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Wednesday, 17 June 2026

3D CNC FDM and resin printer stuff.

The summer looks like a few fun projects will keep me busy. Going to enhance some of the 3D printer setups with klipper (got a few Raspberry PI to use), a tool head swap (wham bam's Mutant V2) so will try direct drive, flexible and liquid filament. Perhaps some pen plotting and going to be making a bigger bed on a donated Ender 3V2. I have an old K8200 will look swapping the head for a cyclops head running 1.75mm PLA and dissolvable PVA. The CNC2418 will not be ignored either, after seeing a new threaded rod added to the Z carriage to stop binding at the edges and have a new spoil board added (the bed board was for a 3018 but might cut it down) and I will use this to mill a couple PCB for use on the workbench. The resin printer wanting to try some water soluable resin and make a few antenna parts. The 'toy' EasyThreed K9 printer I have used for TPU will see some upgrades https://www.printables.com/model/906114-easythreed-k9-max-ultra-pro-plus-upgrade/ Might use Nema 17 steppers though (as have them). Also following one of the projects from Tom Salander https://www.printables.com/model/1079858-3d-printer-emission-sensor-array-sensorbox-v2 I had looked at this a while back with sensors using Arduino after coming across bag of different gas sensors. This will not just cover 3D stuff but soldering too as we all know there are oll sorts of nasties on the workbench. I'll be getting some PCB made up with PCBWay. The larger bed CNC I have made will also see a few updates. (I found this good for making front and rear panels to enclosures). Built a Pi4B into it's own mini tower and then added an OLED diplay, 500GB M2 SSD, Klipper and Mainsail this will control a few of the setups. One of the Bigtreetech S2DW V1.0 accelerometer boards is looking to get tried out (pretty sure have a bare ADXL345 board as well used with Arduino before) so will look at input shaping on the different printers too. For those that don't know these look at resonances in the printer that cause all sorts of artifacts and make some suggestions to values that could be changed to Klipper configuration files to negate the effects. I'll add posts as I go through.

Wednesday, 1 April 2026

Translation ear buds

On recent C5 trip I travelled via Morocco and despite speaking a bit of Arabic thought it might be interesting to try a pair of the new translation earbuds as I had a long stop over. The ones I used get your own ones here
They also have nmber of other functions, the most useful as flying was noise cancellation but they act as mormal blue tooth ear buds too. The ones that I was recommended to try were these but they were not available when I looked.

Travelling with Radio Kit, add a GPS luggage tag

First time had to use it in 100's of flights but definitely worth doing. I added a GPS tag to my bag that got checked. Was one of these.

New Electric Screwdriver

I had to open a few boxes and adjust jubilee clips and 1000 other tasks... rather than use mix of screwdrivers I treated my self to one of these. https://amzn.to/4bUhd7X
Cheap enough and had enough attachments and good enough to leave in the bag.

Sunday, 15 March 2026

Sadly no operations from C5

 The licence was not granted, in time.


Thursday, 27 November 2025

Solar Powered from C5 in March 2026

 https://images.trvl-media.com/lodging/13000000/12380000/12375600/12375599/ed8b4b50_z.jpg

 

Back to C5 again next March 2026 and will be low power and solar powered.

 

Not got call sign just yet but will be C5/M1KTA or ??? 

 

Power will be off solar panel, 100W 12V Foldable Solar Panel Kit Monocrystalline with Solar Controller (2 USB Output) for 12V Battery Charging plan on getting one or two motor bike batteries or one bigger car one (depends what available) and will charge it. will run the radio off it.

 

Radio will be KX3 backup Ashan's Raspberry Pi SDR radio, Antennas, various verticals right by the sea.

Locator should be:

Maidenhead Gridsquare: IK23gl

CQ Zone: 35

ITU Zone: 46

Whilst there used this power bank to recharge phone etc.
I had taken this anti mosquito spray with me too.
https://amzn.to/4v2u28T