ABS Prints and Radio Bits

Halfway through the first week of school holidays already — somehow both too fast and not fast enough. But hey, there has been progress.

The printer’s finally back online and running better than ever. After a blown fuse in the PSU and a stepper driver that quite literally burnt out (RIP to that poor little chip), a bit of patience and calibration (and $10 of hard-earned cash) brought it all back to life. First prints look great, and I’ve jumped straight into something fun: printing some parts from my own take on a 3D-printable Morse code paddle key for ham radio use. It's a mashup of different design ideas I’ve had floating around I liked — now finally coming together in plastic.

I’m printing the case parts in ABS and the rest in PLA, which is either genius or a disaster waiting to happen. I haven’t tested this design in ABS before, only exclusively PLA, so we’ll see if it holds up. (Side note for any fellow makers out there — eSun ABS+ is an excellent filament. Printing it open-frame on my Ender with almost no warping has been surprisingly smooth. Highly recommend.)

Beyond that? Not much. It's been nice doing things at my own pace — fixing things, testing stuff, planning the next round of half-finished projects. I’ve barely seen anyone all week, which is a bit odd, but not entirely unwelcome. That said, I did line up something fun: someone reached out to get a radio built. I'm excited, it's a QMX+ by QRP Labs with the extra GPS module installed. I'm quite familiar with them, I think I've written about them before too, so I'm not stressed about getting anything wrong. Should be a cool little build — I’ll definitely post about it when it’s done. 

Hope everyone else is making the most of the break if you get the school holidays off. Whether that means working through your project backlog, studying, or doing absolutely nothing (all three are valid, no judgement here), enjoy the time off while it lasts.

73,
Daniel