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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • Having a 3d printer is super convenient for any home or shop repairs I need to make. I have so many curtain spacers and custom hooks all over the place now. The key is to get some hours in Fusion or some other good CAD software so you can whip up custom parts in minutes. You may get it wrong the first few times, but a couple minutes of tweaks and then you have a new part printing while you go back to working on other stuff.

    The Swedish Maker just put out a video about how transformative 3d printing has been for his workflow. https://youtu.be/p2bClWmKHRM




  • I appreciate your question, it is nice to see things from a different perspective. My generator is definitely a luxury that hopefully can remain off. Most utilities focus on uptime and this generator ad is a weird cash grab by preying on people’s fear. My local natural gas company did a similar thing where they strongly encouraged us to buy buried pipe damage coverage through them. If a pipe is damaged on your property then you have to pay a contractor to fix it.

    American suburbia is an odd thing. The core metro is usually well planned and stays online due to buried cables. However, a lot of old suburbs were built with overhead lines. Then expansion never slowed down and the cities grew around the old suburbs. Many of the modern suburbs now have underground power, but even they may be fed by overhead poles outside the community. However, other parts of America could be different where they have hurricanes or earthquakes regularly.






  • You can put clear finger nail polish over the pins you are afraid of touching. The higher quality polish, the longer it will last. If you ever need to rework it then the soldering iron will burn through the polish and create extra smoke. Conformal coating is what the industry uses to protect boards from chemicals and moisture, but is more expensive and harder to rework.

    Flux comes in many varieties. Rosin or No-clean are most likely what you have. Rosin should be cleaned off with rubbing alcohol and a toothbrush if you want the board to last decades. No-clean can stay on the board, but can also be cleaned off in the same manner. If you have water-soluble flux then you must clean the board thoroughly with water to prevent future damage from the aggressive flux.