Fighting with computers

I liked the source code from MaskedRetriever user on github and I assumed it would work ok. It seems it was an attempt to create a self-contained tool for 3D printing but somehow it was left at an early stage. But I liked the fact that source code was documented. My needs were to read STL files and to slice them. As usual you need to get familiar with the different classes involved but it took me not much to get it going. I stripped most of the classes as I was not interested on 3D printing nor on having a GUI for such a tool. However, as soon as I draw the output of the slice process I noticed something was wrong. While the proper slice looked smooth like the image below: What I was obtaining was a bit of a mess, though the general ideal was correct. As it was my first attempt I was not sure where the error might be. After a few tests I realized that the same code would work ok if STL file was ASCII-based but it will fail as above if a binary STL was used instead.  ...

It's been quite busy around here lately. Still, I have managed to build a couple of delta 3D printers with heated beds and develop a couple of ideas that seemed worth trying. One of these ideas is the use of a heated bed. While I can see that some people are moving away from ABS to use just PLA plastic, I do not see how I can use a PLA-only solutions for environments where temperature can be high, like inside of a car or near a hotend or heated bed. Two different types of extrusions and carriages were tested: wheeled carriages over the extrusion resulted in a quieter and more accurate system than rails. But the IGUS guides used had quite play by design. After watching the videos of them working I am not sure they are a good choice for this particular use, though printed parts do not look bad after all. While Johan pioneered the use of force sensing resistors on the bed for probe-less bed detection, I was not pleased with the additional cost these FSR sensors woul...