CIRCLE WITH A DOT

@airshipper Yeah, imagine being in the same space with *people*! Forming IRL friendships and doing stuff together.

I'm both, appalled and disgusted.

@mast0d0nphan TBH I was expecting this to come up at some point!

A Pokemon pinball machine was released. I'm reading reactionary comments about it and it's really telling how big the generational gap with the Pokemon audience is, when there are people who see the pinball machine's price and then rant that no one will be able to ever play something that expensive.

Damn, if only there was some kind of a business model, where someone bought expensive *arcade games*, put them under one roof and had them operate on per play cost.

That'd be fucking amazing.

#pinball #arcade #pokemon

When working with a fringe hobby such as mine and using a 3D printer, I often get comments like "Isn't that part like $19? Why bother fiddling with a 3D printer". While technically true, I'm not really after the money saving angle here. A pinball machine has a LOT of parts and owning over 30 of them means pretty insane parts stock.

What usually breaks or wears out is very well known and a lot of it is compatible with a wide range of machines, such as coil sleeves and rubbers. Those I buy. But then there are unique parts, that were used only in a specific machine. Often those parts can be found with a web search, but they're not in stock anywhere or they'll take up to a month to arrive in this corner of the world. There's also cases where a tiny plastic part can fail, but you can only buy the whole assembly for $200.

Being able to just print one means the game is back in the action often in hours and at least in my designs I don't just clone the parts, I also try to see why they break and make them sturdier and easier to install. I also hope more people would be inspired to share theirs, so there'd be a printable parts library out there when needed.

#3dprinting #cad #restoration

With the softer TPU at hand, I wondered how well does a TPU print with a bowden feeder. Prusa slicer had ready made profiles for the Fiberlogy filaments I have, so I decided to experiment.

The first thing I learned that while there was a profile for the 30D FiberFlex TPU, it was not possible to use it in my printer, it just said it's not compatible. 40D however worked and it loaded just fine.

Print quality was okay. I don't know where I had gotten the misconception that bowden feeder + TPU aren't a thing.

#3dprinting #prusa #filament

It's the forbidden lollypop.

I normally have these in stock, but I've had to replace several in such a short notice my spares collection hasn't kept up with the demand.

I epoxied it and sanded it a bit to make it smooth. #pinrepair

@gmc Excellent!

@gmc Nah, I have Atari ST crash screen of when it hits a bus error.

@forty2 I swear I saw someone with a tribal tattoo that I had to do a double take on to see if it was indeed some kind of a nerd pride thing.

I went with a lot more straight forward take on mine.

Another shipment of playfield glasses arrived. Doctor Who's glass chipped and I wanted one extra in stock.

Yep, this is fun thing to handle. Shore 30D TPU by Fiberlogy. #3dprinting #filament #tpu

@outofprintarchive This was one of the examples of a device that went from a dream item to nope after first try. Another was the Thinkpad tablet.

@starless This one was from a Finnish online store, but I doubt it was made for the local markets alone.

Here's the local version: https://www.karkkainen.com/verkkokauppa/lumio-lights-magic-unicorn-54-cm-rgb-led-koristevalaisin

I found multiple lamps like this on Aliexpress too, but not an unicorn one.

@gmc This one was from Finnish online store, but I think Clas Ohlson used to carry them too.

This thing is #fabulous!

#unicorn

Next up: let's see how the Snapmaker A350 eats this softer TPU. I've been searching for the softest TPU that's still reliable to print. Prusa's bowden feeder didn't want to even try this, but Snapmaker has direct feeder.

#3dprinting #snapmaker #filament

Oh joy, Dracula has a loose bumper. It's naturally the only one with stuff above it, preventing just a quickie tightening operation... #pinball #repair

@swampgas I vote for snuu-snuu.

@valoisa Erityisesti talvella.