A sea of unfinished projects

  • Man Down!

    One of the Vorons is down! My guess is a faulty stepper motor driver. The extruder makes buzzing sounds and the motor goes back and forth for some reason when loading filament. Seems like the motor and gear train are fine, they rotate manually without making sounds. If it’s not the drivers, it could be the stepper motor itself. Since drivers are easier to swap, I have some on the way from Amazon. At least I can still print with the second Voron. Not bad for 1,500+ hours to have a first serious problem.

  • Printing

    Not too long to go before the next plate…

  • Printing, and more printing!

    I decided to break out a project I started a while ago (a common refrain) and finish re-printing some parts of this 3D Sets model:

    All of the body pieces are printed, but the filament I chose for the mechanical parts (gearbox, suspension, etc) was a little too rough and not really printed very accurate, so I’m re-printing those parts with Polymaker PLA which I’ve had way more success with.

    This printer has almost 1,500 hours on it and still going strong.

  • How to configure Qt 6 for OpenSSL and PostgreSQL on Windows

    I’m posting this for anyone who may need to compile Qt 6 on Windows with support for both OpenSSL and PosgreSQL. Since I spent an hour of my life figuring this out, I figured I’d share it in hopes that it saves someone else the time.

    You can install both OpenSSL and PosgreSQL from the distributed binaries (easy to find). Make sure you adjust the paths as relevant to your setup. I’m following this guide to compile Qt 6. Here is my command for the configure stage:

    D:\Projects\qt6\configure.bat ^
      -opensource ^
      -confirm-license ^
      -developer-build ^
      -openssl-linked ^
      -I "C:/Program Files/OpenSSL-Win64/include" ^
      -L "C:/Program Files/OpenSSL-Win64/lib" ^
      -nomake examples -nomake tests ^
      -- --fresh ^
      -DPostgreSQL_LIBRARY="C:/Program Files/PostgreSQL/17/lib" ^
      -DPostgreSQL_INCLUDE_DIR="C:/Program Files/PostgreSQL/17/include"

    You can then build as normal. You may want to study the configure output closely to make sure the paths were properly picked up. Once you build you can run a simple application to test your results. ChatGPT gave me this for PostgreSQL:

    #include <QSqlDatabase>
    #include <QDebug>
    
    int main() {
        if (QSqlDatabase::isDriverAvailable("QPSQL")) {
            qDebug() << "PostgreSQL driver is available!";
        } else {
            qDebug() << "PostgreSQL driver is NOT available!";
        }
        return 0;
    }

    ChatGPT also provided me with this:

    if (QSslSocket::supportsSsl()) {
        qDebug() << "SSL is supported!";
    } else {
        qDebug() << "SSL is NOT supported!";
    }

    You should, of course, check these suggestions for accuracy.

  • More Printing

    This is the latest sign, another NYC logo.

    This one was a bit over-extruded because of some first-layer issues I was having, should not have bumped up the extrusion rate that much to compensate for the nozzle being a bit high for some reason. That reason being probably some dried up plastic stuck on the nozzle. The Voron Tap is great otherwise. This machine used to be a nightmare to QGL and mesh, but since I upgraded to Tap it levels quickly every time, and breezes through a mesh. I’m eagerly awaiting a chance to install it on my second printer.

  • Photo Post 11/24

    Just posting older photos while it’s too rainy and dreary to go out and take more…

  • Daily Update

    Trying to do this once a day as an exercise.

    The NYC sign prototype is almost done. I’ll allow another few hours for curing then I will encase the ESP32 inside it’s little hole in the back of the sign. That’ll make this sign the most finished sign I’ve made. The firmware works enough to display several patterns, do WiFi provisioning and allows for factory reset. Future models should have a button that the user can use to reset, in case access to the provisioned access point is lost.

    It should fit nicely into it’s hole there 😉