Day 1 – Mon, Nov. 11, 2019
Where to begin
First, I need a new name for this big 3D printer project. No offense to Ben Levi the designer of this thing, but BLV MGN Cube just doesn’t roll off the tongue and I’m not a fan of acronyms.
I bought some really nice light blue plastic recently. It’s cheap, prints a bit more matte than most PLA, and I think it’ll make a great base color for all the parts. Perhaps it was too many medications in my system, but thinking of blue filament got Blue Meanies stuck in my head – so that’s what I’m going with.
Pneumonia and 3D printing
Even before parts arrive for the Blue Meanie there’s a lot of work to be done. This design requires printing a lot of little parts with your existing printer. There are at least 50 parts to get the basics working, another 25 or so for covers and grills and filters, and another 25 or so for trim, LEDs, buttons and other extraneous doodads.
It’s a lot of printing, but that’s A-OK with me. I’m currently only able to stay awake a few hours at a time and even walking a few steps around my bedroom makes me lightheaded. (Note: this post is from my dev journal a few weeks ago – I’m feeling much better now. Yeah!) This makes printing the perfect recuperation task for me. I spend about 15-20 minutes setting up a print. Walk over to the printer and make sure the first layer is laying down nicely and boom, I’m done. Time for another nap. 😴
