s-ol @s_ol@merveilles.town

another straightened shot:

Other keyboard crimes that have been committed while playing with this pegboard yesterday:

This was never really supposed to happen, but with the aluminum plate the eyelet can actually easily support the whole board's weight!

@technomancy
The bit about reading (< a b c) as "ascending? a b c" is so neat!

I started working on a vacuum table/box for stenciling PCBs like these ones by unexpectedmaker and marius heier:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEEo1tJj9D8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iX61nD94cg

The difference (and reason I'm making my own) is that I need mine to be huge (keyboard-sized) and so I want to laser-cut it rather than spend a week printing huge plastic parts.

I started designing in Fusion360 but switched to Cuttle after a while, here's the final parametric design:

https://cuttle.xyz/@s_ol/Laser-Cut-Vacuum-Stencil-Box-9FuQHLNnFKxh

#theWorkshop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nah4BQ9y8IY

I strongly recommend playing with this for a little and then looking at how the "Open Box" example is implemented. 🤯

Played a lot with https://cuttle.xyz today and I'm really digging it. Probably the best code-CAD approach I've seen so far, building on Apparatus but applying it to physical dimensions and lasercutting.

The way the JS scripting interacts with the core system is *really powerful*. Full first-class scriptability everywhere, yet completely opt-in.

I built this Koch snowflake in ~25min after ~30min of looking at the intro and examples.
https://cuttle.xyz/@s_ol/Koch-Snowflake-Fractal-abMcnC93wkOZ

Excerpts from "Constructables" (a system for interactively designing and fabricating on a lasercutter by indicating each step using a variety of "proxy laserpointers" directly on the workpiece)

Video: https://youtu.be/8g3LaF9oVFY

The smaller session #2 was done while listening to @bleeptrack and @attie have a chat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk2_QkLCEWI

That's almost the same thing, right? 😛

Looks like UPS just cancelled my account silently for no reason for the second time.

It seems logical that it's because after signup they ask you to send an email with extra info or have your account cancelled within 24h. But I've done that within an hour both times and the digitally-certified email system also confirms that they have received and "accepted" the message.

Would be nice if they'd let you know at least? Fun to find out just when you need to send something 😑

TEN YEARS ago Stefanie Müller & her team proposed this groundbreaking "true AR" (no displays) interaction approach where you can design laser-cut 3d objects *on the material* using multiple colors of laser pointers to represent cuts, bends, finger joints etc:

https://youtu.be/8g3LaF9oVFY
(this video is a hard recommend)

Sure, this is about personalized small-scale fabrication and experimentation, but surely there's something useful to the Industry in there, too? CNC operators deserve magic!

I'm generally not a big fan of throwing tech buzzwords at problema willy-nilly but if you're trying to manipulate complex 3d geometries from various angles, with the shape changing over time etc... oh, I don't know, maybe VR or AR could help???

It turns out they've tried VR, but not where it matters (designing the parts & how they're made): there's VR simulations where you can train how to use the clunky software and write Gcode by hand, on VIRTUAL fancy CNC control panels

I'm not sure why but somehow I was expecting to see stuff that I'd envy from the hobbyist perspective. Instead it looks like most of the operator training going on is still about teaching people to write GCode by hand (but now with fancy visualization!) or using "conversational programming" tools:

"drill a hole"
"where?"
"at X=15, Y=20"
"what diameter?"
"5mm"
"how deep?"
...