Making things.

So I just had my eyes opened. I've been following a Youtuber and fellow allotmenteer for a while now. Steve Richards, and he recently uploaded a video which made me stop and think.

I spent my career writing software. Over 30 years writing for one particular system - Lotus Notes - which to be fair is an extremely powerful and flexible database system, that even before it's hay-day, it encompassed everything that the modern web now strives to meet. Encrypted communications, digital signatures, database flexibility, user authentication, email, and so much more. It's the system I still turn to whenever I need to make things. I've made computer mice. I've worked with other people to make software. I've created more websites than I can shake a stick at (only a few are still standing and in use).

And even at my allotment I'm still making things. Stackable raised beds. Raised Flower Beds. Troughs made from Estate Agents signposts. Replacement windows for the shed. Building greenhouses, and the shelves to go in them. Even fixing up neighbours' dilapidated sheds. I even bought a 3D printer for making stuff at home.

But what really made me stop and think about the latest video, was just the sheer fact than many people consume, not create. They spend their time slumped in front of a TV watching things and not making.

Get out there and make something. And make something of yourself.

I created a monster...

I have an allotment. Now it's not often that Allotment and 3D printing overlap, but in this case I grow a lot of courgettes. So following on from the idea of square watermelons, I decided to see if I could grow the courgettes into something monstrous.

First find your model. I turned to Thingiverse to find a bust of Frankenstein's Monster. Once chosen now I need to apply it. This was done before the latest Alpha release of PrusaSlicer which seems to have a lot more options for creating negatives.

I started with a simple cylinder on the build plate. Then applied the model as a modifier. I set the infill to 0%, all layers and perimeters to 0.

After that it involved rotating the model by 90° and performing a cut.

Once I had the two halves, I could then rotate them back and re-arrange the pieces on the build plate.

Now it's time to actually print the mould. Once done I placed it around a growing courgette and waited. The end result didn't turn out too badly.

There was a slight issue in the way the mould was held together. I made the cut from nose to back of the head. The tape I used to secure it stretched under the pressure applied. I should have made the cut ear-to-ear which would have kept the face intact. And of course there was a discolouration because the mould was printed in grey PLA and no sunlight could get to the skin to make it dark green. But anyway, overall I was happy with the result.

After all, it's not often you get to 3D print a courgette.

Hacked 3D Printer?

It's not often that my job skills and my hobby collide. But this is a lesson in why you need to get anything that connects to the Internet tested, and how to handle a cyber security incident.

So user Ok-rub-449 posted on Reddit today about how they woke up to a strange print that appeared overnight on their printer.

The user in question uses Octoprint and has also enabled The Spaghetti Detective as a plugin to spot whether the prints are failing. Now normally this is only enabled for your particular printer as it requires a special authentication token to allow access. However it would seem that during some updates that occurred on the developers side a serious security flaw was introduced.

Now this leads me on to how you should respond to issues like this. Whenever you get a security incident the best policy is to acknowledge it, inform people, make it public and learn from it. It's no secret that I used to work for BlackBerry for nearly a decade until I was made redundant due to downsizing in 2018. And I certainly had my fair share of Security concerns drummed into me by a Company that puts security first. But even they are not immune to hiding and not publicly acknowledging issues.

But to go back to the TSD issue, the Developer and Founder of TSD found the issue relatively quickly, fixed it and made sure that the affected users were aware of the situation. Moreover they actively responded to the reports and discussions that occurred regarding this. It's not like other companies who just clammed up about issues.

Apologies for the graphics light, link heavy writeup. But it needs to be said. Security by obscurity is no security at all.

Do you need a brim?

First let's explain what is a brim when it comes to 3D Printing. A brim is a a number of additional bands printed around the base of an object to help it adhere to the bed better. Items which have a very small footprint, but are quite tall can lose balance and fall over when printing, thereby making the print failure and turn into the dreaded spaghetti monster. I have never experienced that.

The Brim gives additional support and allows it to stick to the bed better.

However you also have to consider how the print bed moves. On printers with movable beds, like the Prusa, the bed moves back and forth on the Y-axis. This can put a lot of stress on the foothold as the weight of the printed object is only applied to the smallest width of the item sitting on the bed.

But there is a very simple way around this limitation. Turn it through 90°. By applying this turn to the model you are now increasing the force holding it to the bed to the length of the object, instead of the width. This decreases the force of movement when the bed moves and allows it to adhere better.

Now this is not always the case. Objects which have a round footprint will obviously have no effect and a brim is a necessity in that instance. However in this particular model the instructions said that you need to have a brim. In this case, it's just not necessary. True the default placing of the object when loaded is not optimal. But as I have already proved, you need to think how things are positioned to be able to get a good result. And here you go. The proof it can be printed with no brim, just the default skirt.

"Subscribe to the Newsletter..."

How many times have you been spammed with popups and notifications asking you to subscribe to a newsletter? Quite frankly I find them insulting and annoying. You're scrolling down reading an article and the next thing you know some great big javascript driven popup is right in your face asking for your email address. I don't care. Any website that does that to me ends up on the ignore list.

What I want is to be able to get the news as and when I want it, and the best way to do that is with RSS. Yes, if you're one of those few who haven't heard about RSS then stop reading right now and go away. I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to people who actually care about getting timely information.

Now you can either get a decent News Reader (I use QuiteRSS) or if you need something a little more specialised then you might kludge together something a little more useful. So thats exactly what I did.

I work in the Cyber Security world. Subscribing to newsletters means that I would be at their whim to receive the details. Whereas having something that brings all the news to you is a lot more useful. Even more so if those feeds could all be collated and re-distributed in a website for your colleagues to use as well. So that's exactly what my current Cyber Security Project is all about. (See my Previous Project)

There was once upon a time a piece of software called Planet. It was a news feed aggregator that you could give it specific feeds and it would display everything together. Unfortunately it is no longer in use and hasn't been maintained for a long time. Besides which, I wanted something with a little more flexibility.

Enter "Hack the Planet".

HTP offers a greater level of control and the ability to subscribe to numerous feed services all of which are scanned and collated every 15 minutes. The system will also check against a predefined list of keywords for services which are NOT cyber security related (such as general purpose news feeds, eg. Sky News or BBC News) and decide whether to include them or not. Add to the fact that it can figure out Keywords to allow you to filter all of the news clips to just the specific entries (which has been really useful during the recent PrintNightmare issues).

The name has a number of in-jokes in it. Firstly, well Planet software and all that. It's my tribute to them. Secondly "Hack the Planet" was a key phrase used in the 1995 movie Hackers which featured hacking as a core theme. (Don't get me started on the inaccuracy portrayed in most TV media about hacking, because that really annoys me.) So the theme all fits together. 

It's all written in shell script, because it's easy and works. The XML processing is done by xmlstarlet, the web pages are generated through filepp and Make controls the whole thing. The fancy indented DIVs are done by Augmented UI.

All in all, I'm quite happy with the result. There is nothing overly complex with it, and it provides timely information needed by the in-house team of Cyber Security people, whether they are Threat Assessment, Penetration Testers, or people who are just interested in timely news.

No subscription needed.

Printing bigger than the bed

 So a colleague at work asked me to make an Amazon Fire Wall Mount, except a particular size to suite his machine. Fortunately this design allows for flexibility of the end model through it's use of OpenSCAD to control the sizing of the system. But he also needed it adapted to allow for a cable to run inside the case. No big deal really... except for how big the piece is.

Now the wall plate itself has no problem to be printed. The design will split the model in two and allow it to snap together, but the outer bezel, that's a different matter.

The print bed for the Prusa Mk3S is 250mmx220mm and this design is 264mm. It's not going to fit.

Except... the build volume is 3D. So by tipping the design up at a 30° angle it will fit, albeit with a lot of supports in place. But that's neither here nor there as my colleague has already paid for the filament (a whole roll of black PLA) so the cost is on his head. I get to keep whatever's left over as my fee. So thats what I did.

The end result took over a day to print but came out really well.

Mind you, thats not the only thing I'm printing at the moment. There is currently a KickStarter campaign underway which I am backing. And they've even produce some free designs which seem specifically dedicated to me... (OK, not really but they're good designs). So of course I made one.

3D printing has a lot of possibilities, but you have to remember, it's 3D. After all, Khan didn't think in 3D when up against Kirk, so make sure you think in 3D as well.