H/T to foxhat
Friends living in Bradford, NH sent these fall foliage photos last week. Photos taken in the morning just days apart. The colors change noticeably as temperatures drop and the season progresses. We do miss the intensity of this part of fall when we lived there. The colors explode.
----------------
We won the pine needles battle this past week. Well, not the battle but have stemmed the major onslaught for this season. Rain forecast for later this week. Clean-out just in time.
Four hours of yard raking and piling out back. We had help.
---------------
3D PRINTING
After months of wanting to learn how to design, draw and build/print my own designs with a 3D printer, I have finally learned enough of the whole process to prototype my ideas into handheld objects. Redesign, rebuild, redesign, rebuild until the items represent my idea in form, function and strength. It is the design process that helps keep my mind active and fulfills my wanting to build things.
I purchased a Bambu Lab A1 Mini ($199). I am going to write a review soon, but no time now. Suffice it to say that the size, cost and dependability of this little 3D printer is proving to be all that it is represented to be as an introductory tool to this process.
I came across this story by accident. Take the time to watch it.
In 2005/06, I was teaching "Project Lead The Way" in NH. The kids who opted for these classes were young geeks and were all miles ahead of me in the classroom as their teacher. If I was at least even with them on any given day and their ability to eat up a curriculum, well, that was a good day. My learning curve with "Inventor" and "Digital Electronics" was vertical.
3D printing was in its infancy for being available to high school classrooms. 3D prints were sand models, brittle to touch, but produced a hand-held product physically representative of a particular design. We had companies show up at the school and demonstrate how 3D printing worked. I was as much a kid in awe of all of this new technology as were any of my students.
I had one student far ahead of the others in one class. It was all I could to keep him interested and busy while I attended to the whole class. Finally, I handed him a model airplane engine with a few small tools. I told him to take it apart and make a working model we could print the day the 3D printer was scheduled to arrive at our school. He disappeared into the computer at this desk for a couple weeks. A few questions maybe, but you would have thought I had given that student the assignment of a lifetime. His desk was full of model engine parts and on his computer screen soon appeared a fully working model of that engine. Again, the kid in me and all of the other students were in awe of watching that little engine run perfectly in the computer model animation on his screen.
Here was a model airplane engine that I used flying model airplanes for years now fully reproduced using computer design software. Behind all of the work was a young teenager.
And, later that month, a full sand 3D printed model of that little engine was prototyped. Good stuff.
So, to the videos above. This technology has come a long way. 3D printing is changing the world we live in and you and I can sit at our home laptop, think of an idea, draw it along with a few dimensions, reproduce that product in a CAD program, send it to a small home 3D printer and physically hold our ideas in our hand within an hour or so. So far, in my case, all of my ideas have been re-done and improved. From complete failure to a working model worthy of printing using stronger filaments.
Give a laptop and a 3D printer to your child along with instruction and help and you will open up a world without limitations to his or her ideas.
-------------
JIBBER JABBER
I have this week finally deleted some of the net sites I visit. The depth of balonium and lies are far more that I can stomach in the search of learning truths. The wars in the Middle East should keep me awake at night, but what is the truth? Simple truths. All is couched in, well, jibber jabber.
So, when I hit the bed at night, I push my mind to "tomorrow" here at home. Chores, meals, winter coming, visiting with neighbors and playing house with my wife. We are at no loss of things to do. A cup of afternoon tea, the warm Texas sun and a breeze that puts the cats on their backs soaking up the simplicity of warmth, safe and sound.
So, October is all but history and I would have lost money betting on this October 2024 surprises over last year's. It appears that this month will, too, come and go without the world ending.
November? Who ya gonna call?
Thanks for the visit this week.
PUMPKIN SILLINESS FROM FOXHAT (just in.)
No comments:
Post a Comment