grouchyfarmer

I’m finally getting the new Lumos Flex laser figured out. It took a great deal of experimentation and time and burning through a lot of test materials but I finally accomplished something that turned out as good as the sample projects Wecreat shows in its advertising.

In case you’re wondering, here’s the settings I used. Emboss mode, Fiber laser, Convex mode. Power 100%, speed 500, line density 300, layers 200, frequency 30, Z-step per layer 0.01. And another little trick I figured out is that it works better if I had the laser ever so slightly out of focus before starting.

What was really frustrating was the amount of time and effort I wasted trying to nail down the right settings. Wecreat included absolutely no instructions at all when I got the Flex replacement head for my Lumos except showing how to mount it. About using it? Absolutely nothing. Zilch. The diode laser was no problem. It works just like the one in the original Lumos, only more powerful. But the new fiber laser works entirely differently than the IR laser in the original Lumos does, and the only “instructions” I was able to find were a couple of utterly inadequate 5 minute videos on the company’s website. I wasn’t the only one who had issues. I even resorted to (shudder) joining the abomination that is Facebook just so I could get on the Wecreat Flex forum looking for answers. Anyway I got it figured out now and it does work.

But embossing like this is not something I am likely to do again. Why? Because guess how long it took to emboss that little coin up there. Go ahead. Guess.

Try six and a half hours. Just to do one side of that coin.

And that brings up the topic of money. The Lumos Flex costs about $2,000. Or you can upgrade a standard Lumos to the Flex version for $1,000. No matter how you look at it, that’s a hefty chunk of money.

A lot of craftspersons out there do this as a side gig. They use lasers, 3d printers, etc. to make products that they sell at craft shows, on outlets like Etsy, etc. And when the Flex was first announced everyone got excited because now we could get our hands on a fiber laser at a cost that was almost unheard of. And everyone had visions of making a few extra bucks using it to make things like engraved challenge coins, deep metal or wood engravings, etc.

Only no, you aren’t. Not if your maximum production rate is going to be 2 coins per day.

The Flex is a very nice machine, don’t get me wrong. But I don’t think it’s worth spending $1,000 more for this when the standard Lumos works just fine and dandy for engraving things like lockets. rings, pendants, bracelets, etc. with the IR laser, and does a perfectly fine, even excellent job engraving wood, leather, etc. with the diode laser. Spending an additional $1,000 just for the ability to turn out a single, embossed coin in 12 hours? That doesn’t seem even remotely cost effective to me.

3D Printing

Now I gave away my Flashforge 3D printer some years ago, swearing off 3D printing entirely as being little more than a silly gimmick and only being good for making trinkets, crude decorative items, etc. And swearing that I would never, ever, get another one.

And here I am about to get a Bambu Labs PS2 in a couple of weeks.

So what happened?

Well, a lot, really.

Here’s the thing… When I gave up on 3D printing it was because no matter what I did, no matter what settings I used, no matter what materials I used, the results universally looked like cheap, crappy, 3D printed junk, that degraded rapidly if exposed to moisture or direct sunlight, that was extremely fragile and could stand little or no stress, etc. It was good for little more than making figurines for gaming or models and was useless for any kind of serious application. At least with the equipment and materials I could afford to buy.

Well things have changed. A lot. Amd they’ve changed both with the equipment and perhaps more importantly, with the materials.

On the hardware side everything has gotten better. I mean a lot better. Much better accuracy, much better temperature and ventilation controls, much better stability, and, yes, AI control systems that help with improving the entire printing process.

On the materials side, things have improved even more dramatically. We now have materials that are less moisture sensitive, far stronger, more shock resistant, even flexible materials that let you do things like, oh, print balls that actually bounce. And even engineering materials reinforced with carbon fiber and things like that. You can now make 3D printed objects at the consumer level that are strong enough and shock resistant enough to use for things like gears in RC racing cars, for heaven’s sake.

Anyway, more about that when it happens. I am still dithering about which one to buy. I’m leaning more and more towards the Bambu Labs P2S. It looks like it has the most “bang for the buck” at the moment. I’ll make a decision this weekend and once things start to happen I’m sure it will turn up here.

Peer down towards the end of the street there past that red truck and you’ll see just how hazy it has been here today. That isn’t fog or normal haze, that’s smoke. Thick, reeking smoke from wild fires raging up near the Canadian border with Minnesota. So not only are we putting up with temperatures in the mid 90s (it hit 99F in Milwaukee yesterday and 98 here at the house south of Green bay) but the heat dome is pushing the smoke down right on top of us. We’re under a severe air quality alert until tomorrow afternoon and that might be extended farther unless conditions change. They’re saying children and elderly shouldn’t even go outside unless necessary.

We’ve had the house buttoned up tight with the AC going for days now already because of the heat, plus we have the three big HEPA filters going full time so i the house here we can’t even smell it. But as soon as I step outside it… Wow… Just the smell is enough to make my eyes start to water.

This is getting to be a regular thing every summer now. Because of the changes in wind patterns and the increase in wildfires because of droughts, both caused by climate change, we’ve been enduring this every summer for the last three or four years now.

We’d been running the house completely on solar for about 5 days now but I’ve had to switch back to grid power by 5 this afternoon because we just aren’t getting enough power from the panels to keep things going. I could just run the house off batteries but we’re supposed to get thunderstorms tomorrow so I want to keep the batteries topped up in case the storms take down the grid.

We finally had some clear skies again and I had the scope out and got a few decent images.

This was the best of the lot, IC 1318B, sometimes called the Butterfly Nebula. It’s about 4,000 light years away and is an emission nebula. Emission nebula are caused by intense ultraviolet radiation from a dying star that ionizes the interstellar gas around the star.

It’s been a rather dull time around here with me more or less laid up because of first my hip and then my back. But my back is almost normal and while the hip is still giving me some issues it’s getting to the point where I might be able to get back on the bicycle in a week or so. Damn that’s been frustrating.

But meanwhile life goes on, right?

I got bored and was fiddling with Photoshop and came up with this black and white image of a stag standing in the woods and then found a plack with a sort of illuminated frame around it that I picked up for the heck of it at Walmart or Hobby Lobby and hadn’t used, and thought engraving that image on the plack might be interesting so I tried it using the Vision Pro and that’s the result over there on the left with the frame lighted up.

Bad lighting but you can get the basic idea. I though it didn’t turn out too bad. I sent that photo to Kyle and Sarah down at the pub and they claimed it so it has a home already.

I do wish there was some kind of retail market for stuff like this locally, some shop that would market arts and crafts from local crafts persons on a consignment basis or something like that. If I were about 10 years younger and had a bit more ambition I’d be tempted to do something like that myself.

Meanwhile the gardens are growing like crazy.

We’re already harvesting onions and small beets and MrsGF just thinned out the carrots and we have a whole dish full of baby carrots we’re going to be having for supper tonight.

The celery up there is looking amazing and it’s gotten to the point where I don’t think I can resist snipping off a few stalks for snacking or salads.

Even the “Stump Garden” is looking good.

The weather has been clear today so I’m hoping we’ll have clear skies tonight so I can get the telescope out.

One of our kitties, Charlie, loves to go outside. We put a harness and leash on her and she has great fun exploring the gardens. But one of the local cardinals took exception to her presence the other day and actually flew down into the lilac to yell at us.

Ooo, he was upset! How dare I bring a cat out into his territory! He kept giving me an earful until finally Charlie had enough and we went back inside.

Got this one yesterday evening.

I’m still not entirely sure how all of this post processing stuff works because the results I get after processing are often much, much different than what I’m seeing in the original images. For example, here’s what the original image looked like before processing.

I’m still very, very impressed with the results from this scope even before processing the images. I’m getting better images with this little scope than I ever saw with my huge 11″ Celestron

… at grouchyfarmer.com’s palatial headquarters. I somehow managed to entirely mess up my right hip and only now am I getting back to normal. I could stand or sit, but transitioning between those two situations caused such excruciating pain I could hardly stand it. The consensus was I severely strained or perhaps even tore some muscles in there somehow. Going to the bathroom was pure torture because sitting down on the commode or standing up after sent a pain through my hip that made me want to weep. And I could forget completely about getting out on the bike.

So even though it’s now early summer and absolutely beautiful out there and the gardens are thriving, I’ve been more or less cooped up in the house being more grouchy than usual and not having enough ambition to do much of anything.

Anyway I’m about 80% back to normal now. I’m at the point where I might try taking the bike out for a run around the block in the next day or two just to see how it goes.

Another thing that had me grumpy is that except for the first night I had the new Sestar 30 Pro telescope, every single freaking night we’ve had has been overcast. Do you have any idea how incredibly frustrating it is to have a brand new telescope and having cloudy weather every single night? Arrggghh!

But now, finally! We had clear skies early last evening and I was able to get the scope out…

Well I say able to get the scope out. And it was out, but I was sitting inside comfortably at the kitchen table having a snack while running the scope from my iPad. If you’ve ever had to endure dealing with clouds of mosquitoes, freezing temperatures and the other inconveniences of using a visual telescope, you can imagine just how amazing it felt to be running the scope comfortably from inside the house. It almost felt like, well, cheating, somehow. And I suppose some amateur astronomers will claim that it is. Spending hours outside in the dark, having your blood sucked dry by mosquitoes in the summer, or trying to keep your fingers and toes from freezing in the fall and winter, is, according to some of them, part of the “joys” of amateur astronomy.

Yeah, sure it is…

I got some neat images despite the fact that it wasn’t even fully dark yet when I started this. Last night was the shortest night of the year so at about 10 PM or so when I started it wasn’t even completely fully dark yet.

Let’s start off with this.

That’s a globular star cluster designated as M 13. It’s the great globular star cluster in the Hercules constellation and it is an astonishing thing when you discover what it actually is. Globular clusters are groups of hundreds, even tens of thousands of stars tightly packed into a tiny, spherical group. In this case several hundreds of thousands of stars packed into an area less than 145 light years across. Exactly how many stars are in there isn’t known but it could be as many as a half million.

Above is M 51, the Whirlpool galaxy and its companion. That this one turned out this good surprised me a bit because even though it was high in the sky, near the zenith, my conditions here at the house are horrible with light pollution so bad you can almost read a large print book sitting in the backyard at midnight, plus it wasn’t fully dark yet. All things considered I’m pleased that it turned out this good.

The one that really surprised me was this one, though:

That’s NGC 6888, the Crescent Nebula in Cygnus. Nebulas like this can be a pain in the neck to image in light polluted locations like mine so I was surprised I was able to capture anything at all. That this not only showed up but even shows some color was a bit amazing to me.

Now let’s do a little experiment. I’m going to take that same image of M51 up there and run it through some AI filtering and see what happens. I’m not entirely sure how this is going to turn out because this is the first time I’ve tried this.

Hmm… I’m not entirely sure what to make of this. I don’t believe for a moment that there was enough information in that original image of mine for the AI to come up with what looks suspiciously like an image that was taken with the Hubble from NASA. I’m suspecting that instead of enhancing the image it’s sucking up data from NASA’s telescope database and adding it in.

Let’s see what it does with that nebula

Hmm, again, I’m not sure where it’s getting the data from to do this because I don’t believe there was enough information in the original image to get these kinds of results.

Anway, that’s it for now. Just wanted to share the new images from the scope.

OMG the horror… Every single person involved in the production of this abomination should be locked up before they can commit further atrocities. It is difficult to describe the experience of listening to this — this thing. It sort of resembles, well, the nearest comparison I can come up with is Alvin and the Chipmunks on a particularly bad batch of acid singing lyrics written by someone with a smaller vocabulary that my cat and who was told by a cynical marketing agency to “Just write whatever crap you can come up with” and was about 3 martinis into a 4 martini lunch. About halfway through the first track I wanted to wash my ears out with bleach.

Yes, you too can experience the horror of the Smurf’s All Star Show for just $1 at the Hilbert St. Vincent de Paul thrift store.

If you’ve been following this blog for a while you know I mess around with laser engravers/cutters and my two machines are both from a company called Wecreat, the Vision Pro and the Lumos. Wecreat recently came out with some very significant new galvo style lasers under the Lumos model name, the Lumos Flex and the Lumos Ultra. The Ultra is way outside my price range, about $3,500. But considering it’s a UV and MOPA laser all included in one package, that’s an extremely good price.

It was the Flex I was interested in. It’s a significant upgrade from my mine. I had a 3W infrared laser and a 10W blue diode laser in mine. The Flex looked like it was exactly the same as mine but with a new laser head that replaces the IR laser with a 15W fiber laser and upgrades the blue laser to 15W.

The blue laser upgrade is significant, but it’s not so much more powerful that I’d really be tempted by that. It was the fiber laser that made things interesting. Fiber lasers generally produce enough energy to cut metal. And they’re capable of doing some very interesting tricks like 3D embossing. They’re pretty slick stuff. And yes, I wanted one but fiber lasers have always been way outside of a price I was comfortable with. Wecreat wants about $2,000 for the thing and I’d already dropped way too much money this year on laser equipment.

But then I was reading the fine print at the end of the hype/advertising for the Flex and noticed a brief mention of the fact that my original Lumos could be upgraded to the Flex by simply replacing the laser head module, and for half the cost of the complete Flex. Now I was interested again.

I sent an email to the company and said “Hey, how can I get one of these upgrade modules?” And they wrote back and said “send us some money and give us about 2 weeks to build one and we’ll get it to you in about 3 weeks.”

And well here we are, 3 weeks later and it is now in my hot little hands. It took all of about 3 minutes to replace the old laser head with the new one, download a new version of their Makeit software, and away we go.

I haven’t had much of a chance to do more than fiddle with it a bit because I’ve been busy with the old unit making a batch of humorous drinks coasters that need to get finished up. But I’m going to have time to put it through its paces this weekend and I’ll let you know how it goes. The bit of fiddling I’ve had a chance to do indicates that it has a heck of a lot of potential. I entertained myself for some time cutting holes in thin sheet metal and engraving things on various bits of metal I had laying around before I had to get back to work. Long enough to see this thing is going to be a hoot to play with.

It’s going to take some time to figure out the exact setting I’ll need in order to get it to do what I want. But once I figure that out this thing is going to be very useful indeed.

Roses

Every year we think this dopey rose bush in the front yard by the sidewalk has finally died, and every year it surprises us and somehow manages to come back. This year I was sure it was dead. When MrsGF pulled on one of the branches something like 3/4 ths of the rootball came out, completely rotted away. I was sure it was dead. Only no, it isn’t, somehow.

I have no idea how this thing manages to survive. Amazing plant. Just saw the first flower of the season and it’s absolutely loaded with buds.

Cats and Backpacks

MrsGF got me a new backpack to carry stuff when I’m out on the bike, but the cat seems to have fallen in love with it. If I put it anywhere where she can get at it, she’s immediately sitting on it. Cats are weird.