Nixie

It printed beautifully externally, absolutely zero complaints. Tweaked the insides with a sharp edged ruler and that's it. The original PLA cover fit like a glove. No need to tweak anything given the results, so I hit reprint right away. Back to sleep!

These are not orange gummies. 🤣 Since I just ordered the windows (and only 3, since shipping skyrocketed after that) I covered the windows in tape for now. I think it fits roughly 250g of dessicant, but only filled 2 of the 4 big boxes, and have like half bag left. I may substitute the 2 small boxes for bigger ones later.

Well, the fan in the 0,4mm.nozzle kinda died? spins freely and doesn't throw an error, but started making an awful noise while spinning. Will save it for extreme need, but in the mean time I just stole the fan from the 0,8mm nozzle. Also, compared it to a.different nozzle and it definitely spins sliiightly less freely. It is possible to change the bearings, so I may do that for fun (ceramic ones? 🤣) Definitely buying spares in the future.

Well, my plan of using my morning well, went to shit and I just slept over my alarms. Oh well, shit happens. Let's put 4 covers to print now.

The single reel feeder has been setup (I have procrastinated for way too long on that) The PPA-CF has been dried (85ºC @ 9h) Now the adventure begins:

It's printing beautifully.

And because I'm a fancy fuck, I added spring detents for the anchors.

That'd be dry.

Okay, I just decided to put the filaments inside and add ALL the dessicant that was stored in the boxes. A tad overkill, but wasn't going to waste it, and I can delay buying 1kg silica gel (it's almost 40€ woth shipping and duties) Best part? Finally not having to worry about dust on my reels or samples!! I always never knew what the hell to do with them, now I can just reserve a spot for them. After confirming it will not plateau on that 21%, I'll start drying all the filaments properly.

Got panel access!! Let's see what all that shit is! Also, good thing I actually opened it, there was a crapload (from what should be zero) of condensation inside. This will get new sealant when finished.

The gradual turn to vertical from the rear slots:

Hmm...I just made the whole thing much larger (like 60mm longer) And also, I'm putting the rear slots slightly more vertical to ease printing.

33 minutes left. I went to sleep a while ago, but woke up hungry. Really tempted to wait it out so I can just hit reprint while the printer is still hot and ready, so tomorrow Incan have ready a pair of units. Then I can later print 4 covers in one go and match quantities. The sloped part does suffer a bit, bit I think I can live with that. I could probably tweak the print for an even flow pattern, but I don't know how to do that. 🤣

Forbidden butt plugs:

HMM...how thrustworthy is this cobalt free dessicant? I know the orange-green one is safe, but I really don't like the colors, I know my brain is going to go "Green, that's good" and forget.

30 minutes from 33 to 10% (just saw the digit change from 11 to 10) Ye, I would say that for the moment, works.

Okay, I beefied up the central spine, and also opened up all the closed sides. Interestingly, I made the central vent, that would otherwise have been aesthetic, a tunnel all the way through and slotted the central spine. I think the final versions will be printed in PPA-CF fibrecore, so the whole assembly can witthstand itself being so slotted. Also, the top anchors will be using chamfered M5*8 screws, that I casually had the exact size I needed.

Three may be a bit too much:

Meanwhile that prints...I thought about this. A central mounting point that can be used by rotating the box 90º to go through the bars, then rotate it again 90º and sit it in place.

In the end I tweaked the box width so I could more easily interact with the evenly spaced bars and ignore the weirdly spaced one to the right. (simmetrical on both sides of the wire shelf) I'm gonna print a 30mm tall test (to test the bead traps too) and see if the spacing works.

Plenty of space for a blue pill in there. it is tempting to just fuck it, remove EVERYTHING and just use the stm32, a separate oled display of suitable size and six touch modules glued to the glass.

Ohhh, nice! We got a separate LCD controller on one end: HT1621B, so I can definitely hijack that one to display whatever I want. The other chip is a touch panel (and lcd controller, but I guess they didn't want to use its capability) I wonder if there are UART humidity sensors. I HATE RUE WINNING. (again, JK) Also, if y'all are enjoying my feet pics, give me some money!

Sometimes I forget at what scale I'm working. That's...a LOT of dessicant. 200cm3 per unit! 400 per tray, 1200 total. However, I have no idea what the density of normal dessicant silica gel (in sphere form) is. Any ideas?

Now, I only need to find suitable glass to put on the front, because I want direct color change sight of the thing, not only depend on what the humidity monitor says. YESS, acceptable price. 45x12,5x1,2mm Nice! And it's quartz glass because I don't want it to get cloudy when the beads roll and try to scratch it. WHAT, it's my project, I can do whatever I want.

Just testing if it will print without supports. Yes, it will (supports enabled) 3h print with a 0,4mm nozzle, 0,2mm layer.

There you go. I may move the windows closer to the center or to the edges...just pure aesthetics tho.

Okay, spent the evening tinkering around with dessicant boxes for the thing. At some point I wanted to try using the mess trapping technique, however, I remembered I want to print the boxes in vertical orientation, so whatever clamps I make, have the best possible strenght: This is what I have come up so far. Not necessarily the final product, but it's a start. The idea is to have two per shelf, if not 4. And I haven't figured out the holding yet.

Unrelated to the function of the unit, it has very obviously been used as a shelf. No idea what three items would damage the paint like that, but whatever. Unfortunately they don't make cutting mats in 500*500mm, wich would have been ideal, so I had to choose between a smaller A3 size or get an A2 and cut it down. In the end I accidentally found a black A3 and went with that. In the future I will maybe think about painting or some other cover. But for now it looks much better as work surface.

3h later.

Okay, I just sealed the draining port, put a pair of dessicant bags inside and found one of the cheapo humidity sensors I had around. Let's see how much before it goes down to 10%

Sorry, got carried away removing all the sealant. After doing so, the panel cover is easily removable with two screws, until it is decided no more access is needed and will be sealed back. Somehow, I still don't want to remove the cooling, not sure what use could I have for it in the future, but hey, it's fully functioning, would be a shame to fuck it up for no reason.

Okay, if you try to send a STL of that, it's 2.5GB...LOL, Bambu studio failed to load that. Saved it as STEP file (9Mb) and all went well. 6h print.50% more than the previous box, with 60% more lenght (not 60% more volume, since the rear is angled). I'll take it. Only 4 to print anyway. (to be fair, I may end up printing 6 for all the shelves...we will see.

Also, realized the slotted central channel was pointless, since the chanel was already 1.25mm wide, same as the rest, so I just joined both sides with some big holes. The slot is now taller, more open, but still reinforced the structure (after all, this is PPA-CF, it will be as rigid as it comes anyway) The smaller two already printed will be used for the lowest shelf, that has the reduced volume of the compressor unit there anwyay.

Also, made the lateral slots less thin, they did print okay, but meh, I think that was kinda pushing it, especially if I want to make it so much taller now.

I just had to remake this from scratch because my bearings where not the ones the original designer used. Mildly annoying.

Final view. I will attach the glass with UV glue, I should remember to buy that, too.

What about two, with two M5 screws so the top pieces can rotate?

Slopes to avoid supports... But this is starting to look kinda cool.

Did some more tweaking around. Reduced the ventilation slots from 1.5 to 1.25mm, otherwise, the vertically printed ones get made a tad too large for my liking. Made the emptying apertures much larger than yesterday, a small test showed me the beads would not flow easily otherwise. Also, put them in the center, and left the windows on the sides. I am still unsure on the mountin method, tho.

Okay, let's see if this arrangement works out. Note: The windows are vertically offset because the wood tray fronts actually hide a bit of the thing.

So, the best I found is about 800Kg/m3 About 0,8g per cm3, or 320g per tray or about 2Kg total. I mean, sounds about right for dessicant.

Meanwhile someone measures the dessicant, I just realized, I can always make the trays shorter to hold less volume-weight. No, I can't make them less tall, since I want to be able to see them past the wood inlay (those look classy and I want to leave them in place, BOOO) But I'm dumb and this shit takes me a while to think. XDDD

In the time it took me to write that, the rh dropped from 33 to 26% Go, go, go! I mean, to be fair, it has like 4Kg of dessicant in there, it better be drying fast af. (in the time of edit, already down to 23%)

I have been thinking. (run, everybody!) The box is already sitting at about 30ºC and we're not in full summer. Maybe this thing will get awfully hot (not saying 60+ of course, but just uncontrolled hot). Since I'll be artificially keeping the humidity really low, I wonder if it wouldn't be convenient, when I have my own controller, to run the chiller, from, let's say, anything above 40ºC, down to 35ºC. There shouldn't be any condensation on the cold side anyway, right?

6,5h later (and and opeing the door once to put tue shelves back)

Half an hour later, 43% I know I haven't added that much dessicant for this volume. Later on I will add some reusable silicagel on high surface containers (just made that thing up)

Also gave the shelves a wash, they had stored food and were a smidge tacky, but not too much.

1h later.

This I want to repair, it annoys me to see it rusty: