Flashforge Finder 3D-printer

So I bought a 3D-printer few weeks ago, been printing stuff. Few test prints, some functional items, etc. and now I am getting into designing my own objects and specific parts for my own projects.

PROS/CONS AT THE END.

Anyways, this is a post for those thinking about buying one. The first thing to know is that there isn't that great of a difference on the print quality if you buy an expensive printer. The technology is pretty much the same on all of the printers(of this type). The only reason I would buy a more expensive 3D-printer is the print volume. And that would have to be at least 1.5 times larger for less than 1.25 time the price.

I bought a Flashforge Finder, it comes with a 200 m(0.6 kg) spool of PLA filament, and if you wonder how much you can print with it, I can show you.

So here is everything that I have printed with the default spool that came with the printer, all the excess filament bits, leftovers and rafts are in the bag in the right.

So if you don't use rafts, then there would be even more stuff that you could print. BUT I strongly advice using rafts, I myself use them to make final adjustments on the print bed, if it's misaligned. The following designs can be found on http://www.thingiverse.com for free (at least for now)

1. Stealth Bookends(unfinished, missing one part, these are the last prints before I ran out of filament), by GMoi 

2. Euro coin organizer, by tmssngr

3. Filament Spool, has like 30-70 cm filament left, full 0.6 kg spool has about 200 meters of filament.

4.  A Simple Direct Current Electric Motor(had to cut the battery holder, too large for the platform), by retrofluffyboy

5. Side Release Buckle 3/4 inch, by UniverseOfDesign

6. Compact planetary gearbox, by Trigubovich

7. Customizable Universal Charging Dock(mine is for iPhone4, but there are other options), by eirikso

8. Filament bag, contains all the rafts and excess filament bits. Waiting to be recycled.

9. PCB Drill, by Geminy_Studio

10. Horus Eye (for necklace, my very first print), by WarraGp

11.Desk Mount Headphone Holder / Mount / Clamp, by mistertech

12. Simple Toothpaste Squeezer(The triangular one) by ChatterComa,

Toothpaste Squeezer(the other two, one is scaled larger), by MicrosoftStore

13. Hoddy Usb Holder, by Hoddy

14. The printing platform/print bed, its 14 cm x 14 cm x 14 cm, or at least that's what the FlashPrint software allows.

X. The two unspecified prints on the photos are of my own design, and are also "secret" projects, so I am not going into those in this post. 

Most of these are used daily, and the other are waiting metal parts to become functional. Now all of the part are from a single spool, 200 meters of PLA filament gives you that many prints. And 200 m of PLA filament cost me about 18 € that's about 19 - 20 USD. And let's say the headphone mount took about 23 m of filament. 

200 m / 23 m ≈ 8.7 headphone mounts

20  $ / 8.7 ≈ 2.30 $. 

For a headphone mount that you attach to your table. (To find the total value, the printer price should be factored in and also electricity, time anfpawfnaejfbsöemslöagn who cares, this is awesome.)

So before this turns out to be a full review(too late?), I'll say if the printer doesn't suddenly come up with weird some really stuff I would definitely recommend this printer. The print quality is very good, the software is intuitive and has normal/expert mode for tweaking, I haven't had to use that though.

I must say though, there is a bug on the printer's assisted leveling function: it wants you to tighten the print bed screws forever, so don't use that function, level the bed manually. This bug probably will be fixed in future firmware updates(while writing the firmware is: finder_1.5.20161014). Once you get the leveling correct(trial and error, this is why I always print rafts, so I see if it prints straight), it really doesn't need any adjusting beyond that.

Actually there's missing one print from the photo, because I gave it away,

Honeycomb bookstand MG, by Gertsen:

Here's a view of the printing software, as you can see it tells you that your design won't fit. But by rotating the object, you can make an object fit within the borders. That books stand I layed on its side diagonally and scaled it to 95 % on the Z-axis, if I remember correctly. This software let's you do things like that, it's nothing revolutional, but it's still a nice touch. Like the cutting tool and auto/manual adding of supports, though I haven't had much use for those. Also after, hitting the print button, you get to see few settings and after that it gives you an estimate of filament usage and print time.  

Here you can see after the settings and slicing the model, it prompted me if I really want to print this, even thought it doesn't fit the printing are. I did this just to show the estimates on the upper right corner. Notice that the print time is 4 hours.

NOTE: THIS SOFTWARE ISN'T A 3D MODELING SOFTWARE. The 3D models/objects/designs are made with software like Blender, Autodesk Fusion 360, TinkerCAD, 123D Design. This (FlashPrint) is just a software, for printing those 3D models.

Few of the items came out so good that I can't even tell them apart from factory manufactured, I haven't even tried the better ones. All the solid parts are filled with the default honey comb structure, and one project (PCB drill press) had a few tight parts, so I had to use a common household hammer on it, and it didn't even break. So apparently the filament is much stronger after printing than in the spool, or at least that's my experience with it.

Here is the honeycomb structure that is used to fill solid objects, this can be turned off from the expert mode setting or changed to triangular and few others.  Nice thing about this software that it let's you see how the object is going to be made layer by layer.

Anyways you can design solid objects on a 3D-design software, and the FlashPrint software does this on its own when slicing (converting the object to layers) 

Notice that the print time is 4 hours, and also notice the raft, which is the puddle around the objects.

The slicer software could've just been a simple *.stl to *.gx file format software, but it isn't, that's why I like it so much. There're little tweak options as well if you connect the printer to your computer, e.g. you can change the print bed led light color, a fun addition for those who are into those things, to me the default white is alright, although I did test some others for the giggles:

(You have no idea how painful it was to get these photos in some order on this blog...)

All of my prints are made with the default settings, except I enable the raft option.

Available print resolutions are:

Low

Standard [X]

High

Hyper

Average print time on the parts I've printed is 2 hours. Ranging from 18 minutes to 5 hours, depending on the size and complexity.

Pros:

+ The printer can run without connection to PC, the print files are uploaded to USB memory, and the printer has its own internal storage as well, where all of the prints get copied to before printing. After that the USB stick can be removed.

+ Has an internal storage ~7500 MB (few of my prints took 20 MB each, most of the prints take about 5 MB and yeah you can delete them too, so there's plenty of space) 

+ Looks nice, clean and neat, unlike some others on the market(I think you've seen some of those unholy mechanical abominations out there)

+ Relatively cheap, 490 € / ~530 USD.

+ Print quality is very nice.

+ A lot of useful stuff comes with it, like a scraper to get the print off the bed after printing.

+ Integrated spool holder, prevents dust collecting on the filament.

+ Almost immediately ready-to-use from the box. Just remember to cut the zip-ties around the extruder, they are clearly marked though.

+ Option to preheat the extruder, I do this while I run the extruder calibration(I run it on every startup)

+ Doesn't make much noise, I wouldn't sleep next to it though.

+ The frame supports the printer very well, making it very stable.

+ It has a touchscreen.

+ The manufacturer has taken many things into consideration.

+ The FlashPrint software.

+ REMOVABLE PRINTING BED, THIS IS A BIG PLUS ++++

Cons:

- The touchscreen sometimes is frustrating to use, especially when scrolling down files on the USB, can be remedied by putting the already printed in a separated folder, or deleted altogether.

- Start up tune, I could find on board settings to turn it off

- Some of the setting are made from the FlashPrint software, like the turning of the lights, if left to print overnight, nothing critical, but still.

- Current on board firmware( [V1.5 20161014 / finder_1.5.20161014] I haven't checked for an update in a while though) has a bug on assisted leveling function, but this leveling can be done manually.

- 14 cm x 14 cm x 14 cm print size will get too small after a while, but you can print the part for a bigger printer.

- Although the printer knows how to bridge, I wouldn't trust the default settings on that. I just align the object before slicing so that it prints right and minimizes bridging.

- FlashPrint software has few bugs, like some connection errors(connection to what? No idea.) from time to time, never bothered to look what they were about, because they didn't get in the way.

???:

? Has WIFI, I have no idea does it work or do I need it/does it make things easier.

To end this, IF I had the need, I would buy a second one. I just don't print that much, on some occasion with multiple part projects I've wished I could print stuff simultaneously. Maybe that comes later. Anyways now I gotta eat something...

Is gravity tied to vibrational frequency?

//WORK IN PROGRESS, UNFINISHED ETC.

I really haven't thought this through: but is gravity tied to vibrational frequency of "stuff"? I mean the higher the vibration the less it weighs, like visible light for instance isn't that affected by gravity and it has a high frequency. If you start to vibrate a nail on an atomic level, first it'll start to get hot, then it'll start to glow. Also heat causes expansion in objects, so they become less dense. And yes I am trying to say that the aforementioned nail will start to levitate* if you heat it enough; it vaporizes. The atoms are moving/shaking/vibrating so much that they can't hold onto each other any more.
*(The reason it goes "up", is because everything else is still more susceptible to gravity )

So heat is movement, that is tied to density  density is mass/volume.
//sidenote: "Mass is the measure of an object's resistance to acceleration (a change in its state of motion)"

So density is how many things can you fit in a certain space. Like, how many stationary people can you fit in a room versus how many ballet dancers doing La Bayadère can you fit in to that same room? And that's how dense that group of people is, then you give it a name: like helium or iron. So is the periodic table about how many observable groups of movement there are? By adding protons and electrons you make an atom more dense, thus making the different elements from the periodic table.

Maybe I should use an example of couples, since there are protons and electrons dancing with each other, and in the more denser stuff they are just hugging it out. Neutrons are just sitting it out. But then it begs the question: why helium and hydrogen aren't hot? There are only two couples(proton-electron) in helium, and one couple in hydrogen. Maybe heat is something that applies more to the denser stuff, the more dense a thing is the more susceptible it is to this movement or rather the more it disperses within the thing; the more tightly packed a crowd is, the wider a push against a person within it is felt and the energy dispersed. Maybe density is the ability to handle and disperse the heat (vibration) introduced to it or at least linked to this ability? DAMMIT ...I lost my trail of thoughts..

//CAN'T THINK STRAIGHT, MAYBE I'LL COME BACK AT THIS LATER. THERE'S JUST SO MUCH A MIND (my mind )CAN TAKE AT A TIME.

Just a thought..

Maybe adults are trying to control and condemn (I'm not talking about responsible parenting, just the over the top and desperate acts of control we've seen through the history) the acts of the youth because they don't want to feel obsolete, something that will be forgotten and left behind when the next generation goes on, creating a world which has different values than the previous generation. No one wants to feel like an outsider.

And what do you do, when you cannot connect or keep up with a thing that is occupying your beloved culture in growing numbers, in someways destroying your world? Kinda like bacteria in a petri dish fighting over the substrate. From your point of view that newcomer, that other than you, is bad, subversive and all that. Maybe that's a thing we all experience at some point.

It appears that things don't ever stay the same. And that same one might refer to was never the "same" to begin with.

Wonder does older versions of software feel that way as well when the update comes.. Yeah I know, I'm bad at jokes..

Creating a wormhole by colliding black holes

///THIS IS STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION, WORK IN PROGRESS AND ALL THAT e.g. images (and probably common sense) are missing and terms/concepts are mixed up etc. And if the gravity is always perpendicular against the fabric (which would explain why everything has their own gravitational pull), and that defines the shape of the universe, then this whole thing is kinda useless.///

Disclaimer: I do not own the universe (probably). If you try making a wormhole based on this and fail, remember that you got this stuff from the internet..

If you succeed, though, then I might have some claims.. So arbitrary rights reserved..? The point is: don't come blaming me if you make a mess or unmake all the messes ever.

Information and entertainment purposes only.

So let's assume that the universe is a bubble. Why bubble? Well everything else in kind of like a bubble(a sphere!).

(image from Wikipedia)

[air bubble underwater image]

[atom image]

[honey comb structure(sharing walls with other bubbles = hexagons) image]

[honey comb layered on top of each other will form a cube image]

[Earth image]

Nature just loves to arrange itself into a sphere or a bubble. But this is kinda like 4th or (some other)-th dimensional bubble

Now when we see this:

Where the gravitation is like a pressure against a fabric or a rubber film, and the space is bent.

What if to achieve a wormhole you didn't have to bend space?

What if it's a matter aligning immensely heavy object to collide with another head on?

(image from Reddit, whoever used it there has the responsibility of distributing stuff.. God I hate arbitrary things like copyrights, how can one own anything? Everything used to make things are mined from this planet and the brain is kept running with the food gathered from this planet, so how can anyone have any claim on anything? Yeah I don't bother checking how they work.. Someone let me know if I've dun goofed, I have no intention of hurting anyone)

To achieve the shape on this depiction of a wormhole you can't be pressing the rubber surface on just one side, you'd have to press it from both sides.

(image from telegraph.co.uk)

Now apply that idea to a ball, bubble or a balloon, and let's assume the balloon
wouldn't pop, You'd have press it from the exact
opposite sides of the balloon to make those two points collide head on, to make the forces fully cancel each other out.

Now there could be some sort of explosion or some sort of spectacle while those forces fight to stay in existence, and that may have some "collateral damage" hopefully tearing a hole in the aforementioned rubber fabric of space and at the same time welding the edges of the two opposite holes together.

Since they both are like rubber they'd be pulling to the opposite directions keeping the wormhole stable. Since the black holes are gone, there would be no spaghettification when entering the wormhole. And I think it's crucial that the collision (and the created "gravitational tunnel") is made head on and not from an angle(maybe there's some tolerance), because when the two black holes cancel each other out, the fabric will try to "surface" because there won't be anything pressing against the fabric.

If the thing we refer to as a black hole, is just an immensely heavy "object" sinking through the fabric of the universe, then I don't think that black holes are as nearly as interesting as the force pulling it. What is it sinking towards? And since apparently(to my limited knowledge) everything has gravitational force, then there must be a source for that, something that grants everything that attribute, an absolute weight that everything is measured against, and the closer to that weight an object is, the deeper and closer to that point it sinks.*


I think I've read or heard somewhere the two black holes colliding just makes a bigger black hole, but I think the calculations where done to a situation like this:

When the two holes and the event horizons meet, they'll add to each other.

As you can see the black holes are sinking towards the "maximum weight" which is depicted to be in the middle of the sphere, so the objects around the universe have the same "mass gain distance" to the center. To connect the two black holes without sinking to the center, you would have to move "gravitationally sideways" which isn't a dimension of gravity anymore in this case. You would need the assistance of another dimension, which would apparently be, in this depiction, from the first three(x,y,z) dimensions. So you'd have to actually travel through it, just like in the movies, the travel miles saved are paid in increase of weight, since you'd still be moving towards the center of the gravitation bubble. To think of that, maybe the spaghettification would still be a problem. Or maybe the gravitational core always tries to align itself a certain distance away from the fabric. If not, the whole thing could at least partially collapse on itself, after losing the weight of those black holes keeping the thing "submerged".

(I should have done the models with "ico spheres" instead of the "normal" ones, which made the thing look kinda funny.)

Now there are few things with this theory: If the universe is an ever growing 4th dimensional bubble, where is the 4th dimensional horizon? How is observed? Is it the threshold set by the speed of light(!!??); just like the commonly known horizon it's ever evading and out of reach. And even if you find the horizon and could calculate the size of this 4th dimensional bubble, how would you know the locations of black holes on the opposite side if there's even any?

If the "gravitational weight" or mass is something pulling planets and stars against the fabric, and the universe was a bubble or a balloon, the point where everything is pulled towards would be the center of universe, the big bang origin point; where the bubble started to expand. And to achieve this wormhole, you would have go through the gravitational center, the thing that is pulling EVERYTHING against the fabric of space. Maybe it aligns itself around the created tunnel?

If the fabric of the universe acted like rubber, the fabric could tighten thus lightening gravity. The balloon bubble universe would make the universe a somewhat limited, although possibly ever growing. This growth rate is something to take into consideration when calculating the position of the opposite side black hole, but that's why we have Newton's Calculus.

Another thing to consider is that if the bubble was to burst for some reason, what happens when there's nothing to stop us from getting pulled to the center of the universe? Would it create another universe to the opposite "direction", like an inverse universe? No worries though, this probably doesn't happen as long we feel/observe gravity, meaning that the rubber surface hasn't yet stretched near to its breaking point, but if it gets punctured by something that's another thing.. But what would such thing even be? Or what if the universe was already tunneled through; what if it's a shape of torus and the accelerated growth of the universe is just the surface texture nearing to pass through the center hole, which is a smaller diameter than the outside circumference, causing a Venturi effect of sorts? Are we eventually heading for a black hole, that being the tightest spot to "squeeze" through; center of the aforementioned torus?

Another thought: What if gravity doesn't warp time, but IS time? Or the other way around? Although the "time" we use for measuring, is movement compared against other movement (e.g. a second is"the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom").

And when the flaming and bashing starts, just bare in mind that I don't actually know if all this is already old news or debunked beyond stupidity, I'm no scientist, and I woke up to this thought this morning, and I really don't have any idea if this is stupid or not, just wanted to share.

*(Could we create a model where all the known absolutes/constants are, and where everything else is "sinking" in relation to those absolutes/constants? Without it being this very reality, of course.)

//Oh, and IF I got something very top secret accidentally right by some unfathomable miracle, could you not assassinate me or do anything that I would deem unpleasant. Or at least consult me first.

About leaving Earth

My view on the subject of leaving earth is that if we can't leave the star system with the current planet we live in (like attaching a giant rocket to its side) we can't do it with a spaceship made out of a part of that planet. (reducing the size and ratio of energy/people)

If you grow plants on the ship, where does the alternative sunlight for those plants come from?(and they need much more than that) And if that is produced with lights, where does the energy for those artificial light sources come from? The energy sources on the ship has to last for the entire trip, because there is no way of charging it e.g. sunlight, because leaving the star system kinda rules that one out. 

There are other problems as well, like how to generate heat without running out of energy or how to get rid of excess heat if that builds up. And of course the ever present time, how long does it take to travel to someplace else, like the man[Bill Nye] said: No place to go 

So the only way seem to be those wormholes, or some other "unconventional" mean. 

I don't know why there is this urge to leave this planet, it's very sustainable compared to the others around there. What is it that we can't have here? What is it we are trying to escape or reach, ourselves? But I guess the grass is always greener..

Though of the day (how to party)

The party isn't in the club, it is in the people inside the club. The club is just a place for those people to meet each other at a certain time. But the party isn't tied to that place nor to a time. The party is inside each individual, so it really doesn't depend on having other people either*.

So the party isn't depended on time, place nor on other people. So what can you take from this? You can have fun in any place at any time, whether there's people around you or not.

Now you have to consider what you deem as a party. I think we can agree that it is generally about having fun; there's really nothing more specific to it, it's about having fun. So have fun. Whatever you do, have fun doing it.

You are the party.

*(just play with different variations of the thought: club with all the colors blasting music to the fullest, but without people. People dancing and laughing in the middle of a desert without the club. Just keep adding and subtracting things, and you'll see it. It's your own mindset, the way you allow yourself experience life)

The perceiver of perceiving

My view on person/identity-stuff is that, we are not our memories nor our body, we are just perceiving those. The clue is in the language: it's YOUR body, YOUR opinions, YOUR memories, YOUR identity. Those are things you are HAVING, not being. Just like your coffeemaker, you HAVE a coffeemaker but you ARE NOT the coffeemaker (probably..?) same goes for your identity, memories, physical body, opinions, thoughts (your thoughts about yourself too) and all that stuff. We are not anything we can perceive, we are the perceiver, we can't perceive ourselves, because we are the perceiving of everything, there's nothing else to us than perceiving, and by doing that we are ourselves. Much like a fire can't burn itself, a knife can't cut itself, light can't illuminate itself. (Thanks, Alan, for that)

To me my body is something that I control, not something that I am, it's like an operating system for the physical world, a vehicle for travelling through life. It's an interactive operating system, i.e. it gives you warning signals (pain) when you do something detrimental to your body. Pain and other sensations are like the warning and other lights on the dashboard of a car, sure you can ignore them, but they are there for a reason.

Anyway that's my take on this.