A combination of SearXNG and Stract, for the most part. They’re definitely not perfect (yet), but they mostly get the job done! And I think they both have a lot of cool filters and refinement settings that I haven’t even taking advantage of so far.

For niche stuff it seems like a lot of hyper targeted search engines are popping up, like Sepia Search for PeerTube.

Pennsylvania, U.S.A. I hear it’s a fairly common policy here but does vary from provider to provider. As I understand it, most areas in the U.S. have at most 2 ISP companies to choose from, and many only have 1. So they can kinda set whatever BS policies they want.

That’s what I’ve been wondering, like can I just do it anyway? I have Verizon FiOS gigabit, for reference. If they really just don’t care then I don’t mind violating TOS at all, but I wasn’t sure if they do or not

I’ve heard of options to get around the lack of static IP, but will something like this also keep my ISP off my back about hosting? If so I’m onboard!

I was afraid that might be the case… Definitely pretty messed up, but with the state of ISPs around here it’s not surprising either. This guide is super awesome though, I’ll use it if I ever get a chance to!

I would really like to mess around with self-hosting someday, but I live in a residential area and those sort of shenanigans are explicitly banned by my ISP. Is there anything someone in that position can do?

Like PeachMan said, if you try to lay down the filament and then place the tile, it’ll harden too fast for that to work. You can use a 3d pen to attach two things along the seam where the two things are touching though, I’ve done that.

Parts for a Wimshurst Electrostatic Generator! You’d think it’d just be for fun or something, but we actually need one for supplying the charge on a electrospinning machine lol

As in, mail the empty spool and they send it back filled? Or as in, they send it unspooled and you spool it up yourself? If it’s the latter, that’s what I do! I get my refills of PHA unspooled in the mail from a Canadian company, Filaments.ca. They probably do the same with PLA too.

Ohhh that makes sense! The opaque material acts kind of like a diffuser?

cnckitchen did a pretty good comparison of different gitd filaments. There’s a video on their channel too.

I don’t remember if the comparison covered this, but I would expect PETg to work better than PLA for gitd stuff because it’s inherently more transparent, right?

Do you have any suggestions for what else one might use large perfectly spherical balls for? I desperately need a justification for building one of these 😅

I use this all the time, real filament saver! For the overwhelming majority of real world use cases, the strength of a part has much more to do with the walls than the interior, so it shouldn’t really be any weaker. Just make sure your walls are thick enough.

We use a 3Doodler Pro+ at work, which I think might be the most expensive one out there? I’ve got to say, it really isn’t any easier to use than the cheapest alternatives on the market… There’s just a horrendous learning curve to these things in general, although if you think of it as any other art form then I guess it’s probably comparable.

On ours, I do really appreciate the wide heat range, the ability to access the dual gear extruder during operation, and the swappable nozzles. What I don’t appreciate is the ridiculous markup, the non-standard nozzle size, and them lying about only being able to use their special proprietary filament (it’s just normal 2.85mm).

Our defuault PLA at work is all recycled stuff from Reflow, especially the candy collection.

At my work we occasionally use a vibratory tumbler for that

You’re not wrong… 😅

I am fortunate enough to work somewhere that has one, although we also make it available to the public!

doing that is going to create a rotary tumbler. i think for this specific object that might work totally fine, but it might be too rough for anything with fine details or sharp angles. vibratory tumblers are more likely to keep the object’s overall geometry intact, whereas rotary ones will eventually sand things into kind of an ovoid shape?

as for parameters, the main ones are which grit levels for each stage, how long to run it for each stage, which tumbling medium to use, and how much water. i haven’t really ironed out any general guidelines but in my experience (perhaps obviously) most plastics don’t need nearly as long as most minerals.

it doesn’t seem like many people have gone this route yet, so if it works out, please post about your process!

where I work, we ocassionally put stuff like this in a vibratory tumbler for post processing. it’s finicky to get all the parameters just right from one material to the next, but when it works it’s AMAZING.

Awww that’s a shame! I’m honestly pretty surprised, my library isn’t even that big. Tell them to get their act together lol