God, Cows, And Intelligent Design

My recent work with 3D printing has had me thinking about the arguments between Evolution and Intelligent design. Leaving aside Science and Rational Thought for a moment and putting equal weight on the concepts of Evolution and Intelligent design I say, hey, let's take a look at a recent 3D model I have been designing (I claim intelligently).

I have been working on this project for years. Much like God let the universe swirl around for a few billion years before he got to work on 'Life'.  My project is to put programmable flashing Christmas lights on my G-Scale home train. So it would go around the tree and blink pretty programmable patterns. The problem is hooking the lights to the trains in a way that doesn't look all schlocky. I had tried with wood. Ugly. And didn't work. The lights kept falling off. And I need a way to hide the solder joints. Then I got a 3D printer. It was a great start. But it was sort of small. Two many pieces had to be hooked together. And it still didn't look so hot. Then I got a bigger printer. And I had this idea of how to put the light holders around the top of the car as a sort of raised roof technology. It would look like an original part of the car. And then I started to design that.

I made a lot of scrap plastic on the way.

Each time I printed it I would try something different and better and my design sort of.... evolved... toward the right design. It was intelligent design, but with evolution !!

Perhaps it was like that with God and Cows. God was out creating Cows and he would print one up (using a previous cow's self replicating mechanism) with a few minor tweaks from the last print. He would take a look at it, see how it mooed, see if there were any gaps he didn't expect and that everything fit nicely. Perhaps he would notice something that would be better in a slightly different shade of brown. So he would tweak the gcode (called DNA in COWS) and have the latest sample print him the next generation. And so forth. Eventually he had something that he thought made a really good cow and he was pleased with himself. Then he sat back and thought, "How in the hell am I ever going to get programmable Christmas Lights hung on this puppy?".


get intelligent design guys and evolution guys together using 3D printing.

Gee, that isn't quite what I had in mind when I thought "Cow".

Meta Hobby

3D printing, for the average joe, is considered a hobby. But I maintain that it isn't so much a hobby as a meta-hobby. That is, it is a hobby that helps you do hobbies. To make it even better,  the main hobby that it helps you do is 3D printing. How Self-Referential !!

For instance, let's take a look at my small 3D printer, a 200mm standard design Ender3 from CReality. I believe it was selling for $250, unassembled in a box at my door, a couple of years ago when I bought it (looks like you can get one for $189 now, but you probably want an upgraded model which is around $300). 

Though the out of the box Ender3 works very well, there are a few things that you start running into pretty quickly that are irksome and encourage you to make..... modifications.

For instance?

Well, the main control box sits under the build plate and it has fan right on top that tends to suck in little threads of filament that come wafting off the build. This gets all clogged up in the fan. Sure would be nice to have a forward facing vent cover. Gee.... there is one on Thingiverse? Great. Lets print that and install it. neat. 

Boy, sometimes if I leave this thing for a while the cables slouch over and get caught on the moving build plate and cause print badness. Is there some cable management system? On Thingiverse there is an entire parallel universe of 3D printer cable management systems and remixes!! Hell, some of them I designed myself!! Cable chains are a wonderful thing and lots of fun to screw with. Ok. Lets get them. 

Hey.... I want a controller for my printer. I hear Octoprint works great (it does) and it runs on a $30 Raspberry Pi. Gonna need a case for that sucker. Look <here> on Thingiverse you say? Great. (ooooh, snap together). But.... I also want a Pi Camera holder. I think I will design my own one of those (you can use it too if you like).

I don't like the bed leveling. Too hard to get things just right. Would like to try out some sort of automatic bed leveling. For that you will need solid bed holders and cable guides (i.e. get rid of the springs). Hey, I got a good design for that too. Uses some bolts for spacers. How clever!!

But, in the winter, it gets too cold in the garage to print (needs to be around 20C for things not to pull themselves apart when cooling). What to do about that? How about a thermal enclosure!! I could use some corrugated plastic sheets for walls and I could print some corner and side holders that just snap things together. Perhaps with some plastic 3D printed bolts. I made this great Enclosure (that is easy to put away in the summer). See the Pictures !! (OK, this turned out to be a big waste of time and plastic. When I make a larger one for my CR10, I am going to use cardboard boxes and duct tape). 

Stupid Enclosure

After a few years I decided I wanted to upgrade to be able to print with flexible materials. For that, you have to get rid of the standard bowden tube and get a (somewhat pricey) direct-drive attachment. I did that and things seemed to be working OK, but after a while my runs started failing because there was too much friction in the filament path. Specifically, the holder for the filament wheel was making the wheel too hard to turn and this was making the filament catch up. What to do about that. Hey, here on thingiverse is a ball bearing based holder that fits on the top of the Ender3. It works Great !! 

Snap together ball-bearing filament holder holder

And there you have it. 3 years of printer design evolution have resulted in a printer that can print ANYTHING (small) !!!  And now..... I have no idea what to do.

Bridges !! Train Lights !! 3D printed Deck !!