A photo looking up towards the underside of a Nikon SMZ-1 microscope showing the illuminated fluorescent ring light that is attached.

Picked up a secondhand microscope today. I got a Nikon SMZ-1 to give myself a bit of a break from trying to use binocular magnifiers all the time.

It has a super old tube based ring light that is a bit dim with age and consumes a silly 16W, but it works and is […]

[Original post on gts.amd.im]

A sort of beat up and surface rusted mechanical bit sitting on the carriage of an old lathe. It has vertical ways and a knob on top that moves a small workpiece in a vertical direction giving another axis to the capabilities of a lathe.

Still digging. Still finding things.

This is an adapted milling attachment that seems to fit where the compound mounts.

The bracket looks home made and the paint doesn’t match so it likely originally came from some other lathe.

Two round wooden structures with small ball bearings on three equally spaced armatures to enable supporting a workpiece along its center while doing turning operations far from the spindle.

I kind of love these two homemade wooden steady rests.

The lathe came with the original jet steady rest but it only has brass bushing ends. Maybe Mr Hacker really needed the bearings?

The mysteries of 50 year old tooling.

The pulley box and upper gears for a jet 1024p lathe. The belt is in the highest gear and looks to be fraying quite a bit. Belt shedding debris is seen all over the box.

This is one ugly looking belt.

But replacement looks like a huge pain… I see how the bearing blocks come off for the back pulleys, but I think I have to pull the spindle shaft for the front ones?

I’ve never had to do that before.

I see people using adjustable […]

[Original post on gts.amd.im]

A micrometer handle that’s been disassembled and set into a custom made clamp that fits the machine weighs and allows for creating a very precise stop position, but seemly only fits for cutting away from the spindle. The carriage sits in the background and a circle has been knocked out of the paint where the stop hits the carriage body.

A completely custom made stop that has a central axle that is articulated by a ring in the middle that has graduated markings and a thumb screw to lock the position. It also clamps on the ways but this time in any position. This is a pretty nicely made piece of kit that appears to be made of a couple of modified bits that were then welded together.

I’m digging through the boxes of stuff that came with the lathe and this guy was old school and clearly did some real work with this machine.

Check out these two custom carriage stops he made.

You can even see where the hacked up micrometer had worn away the […]

[Original post on gts.amd.im]

A 1980s Jet 1024p metal lathe sitting on a square tube metal frame welding bench with a plywood topper.

I’ve been casually shopping for machine tools for a long time now.

A deal that was too good finally popped up. I bought an estate sale lathe that was donated to an area non-profit that can’t use it and would rather have the cash.

I guess I’m a #machinist again […]

[Original post on gts.amd.im]

Question for the #radio crew on here... i know there are a lot of you.

I was reading the wiki page for WWVB and it says that long wave bands propagate much further at night.

...But it doesn't elaborate why that would be the case.

Anyone able to enlighten me?

#hamRadio #amateurRadio

A screenshot of the freecad interface showing the original drawing where the shelves are rendered in 2d and have a very faint gray fill.

A screenshot of the same drawing, now in inkscape, showing the fill selected with a 210, 17, 95 hue saturation and luminance.

To all the #FreeCAD fans out there.

I am working on a #LaserCutting design and when I export from TechDraw to SVG, the parts are all rendered with fill that I then need to delete lest the laser decide to engrave it.

Is there a way to make that _**not**_ happen? […]

[Original post on gts.amd.im]

A screenshot of a website selling a replacement thrust bearing for a consumer electric drill.

An exploded parts diagram of an electric drill. Showing the placement of a thrust bearing and motor driving through a gearbox that separates its loading.

@dcz drill motors are primarily designed around a thrust bearing in the front of the motor gearbox to take the axial loads.

That bearing should not be heavily loaded laterally or it can cause issues.

There are usually little ball bearings or bushings that keep […]

[Original post on gts.amd.im]

A close up of bright pink rhododendron flowers on a large rhododendron bush.

Happy Rhododendron Season to those that celebrate.

#bloomscrolling

IRCv3 is shaping to be amazingly good!

here's the things it offers, today, right now, on a chat server we just set up in one evening:

* you don't need a bouncer (friggin _finally_). there are moblie clients that work well
* you can see backlog when joining a channel
* you can browse chat […]

/me raises hand.

I am one of those people that thought Beam.NG was just a fancy crash simulator.

https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=rnnf19a11WA

@ryan I read that and went out and bought an anbernic immediately.

Then another. Then a psp. Then a DSi.

And I’m glad I did.

Oh, shiny, now I found something else I want! 😁

https://0l.de/blog/2026/04/sylvac-freecad-input/

#FreeCAD

@wildrikku I have little silicone brushes mounted in my 2 machines and run a macro that brushes the nozzle against them before it moves to catch any ooze

www.printables.com/model/1494689-silicone-n...

In the past I've used cut off ends of brass brushes to […]

@wildrikku my print start macro heats to full temp parked over a little bin, then it brushes to clean the ooze, heads to 6mm in front of the part print area, and prints a 60-75mm line then moves to the part to print.

Brushing then printing a single purge line close to the part seems to […]

A screenshot of the FreeCAD user interface. The preview area shows a simple rectangular shelving unit with six evenly spaced shelves that use tabs and slots to fit into the side walls and back panel. The treeview is somehow already six levels deep and is a mess of cuts on top of cuts on top of compound operations before finally getting to basic sketches and extrusions.

I really feel like I do not have a good handle on designing for laser cutting...

My instincts say that booleans and relying on kerf compensation is going to be the most straight forward way to get good fits, but this little shelf my kids asked for has a seriously […]

[Original post on gts.amd.im]

@essjax fair enough. We’ve all been gotten at one point or another.

@essjax you know that’s posted on apr 1, right?

A three compartment parts tray sitting on the bed of a Voron Trident 3D printer. The tray has one larger compartment that takes approximately 2/3 of the total area. It is intended to be used for the primary build area. In the center of this larger area is an inscription that says "EVERYTHING IS AWESOME" in all caps. There are two smaller areas that divide the remaining third of the area evenly, these can be used to store parts to search from. The partitions behind these areas are lower than the outer perimeter and the outer surface has a taper to allow for stacking the trays.

I am sick of my kids stealing my baking sheets for their lego builds, so I did a little #3DPrinting and made them this little parts tray for building lego sets.

I think it turned out pretty well (except some of the fine text details). It's designed to be […]

[Original post on gts.amd.im]

I didn't know that Ruth Buscombe had started a youtube channel.

This is a nice dive into the strategy mishaps of the #F1 #JapaneseGP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMe-Vfk7dgI

Updated this #gotosocial instance to 0.21.2

I’ve been having weird media bugs that prevent me from viewing any videos you post on my phone.

Seems that the first reasonable step in troubleshooting would be to get up to date.

If you run one of those sleazy extended warranty companies, add an email list filter so you’re not emailing asking for a renewal if a customer is currently engaged in a dispute with you…

'Separate your identity from your projects. Find people who see you when you're not shipping. Get a doctor who understands that "I've been incredibly productive lately" is sometimes a symptom, not a success story. Build a life that doesn't depend on the community's approval to feel real.' […]

Is anyone out there running a crossbow cutter on their printer?

I like it. I find it to be way more consistent, reliable, and serviceable than my old Xol-metrix setup.

But wow does it rattle.

Anyone have a fix? I’m going to try some thick grease but if you have a clever solution, I’m all ears […]

#FreeCAD 1.1 is another great quality of life update.

I've been playing with the betas and @FreeCAD has come _**so far**_ from the 0.2x days.

If you haven't tried it since then, definitely give it a go.

https://wiki.freecad.org/Release_notes_1.1

https://yewtu.be/bYdobpjTypg

Hey I found your chapter in Moby-Dick

www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2701/pg2701-i...

@mrundkvist I understand a museum being extraordinarily price sensitive and every industry is different.

But I’ve paid over USD$10k/day for truly world-class-expert niche consultants before.

🤔I wonder if I can make home assistant automatically send a toot when the power goes out.

Power is out again so this instance is going to shut down in just a moment.

I’ll be at @amd if this becoems an extended outage.