What did you do today?

[Choidebu]

Folks at r/3dprinting, r/functionalprint, are mentioning that ender mfg is being dodgy by swapping parts for cheaper options. For example they no longer gives meanwell PSU, and sometimes the vent pattern doesn't even match the psu they sent so it chokes and overheats and shut itself off. One also mentioned lower quality magnetic plate than before.

You might wanna check underneath for that psu.

 

[Skripka]

Haven't taken it apart yet. Tried printing in PLA--using Creality's official Slicer (based on 4.8.2) with their own recommended settings (vanilla Cura 5.0.0 doesn't have a profile for the Ender 3 S1 Pro). Both Amazon filament and Creality's own test filament. All outside the thermal tent--stopped all times. Started using glue-stick to get the prints to stick to the plate so I can at least resume-prints, and that works.

Have an email out to Creality asking WTF.

The print head comes with a cooling fan for the print and head...but I have never seen it do anything until I have to resume a print (the printer will run 3-4 hours without it),, and I cannot find any setting to alter its behavior in Cura.

 

[ignsvn]

 

[ignsvn]

So probably I'm a terminator. Or at least R2D2 lol.

 

[Phuncz]

Please report to robot recycling facility within 4000 cycles.

 

[Skripka]

So 3D printer shenanigan update....I traced my issues, I think, to the printer-head cooling fan not functioning properly--BUT--it kicked on when I resume the print when it stopped and then printed fine not only on the resumed-print, but also a following print straight through with no stops.

So I thought...maybe there's a firmware fix for this.

Well the abject life-failures at Creality....their official firmware update instructions can and will soft-brick their Sender S3 Pro S1 printers. Seriously, I won't even link to said official Youtube tutorial on how to do it--because everyone who follows them is told by Creality to contact after-purchase support, and the video tutorial is still up month(s) later. I had to read YouTube comments to discover you instead have to flash Japanese firmware to get it unbricked and updated. WTF.

Ugh.

 

[Arboreal]

Folks at r/3dprinting, r/functionalprint, are mentioning that ender mfg is being dodgy by swapping parts for cheaper options. For example they no longer gives meanwell PSU, and sometimes the vent pattern doesn't even match the psu they sent so it chokes and overheats...

The Meanwell situation is possibly not Creality's fault, my neighbour is an electronic engineer and says there are huge supply problems and delays in that industry.
I looked at Meanwell RPS power supplies last week and all the UK suppliers were quoting delivery dates in Q1 2023

 

[GuilleAcoustic]

Found out that the 3rd part of the manhwa "The breaker" started a month ago. Been waiting for it for YEARS ... so I did read the first 11 chapters

 

[ignsvn]

Received a scam call just now.

Scammer:
"Hello sir, my name is xxx, I'm calling from Microsoft. This is about your system security. I need you to turn on your PC now"

Me:

 

[lozza_c]

Received a scam call just now.

Scammer:
"Hello sir, my name is xxx, I'm calling from Microsoft. This is about your system security. I need you to turn on your PC now"

Me:

I love receiving these calls. I try and keep them on the line for as long as possible, going along with it initially then introducing and gradually increasing the outlandish and absurd to gauge their reaction. Try and scam my grandmother, that's an act of war

Recently it's robocalls my national insurance number's been suspended. Great says I, that'll save me 13.25% on my next paycheque!

 

[ignsvn]

Learning FreeCAD.

This confirms my hate toward video tutorials. Out of a 15 mins video, I probably spent 7.5 mins rewinding & fast forwarding to get to the right frame where a particular info is displayed.

 

[GuilleAcoustic]

Today I broke my phone and bricked my Linux

 

[Skripka]

Today I broke my phone and bricked my Linux

Stay away from any and all tech you own or are responsible for. Like my mother always said--these things come in threes.

 

[GuilleAcoustic]

Stay away from any and all tech you own or are responsible for. Like my mother always said--these things come in threes.

That I did very much. It's a new day now. My SIM card is inside my pro phone now, but I'm not a huge fan of receiving work notifications during the weekends/vacations.

Nuke and paved my Linux (vanilla Archlinux) with Endeavour OS since I've been willing to try tiling WM for a while and they provide several flavours of it (i3, Sway, BSPWM, QTile, etc). So far so good, stuck to i3 (because my crappy ultrabook only has a low voltage core2duo from 2006).

 

[Valantar]

Got a controller board in for a laptop screen that I'm planning on making into a portable monitor. Really nice and compact board.

Except... well, you see that red connector with the trimmed-off sides? I wanted to add USB-PD power with one of those tiny trigger boards, and that backlight header - unused for my panel - seemed like a convenient spot to add connect it, as its outer two pins on each side were 12V and ground respectively, confirmed to be continuous with the input jack with my multimeter. So I trimmed the sides of the connector and soldered wires to the pins.

Then things started to go downhill.

After soldering the wires to the PD trigger board, suddenly I was only getting 9V out of it. Turns out I had accidentally un-bridged two points on the board which set the voltage. But I didn't spot that until I had tried running the board and display for a bit. Power LED flashed in weird patterns and nothing worked. But a too-low voltage shouldn't do any damage, right? Well, the flashing power LED kept going after I bridged the solder points again and brought back 12V, before everything just went dead. I desoldered the PD board and plugged in a regular barrel jack - still dead.

I decided to probe around the board a bit, looking for defective components and the like. After finding no shorts, I hooked up the power cable to check if voltages were okay. They were weird - 12V was 12V, but what used to be 5V was fluctuating around 2.8V, and what used to be 3V-ish was more like 1. Then, poking around a bit more, I learnt just how easily you can blow up a tiny IC if you bridge two of its legs with a multimeter. See that hole to the left of U1? That's where two legs of that chip used to be. The trace opposite is also shot. The chip glowed for a bit, then pretty much disintegrated.

This is after desoldering what was left of the chip - it looked a lot more dramatic before that. Still, while the board was seemingly dead already, now its definitely dead. This one ain't coming back. Guess I'll have to order a new one - and this time I'll solder the USB-C leads to the power jack, and make sure the board is set to 12V before connecting it!

 

[confusis]

Big oof on that one @Valantar!

 

[Valantar]

Big oof on that one @Valantar!

Yeah, it was one of those classic "just because it looks easy on YouTube doesn't mean it is easy in real life" type of situations.

I'm still curious about what killed the board in the first place - whether inputting 12V where I did was somehow wrong (I don't think so - the components don't know or care where power comes in as long as it's on the same voltage plane on the PCB), or whether it getting 9V rather than 12 was somehow what killed it. I don't think I've ever heard of electronics dying from having too low a voltage applied either, so I'm a bit stumped. Too bad I blew up that chip, as that makes further diagnosis impossible.

 

[confusis]

Yeah, it was one of those classic "just because it looks easy on YouTube doesn't mean it is easy in real life" type of situations.

I'm still curious about what killed the board in the first place - whether inputting 12V where I did was somehow wrong (I don't think so - the components don't know or care where power comes in as long as it's on the same voltage plane on the PCB), or whether it getting 9V rather than 12 was somehow what killed it. I don't think I've ever heard of electronics dying from having too low a voltage applied either, so I'm a bit stumped. Too bad I blew up that chip, as that makes further diagnosis impossible.

It's possible current, rather than voltage, killed it. Or just bad luck :/

 

[Valantar]

It's possible current, rather than voltage, killed it. Or just bad luck :/

Yeah, that's possible - I guess if anything tried to operate normally but at 25% lower voltage, that would mean a matching increase in current. I didn't see or smell anything burning before I fried the chip, but that obviously doesn't mean something didn't burn out in a chip or more subtly elsewhere. The lower voltage VRMs (or whatever is/was controlling them) seems like a likely culprit, given the odd voltages I saw. Definitely bad luck, though of the mostly self-inflicted kind. I guess I've now got proof that I'm at the "I know just enough to be dangerous" point of my DIY electronics journey

If nothing else, I've now got a donor board for a few components and a practice board for SMD and tiny through-hole soldering!

 

[confusis]

Yeah, that's possible - I guess if anything tried to operate normally but at 25% lower voltage, that would mean a matching increase in current. I didn't see or smell anything burning before I fried the chip, but that obviously doesn't mean something didn't burn out in a chip or more subtly elsewhere. The lower voltage VRMs (or whatever is/was controlling them) seems like a likely culprit, given the odd voltages I saw. Definitely bad luck, though of the mostly self-inflicted kind. I guess I've now got proof that I'm at the "I know just enough to be dangerous" point of my DIY electronics journey

If nothing else, I've now got a donor board for a few components and a practice board for SMD and tiny through-hole soldering!

Expensive practice board :/ At least you blew a 12v power component and not a 120v/240v one!

I really should get back into PCBs, soldering and Arduinos.. it's been a while.