The Bambu P2S 3D printer has been working almost non-stop since I got it and it hasn’t missed a beat. I’m still amazed at how much the technology has improved since I had my old Flash Forge. It’s much faster, is as close to being “Plug ‘n Play” as a 3D printer can get. It has automated bed leveling, automated nozzle cleaning, automatic filament changing, automated calibration, etc.
All of the stuff that used to drive me nuts like doing manual bed leveling with the old Flash Forge is now taken care of automatically by the printer.
First thing I did was print a whole bunch of parts for my fume extraction system to make my life a little easier. Things like adaptors to go from the 4″ hose my extractor uses down to the size needed for my lasers. That makes life a lot easier.
A variety of other parts and gadgets were printed including some custom stuff for eldest son who dabbles in retr0-computers and occasionally need special parts that can’t be sourced elsewhere any longer.
Yes, they really work.
And then I found out I can 3D print hose clamps. Seriously. Actual real hose clamps that work beautifully with my fume extraction system.
One of the most useful things I found to print was an extremely sturdy and very handy adjustable easel for my Wacom Cintiq graphics tablet.
I have a half dozen or more batteries for my Dewalt cordless tools and ran across this one day.
A battery carrier/storage thingie for my Dewalt batteries. This thing is so good and so useful I’m surprised it isn’t a commercial product.
My old 3d printer was, to be honest, little more than a toy that wasn’t good for much except printing mildly naughty anime figurines and novelty items. The technology and materials have now gotten so good it’s producing genuinely useful, durable parts. I’m really pleased with this thing.
I thought about doing some kind of review of the P2S but then decided to not bother. It’s been on the market for some time now and there are dozens of reviews alreayd out there on YouTube, etc.
There is some controversy with Bambu Labs, however. It’s been accused of trying to “lock down” its user environment to make it difficult to do things like use 3rd party slicing software and even filament from other makers. And there is some truth to that. Sort of. Apparently now you can use 3rd party slicing software with a bit of fiddling around.
And as for filament, yes Bambu would certainly love to have you buy materials from them and has made it extremely attractive to do so. Bambu filament comes with RFID tags that are read by the AMS which automatically determines what the material is etc. and automatically sets up all of the correct parameters for using that material. And yes, you will pay a bit more for that convenience. But damn, it works nice. No more scrambling to try to find the exact temperatures, flow rates, etc. for a spool of filament. And it doesn’t cost all that much more than generic filament does, to be honest. And if you buy in bulk they give you huge discounts that eliminates the price difference entirely in some cases.
And it will still work with generic filament. You just need to remember to set the temperatures, flow rates, etc. yourself if you go that way. I’ve gone through a half dozen spools of generic PLA I picked up at Hobby Lobby with no problems at all.
What it all boils down to is Bambu 3D printers are the best selling models on the market right now, and for good reason. My experiences with the P2S have been nothing but positive.
But enough of that, let’s get on with this.
It was an absolutely beautiful day yesterday. So nice that when I went out on the bike I ended up putting almost 15 miles on. Rolling down the trails through the woods was absolutely delightful.
But wow, it’s dry here. The branch of the Manitowoc river that runs under the old stone bridge north of town is almost completely dried up.
There are places where you could almost walk across the river without getting your feet wet. I have seen it worse.
And with the low water level crap like this starts to pop up:
WTF is wrong with people? Seriously. I would dearly love to have the people who toss their trash into the river get not just seriously fined but do jail time too. There is simply no excuse for this. We’ve fished old computers, television sets, tires, car parts, car batteries, refrigerators and in one case a complete suite of living room furniture including a sofa, loveseat and recliner, out of that river.
The DNR used to have a sign there warning people that they had cameras set up to catch people doing this. I noticed that the sign has, of course, been stolen. Sigh. The cameras are still up, though, hidden in the trees. So I sincerely hope that they catch the weasel who dumped these tires.
On a more pleasant note, we finally got some rain this morning! We got almost an inch of rain which we needed desperately.
Also MrsGF is finally back from almost a week long trip to Atlanta to some conference so I’m less grouchy than usual.
And to wrap things up, how about a cat holding a carrot?
If you’ve been following the news you know that we got hammered here in Wisconsin on Monday, July 27. A massive storm system roared through here about mid-day with grapefruit sized hail, high winds, downpour rains and tornadoes. The town of Menasha (just 10 miles from me) and the surrounding area got a direct hit from an F2 tornado with winds of up to 135 MPH. Massive damage, buildings destroyed, streets blocked with uprooted trees, power outages for over 100,000 people in the area. Miraculously it seems that no one was killed by the storms but there were some people hurt. At least one large facility, Christ the Rock Church just outside of Menasha opened up as a storm shelter for those displaced. Making things worse was the heat with temperatures well above 90F.
The worst of it missed us, thankfully. Power went out around 1 pm but we hardly noticed because of the solar power system. We can’t run the central AC system off solar but we do have portable AC units that run off the solar system in the bedrooms so we had a place to retreat to when the temps in the main part of the house got intolerable. So all things considered, we were extremely fortunate. The internet was down but we still had cellular service so we could keep track of friends and family and keep updated about weather conditions.
Meanwhile…
I’ve been busy cleaning down in the basement, moving things around, putting things I haven’t used in a long time in storage, etc. to make room for the 3D p Put up new shelves for storage in the main part of the basement.
I don’t plug a lot of products here but I have to mention these Origami shelving units. I have about 8 of these things now and they’re fantastic. Takes just a couple of minutes to assemble them. Basically just unfold them, screw in the wheels and they’re ready to go. All steel construction. No flimsy plastics. They hold an astonishing amount of weight. We have them packed full of canned goods, equipment, paint cans, electronic equipment, you name it. Yeah, they are expensive but damn they’re good. And even better they show up on Woot once in a while for almost half price for some reason and when they do I generally snag a couple more even if I don’t need them. So I had three of them out in the garage still in their packing cases that I got off Woot when they went on sale a few months ago at half price so I set two of those up in the basement to take care of the overflow. One is now dedicated to just holding supplies for the lasers: various bits of hardwood, plywood sheets of various thicknesses, plastic sheets, coin blanks, etc. Also stuff associated with the lasers like the rotary tools, sliding table, paints for the airbrush, and all that fun stuff. I actually should have done that long ago because it makes it a lot easier to find what I need when I need it instead of having it scattered around wherever I could find room.
If FedEx can find my place the 3D printer should be here today. It’s a Bambu P2S with a 4 spool filament changer. The spool holder on top also doubles as a filament dryer so the filaments don’t absorb moisture. A lot of the filaments for 3D printing absorb moisture from the air and that is not a good thing.
This thing makes my old Flashforge look like my Buick compared to a Model T Ford. 3D printing technology has advanced enormously in just the last few years and this thing has capabilities that I could only dream about when I was running the old Flash Forge. And it costs less than my Flash Forge did on top of it all.
Okay, I do remember that once upon a time I swore I would never get another one of these but… Well, things change, okay? My priorities have changed.
When we first moved into this house back in around 1998 or so, one of the rooms in the basement was reserved for my model railroad. I had an HO scale railroad that occupied almost the entire room. But the house also needed a lot of work and having all of my woodworking tools out in the garage just wasn’t a viable option, especially in winter. So the railroad came down and the room became my woodshop and it’s been that way ever since.
Priorities change, as I said. I’ve lost interest in woodworking for a variety of reasons. I don’t foresee having to do major carpentry work on the house in the future, and for some reason I want to get back into model railroading again. And that’s one of the things I’ll be using the P2S for, making models and parts for that. That’s also partly why I got the laser, to cut out parts to make structures and accessories for the upcoming railroad.
Of course considering how I procrastinate and how lazy I am I’m probably going to be, oh, 90 or so, by the time I actually start building the railroad….
GoPro stuff
I really want to like GoPro cameras. I’ve had a couple of them over the years even though I don’t dabble much in videos. But I did buy an older model on sale early last spring with the intention of putting it on the bike. Well first my hip and then the smoke and heat dome and all of that shut that down. But now I’m feeling up to getting out on the bike again and after the storms the weather has cleared.
GoPro’s have their problems. The most notorious is heat. Every single one I’ve had, no matter what model, had heat problems. You’d have thought that they’d have figured out how to deal with that by now but they haven’t.
The other is battery life. For what is supposed to be an “action camera”, battery life is, frankly, abysmal. They claim a battery will last up to 75 minutes. That is a lie. I’ve never gotten more than about 30 – 40 minutes life out of the batteries.
The batteries also self-discharge at what I feel is an alarming rate. Every battery, no matter what its chemistry is, self discharges a bit. That is, they lose power when they’re stored even if they aren’t being used. I can charge the goPro batteries to 100%, set them aside for a week or two, and when I want to use them I find that they’re down to 75%. There is simply no excuse for that with modern battery chemistries.
I’ve reached the point where I don’t think I could ever recommend a GoPro camera. Not unless you can pick up an older model at like half price. There are cameras out there with longer battery life and capabilities almost as good for a heck of a lot less money.
The new solar panels are doing better than they have any right to, really. At least when the sun is shining, which hasn’t been often, alas. We’ve had lots and lots of clouds ever since the guys put them up back at the end of April. In case you missed the details, I now have 10, 420W bifacial panels up on the roof of the garage to replace the 2KW of cheap, 220W “Amazon Special” junkers that were leaning up against the back side of the garage.
These suckers start producing significant amounts of power as early as 8 AM if the sun is out. And even if it’s cloudy I’ve seen them producing as much as 1KW of power. If the weather would cooperate we’d be able to take the house almost completely 0ff-grid indefinitely, running off the battery bank at night and producing more than enough solar power in full sun to recharge the batteries and run the house.
This is a good thing because We Energies, our utility, has gotten totally out of control. We’ve had 6 rate increases since 2020, and there’s no end in sight. I just got notification in the mail today that now we’re looking at a 16% rate increase over the next two years. And I suspect this is just the tip of the iceberg. Microsoft, Meta, Oracle and several other companies are building mega sized data centers here in Wisconsin and our current electrical infrastructure simply cannot handle the new loads. Not even close. The company is buiding two entirely new generating facilities just to handle the increased load, and even with that they aren’t going to have enough capacity and are going to have to buy power from other utilities to try to make up the difference. It’s going to require also a massive expenditure for upgrading the transmission lines, new sub stations, etc. The company claims that the data centers are going to be paying for that but us consumers don’t believe that for a minute. We’ve been misled and lied to far too often to believe anything these utility companies tell us any more.
Laser Update:
I have an upgrade for the Lumos laser from Wecreat on order.
If you’re interested in my original “kinda review” of the Lumos you can find it here.
They just came out with a drop in replacement laser head for this thing that upgrades the diode laser to 15W and replaces the 3w infrared laser with a 20W fiber laser that’s capable of doing 3D embossing of metal. It’s ridiculously simple to replace the head. Just remove a single bolt and the whole laser head lifts right out of the base. Drop the new one in and bolt it down, then download a new version of their software and it’s good to go.
Or so “Pamela” at Wecreat tells me. It turns my standard Lumos into a Lumos Flex for less than half the cost of what buying the new Flex would cost me. It’s going to be probably 3 weeks before it gets here. It is, they tell me, being made right now. Once it gets here and I’ve had a chance to try it out I’ll let you know how it goes.
Cats and Laundry
This is an older photo and I don’t recall if I’ve posted it or not before. Doesn’t matter. Even if I did it’s worth running it again. Damn you should have heard her purring! She was so happy the whole bed was quivering.
Ooo! Warm laundry right out of the clothes dryer!
Weather
The weather here in NE Wisconsin has been exceedingly irritating. It’s the second week in May and we’re still getting temperatures down in the mid-20s at night. The other morning I got up and the grass was solid white with frost. I’m surprised that anything at all is growing out there.
The little greenhouse we have set up in the basement where we start our seeds is overflowing with plants, but we don’t dare put anything outside yet because if we do there’s a good chance a frost will hit and we’ll lose all of them.
We’ve gotten some rhubarb. That’s at least been doing pretty well. And the chives, of course. But chives are like weeds once they get established. I don’t know what variety we have out there but it is incredibly hardy. We’ve had them thriving out there in a corner that faces the SW and we’ve had fresh chives coming up while there’s still snow on the ground.
Stuff
I’m still making those silly coasters when the mood strikes me. Making these things is almost addictive.
When I first started this a few years ago I tried to make them all related to brewing, pubs, taverns, beer, etc. But that got old fast. Mostly because there really aren’t that many beer/drinking/brewing related jokes out there that will fit on a space as small as a coaster. And a lot of the ones that are floating around aren’t really all that funny, IMO.
So I started to slip in more snark and sarcasm and just plain silliness and no one seems to have minded so I’ve continued down that path, slipping in a more brewing appropriate joke as I’ve thought one up or found one I could steal.
Damn that’s a horrible photo. What the hell happened to the auto focus on this stupid phone?
And then there’s this over there on the right. I had no idea that Zippo lighters were even still a thing, but apparently they are quite popular and allegedly “collectable” with certain persons.
Not hard to do. With the IR laser in the Lumos it takes about 15 minutes per side, half an hour or so per lighter, to do the engraving. It does a pretty good job of doing a nice, relatively deep engraving that isn’t going to wear off rubbing against someone’s car keys in a pocket or whatever.
I was surprised at the cost of these things, about $18 each. I don’t think they’re worth it, personally. I suppose what you’re actually paying for is the brand name, not really the product itself.
Custom engraved lighters pop up on places like Etsy. A genuine Zippo, engraved, runs anywhere from $35 to as much as $70.
One thing I might try is something like this over there on the left.
Yes, that is actual real color on a piece of stainless steel. That is not inked or painted or stained or anything like that. The Lumos can indeed do color engraving of stainless steel using just the laser alone. Something to do with frequencies and diffraction patterns or something? Maybe?
I’ve only experimented with this a few times because it is a pain in the neck to get everything set up right. And the type of steel seems to have a great deal to do with how well it works. I’ve gotten decent results using these stainless steel cards. But I tried doing the same thing on these bare metal “Altoids” candy boxes I get cheap off Amazon and make into holiday/birthday gift card boxes, and the results have not been encouraging there.
What it boils down to is that to do color on one of these lighters would require experimenting and burning test patterns into one or more actual lighters to figure out what settings I’d need to get the colors I want. I’m reluctant to burn through two or three or more $18 lighters just to experiment.
If the weather reports are to be believed we’re going to get hit hard from Sunday afternoon through Monday morning. It looks like the worse of this storm is going to hit us directly with a combination of freezing rain and heavy snow, with the possibility of up to 24 inches of snow total.
All the towns around here have already declared states of emergency and put on street parking bans into effect, businesses are already announcing closures, etc.
The thing is, though, I’m not sure any longer if I can believe anything the weather reports tell us. They’ve completely blown just about every forecast for significant weather events here for the entire winter. Predicted “massive snow storms” have turned into an hour or so of a rather gentle rain or a light dusting of snow.
Anyway, we’ll see. Come Monday if you see a selfie pop up here of an old, overweight, white haired bearded guy standing up to his eyebrows in a snowdrift, you’ll know the weather service finally got something right.
We’re about as ready for it as we can be here. The snowblower is gassed up and ready to go. The batteries for the solar power system are fully charged and those can carry the house for about 24 hours if the power goes out, and if that’s not enough, we have the old Generac generator and extra gasoline to recharge the batteries if we need to.
If we do get hammered, I am not optimistic about what’s going to happen to our power. Just some 50 mph wind gusts down in the Milwaukee area yesterday or the day before knocked out power to over 20,000 people. The last time we had a significant late season snowstorm it knocked out power to almost the entire northern third of the state for days in some areas. Sherwood, a small town about three miles from here, didn’t have power for 3 or 4 days, for heaven’s sake.
Okay so this is like the third time I’ve started to write this review and each time I ended up with something I found entirely unsatisfactory so I’m going to start this all over again and keep going until I finish this sucker.
I’ve been having problems with this review not because of the Lumos itself, but because I don’t want this to be associated in any way, shape or form with the dozens and dozens of fake crap “reviews” I’ve seen for the Lumos since it was released a few months ago. I’ve sat through way too many of those so-called “reviews” and they are almost universally utterly horrible and completely and totally useless. I’m tempted to go off on a rant about these and maybe I will at the end of this or in a separate article. But I’m not going to waste your time with that now. You’re here to hopefully learn something useful about this thing.
I’m not going to do a typical review. I’m not going to repeat readily obtainable information about this thing. If you want to learn statistics and hear people gushing about how wonderful it is and all that just go look at the dozens of reviews on Youtube and elsewhere. Me? I’m going to talk about what it’s like actually using this thing in actual real world conditions.
So this is it down below. the Lumos from Wecreat (yes, that’s how they spell it) in all of its purple and orange glory. And for those of you who might be interested in actually buying one of these puppies, it sells for $1,200 or so. Ah, strike that. Looks like it’s down to $1,000 as of Nov. 12. That’s without accessories like the sliding table and the rotary tool which are extra cost options.
What makes this unit interesting is that it has two different lasers built into it. There is a more or less normal 10W blue diode laser for working with materials like wood, paper, some plastics, etc. But there is also a 3W infrared laser that lets it actually engrave metal. That’s the real reason I was interested in this purple beastie. I wanted to be able to engrave metal. And at the time I bought it, it was the only one on the market that had all of these features. X-Tool and a couple of others have brought out units that are comparable to this one now, though, so if you’re in the market for one of these do some shopping around.
Personally I think it’s a good looking little unit. Certainly the build quality and fit and finish seem to be excellent. The only visible plastic bit is the orange shield in the front. Everything else is solid, sturdy aluminium. The laser head is the circular unit with the handle attached at the top. It is packed separately and must be attached to the base unit but that takes only one bolt to accomplish and takes all of about 2 minutes. That’s the only assembly that is required. Basically you can put this thing together, plug in the power and USB cables, and be ready to go in about 5 minutes. Then just install the software from Wecreat’s website and you’re all set. You could be up and running with this unit in probably fifteen minutes from the time you open up the box and unpack it. This is a far cry from the first laser engraver I bought many years ago that arrived from China as a box of parts, with no instructions.
I won’t keep you in suspense. I’ve been using this thing for over a month now. And I’ve been using it hard. It’s cranked out about 150 challenge coins, several hundred drinks coasters, along with dozens of one-off specialty projects along with just goofing around with it, and it’s never missed a beat. I’m not your typical hobby craftsperson churning out the occasional birthday gift or Christmas ornament. I’ve been using this in a semi-production environment almost since the day I got it. There have been days where it’s been going non-stop for 6+ hours a day sometimes. And it’s worked pretty much exactly as advertised.
Does it have limitations? You bet. Does it have problems? Sure it does. And I’ll get to those. There is no such thing as the “perfect” laser engraver, after all. But this unit does exactly what it’s specified to do and it’s been doing it very well indeed.
First a bit of background. This is what is known as a galvo laser, and by its very nature that means it has both some very significant advantages as well as some equally significant limitations when it comes to functionality when compared to a gantry style laser like my Falcon.
The biggest advantage is speed. Galvo lasers are very, very fast when compared to gantry style lasers. Gantry lasers have the laser source itself mounted on a movable framework that is physically moved over the surface of the work material by belts, pulleys, stepper motors, etc. All of those mechanical gubbins having to move around seriously restricts the speed at which it can work.
Galvo lasers have a fixed laser source. It never moves. Instead there are tiny mirrors in the head that are moved to direct the path of the laser beam itself. Because the mirrors are very small and very low mass, they can be moved much, much faster. And that translates into getting projects done and out the door much, much faster as well. As anyone in business can tell you, time is money.
But that’s also the biggest problem with galvo lasers because that severely restricts the size of its working area. Where my Falcon has a working area of about 13 inches X 15 inches. the Lumos has a working area of only around 115 millimeters square, or about 4 inches.
The working area of the Lumos is only about 120mm x 120mm or around 4.5 or so inches square.
Now this isn’t as much of a problem as you might think. The vast majority of engraving jobs I do will fit quite comfortably into that working area. If I need to do something a lot bigger I can either use the sliding table, which expands the working area to around 120X420mm, or if I need to do something bigger still I can use the Falcon.
Speed is where this thing really shines. Let me show you with a short video if I can figure out how this upload thingie works…
Egads, it worked!
Now that engraving on a metal business card took about 30 seconds, all together. The exact same engraving using the Falcon took a good 3 minutes.
Since the video thingie seems to be working let me stick another one in here just for the heck of it. This one takes a little longer because it’s a more complex design but what the heck
I should perhaps point out that these videos are real time, not sped up. It’s really that fast.
(FYI: Those are black anodized aluminum business cards. They’re fun to mess with and they’re super cheap. I get 100 for about $9 on Amazon so I use them for experimenting and just messing around.)
This one above shows the infrared laser in action. Instead of just burning the black coating off the metal card it’s actually etching that design into the metal itself. It’s a bit hard to tell what it is because the video is shot through the shielding but that’s a cat watching Santa’s sleigh flying across the face of a full moon.
It’s that IR laser that made the Lumos interesting to me. That and its very high resolution. It’s the only laser in this price range that I know of that has dual laser sources built into it; a more or less standard 10W blue laser and a 3w IR laser. The standard laser works with the usual materials like wood, plastic, leather, etc. The IR laser has the ability to engrave metal.
If you saw the review I did of my Falcon laser you may remember that I used it to work with metal also. But that was different. The Falcon cannot actually engrave any kind of metal no matter what the hyped up advertising might make you think. It can discolor metal but it cannot actually engrave it. It can also be used for a kind of powder coating. A special material is applied to the metal and the laser’s heat causes the material to chemically bond with the metal to give a very durable result. But that’s not engraving as such. Engraving involves the actual removal of material from the surface of the metal.
I did about a dozen of these little metal Christmas gift boxes with various designs and wording. They’re just the right size for gift cards or small trinkets.
If you’re doing this laser engraving thing as a business, here’s a hint. You can pick up these boxes for about $0.50 each in quantity or even less if you shop around, and people will pay actual real money for these things with a nice bit of artwork engraved on ’em. Better still, take the whole show on the road, set up in a booth or table and do custom engraving on the spot for people. Takes only a minute or two to engrave a name or brief message on one of these.
That’s not just discolored metal, that’s actually engraved into the surface of the metal box.
One thing I’ve been doing for years now is I make a whole line of custom drinks coasters for a brewpub in West Allis. One side has pub’s logo, the other has a (hopefully) humorous cartoon or satirical item. Those dopy things have become ridiculously popular and when I send a new batch down there they’re usually gone in a few hours because the customers steal them. Which is just fine with me because the customers hopefully show them to friends and family and helps get the pub’s name out there and attract new customers. So I do stuff like, well, this, for example:
Nope, I don’t read a lot of manga and even if I did I wouldn’t let it influence my drawings. Nope, no sir… Yeah, right…
Yes, it’s an old joke. I used to steal borrow images from late 19th century and early 20th century public domain sources but I’ve been doing that less and less lately and doing my own because it’s hard to find appropriate images from copyright free sources to match a specific joke. They’re fun, easy to do, and the only difficult bit is the amount of time it takes. With the Falcon doing one of these would take 5 minutes or more. I could cut that down quite a bit but only by sacrificing the quality. With the Lumos it takes about 1/3 of the time or even less do do one of these.
I’m afraid that I’ve been picking on West Allis, the suburb of Milwaukee where the tavern is located, of late. I hope the town has a sense of humor because stuff like these pop up…
Yes, I am ashamed of myself. Anyway I’m showing you these because it would have been difficult or even impossible to do this with the Falcon. At least in any kind of reasonable amount of time. As nice as the Falcon is, it just isn’t fast enough, nor does it have high enough resolution to be able to do a decent job reproducing photos like these up there. Just for the heck of it I did the “vegetable queen” one on both the Falcon and the Lumos. On the Lumos it took about 3 minutes. On the Falcon? It took 10+ minutes. See why I’ve been using the Lumos so much since I got it?
The resolution of this laser is extremely impressive. Look at this test image I did on one of those black anodized business cards.
There’s no way the Falcon could achieve that high of a resolution. The width of its laser is just too wide.
Doing photos with this thing is a blast. It gives near photographic quality results on almost everything I’ve tried it with. Over there on the left is a photo of one of my cats that I took. I cut out the background and imported it into the Wecreat software. I found a bit of scrap cork laying around and lasered it onto that with the diode laser and you can see the results for yourself. The resolution of this thing, both the diode and the IR laser, continues to impress me.
Let’s look briefly at the sliding table. I use the optional sliding table for batch runs all the time. Below it’s set up for doing 4 coasters at a time.
I put 4 blank coasters on the table, start it up and it merrily chugs along for about 10 – 15 minutes doing all 4 of them. Then I reload more blanks into it and start it all over again. While it’s chugging along doing the batch I’m usually working on artwork for the next batch of coasters or some other project.
Installing it is about as simple as it gets. Over there on the left you see one of 2 “L” brackets that are included with the laser that screw down into the holes you see on the baseplate. Not only do they serve as makeshift guides to help place material on the bed, they are also used to anchor down the sliding table. The two brackets are screwed down to fit in the white painted line shown in the lower right corner, and in a second one in the upper left corner on the base. Then the sliding table has corresponding holes in its base. Just fit it down over the top of those knurled knobs, plug two cables into the back of the Lumos itself, and it’s ready to go. Takes all of two minutes to install it or remove it as needed.
I also use the sliding table with jigs I make myself (usually cutting them out of acrylic plastic or plywood on the Falcon) to hold small objects. or with guides clamped down to the edge of the table that I use for coasters. Below is a jig I cut from acrylic on the Falcon to do challenge coins 6 at a time.
I load 6 coins at a time into the jig, load the appropriate file and start it going. Engraving coins takes a long time though. Depending on how intricate the design is and how deep the engraving needs to be it can take well over an hour to do one side of all six coins. But since I’m working with non-flamable material I can just let it go while I do something else and I don’t need to actually be there the whole time.
The other optional tool you can get for this thing is the rotary tool and I have that too although I’ve only used it a couple of times.
Engraving things like cups, glasses, water bottles, etc. isn’t something I really do but I wanted to do a few items just to make sure it actually worked as advertised.
Unfortunately, unlike the sliding table which is extremely easy to install and use, the rotary is a pain in the neck. It has to be physically bolted to the base of the Lumos with 3 very small screws which you will immediately lose. I did. Fortunately there were extras included.
It does work well, however. I tried it just this afternoon using the old stainless steel water bottle I carry on the bike. The kit with the rotary tool includes a height adjustable rest with rollers to support the end of whatever it is you’re trying to laser which was absolutely necessary or the bottle slipped enough in the jaws of the tool to get out of position.
The blotch over the “u” in grouchy is from a defect in the surface of the bottle, not from some kind of glitch from the Lumos.
Once I had it set up it worked quite well. I had no issues with it. Basically it works just like any other rotary tool so if you’ve used one before with a different laser using this one isn’t going to be a big deal.
One thing you are supposed to be able to do is take the top off the sliding table, attach the rotary tool to it somehow, and then then clamp that whole conglomeration to the base of the Lumos and use it to making engravings up to 0ver 400mm long on lengthy round objects, with the rotary tool rotating as needed. and the sliding table moving the whole thing left to right as necessary. One of the advertising videos Wecreat has shows them engraving almost the entire length of the barrel of a baseball bat.
Now that’s a neat trick but me, being the 3rd laziest person in the state… Well I couldn’t work up enough ambition to go through all of the work of half dismantling the sliding table, attaching the rotary to it and then trying to test all of that. I’ll just take their word for it that it works and be done with it.
Overall the Lumos has been excellent. It does exactly what it’s advertised to do and it does it pretty darn well. I’m very pleased with it so far.
I want to talk specifically about metal engraving for a few minutes too. I’ve been using laser engravers for years, but I’ve only had diode lasers that couldn’t engrave metal before, so this was something entirely new to me.
Something like that metal box up there that I pictured doesn’t take very long, a few minutes at most. But if you want to do highly detailed, relatively deep engravings for an object that will have to endure a great deal of handling and wear, it is going to take a long, long time. Let me show you what I mean. Here’s a 30 second clip of it engraving a coin:
See what I mean? When I was doing those coins I’d load up 6 of them in the jig, start it going and then go do something else for an hour and a half or so. All those videos you see on Youtube of people doing deep, intricate engravings in just a few seconds? Sorry, just isn’t happening. Those videos are speeded up enormously. Until you get into lasers in the $4.000+ range you can plan on waiting a long, long time to do a deeply engraved, intricate design on something like a coin.
The other thing I want to talk about is that there has been a huge amount of hype with the Lumos and other IR laser engravers about being able to do color engravings on metal, usually showing you pictures like the one over there on the left. If you follow some of the “reviewers” and “creators” or whatever on Youtube, you’ve been led to believe it’s that it is wildly popular with customers, and that it is easy to do stuff like this. It isn’t. IMO it is mostly an interesting gimmick and I had a hell of a time trying to get it to work consistently.
I have gotten this to work and one of my successful experiments is up above. But I burned through a dozen or more of those stainless steel cards before I got results like that. And even that simple design took something like 20 minutes to crank out. More often than not, my attempts to get color turned out looking more like the image over there on the left. Lots of dull browns and grays.
And even more interesting is that these brushed stainless steel cards and a brushed stainless steel bottle opener I had laying around from another job were the only pieces of metal I was able to do this with. Every other attempt using brass, aluminum, copper, and even other pieces of stainless steel were complete failures.
Perhaps I’m doing it wrong, perhaps I don’t really understand how it works well enough to get decent results, but my experiments with getting color have not been encouraging.
And when they have worked the results were never as brilliant as the ones I’ve seen in the ads and reviews, and the process took so long that it wasn’t worth the effort. If you’re doing this as a hobby and aren’t under any kind of time pressure, hey, it’s fun to play with. But if you’re trying to crank out products for sale? The color effects aren’t as brilliant in real life as they appear in the videos. You need to put some kind of clear coat over the top or it will start to fade and even corrode (yes, even stainless steel will corrode over time). And even worse it takes so long to do that I don’t see how this would be cost effective for commercial production.
So let me sum this up. The Lumos is a great little laser. It’s fast, compact, does a nice job. The resolution is excellent. It’s much, much faster than my Falcon. And the price isn’t bad at all. I just saw that it’s down to around $1,000 now, $200 less than mine cost me.
There are definitely disadvantages to lasers of this type, however. There is the small size of the working area, for example. There is the issue of fires to deal with if you’re going to try to cut material with it. I’ll come to that in a minute. When engraving metal it can be very slow. But otherwise I like it a lot and it gets used here constantly.
The Problems
Does it have “issues”, as they say? Definitely.
Let’s talk about fires. Yes, actual, real fire. Whenever you’re using a laser on flammable materials like wood, paper, fiberboard, etc. there is always a danger of fire. This is especially true with galvo style lasers which lack the air assist capabilities that most modern gantry style lasers have.
When trying to cut flammable materials the Lumos can and will start things on fire. It has a built in fire detection system that will shut down the laser, but that’s all it can do, shut off the laser. The burning material will continue to burn until you put it out.
This isn’t the really the fault of the Lumos, it’s just the nature of the beast, as they say. With the Falcon, because it has air assist, I can hit a piece of plywood at full power to cut through it without much risk because the air assist prevents charring and blows out any fires. But that’s not the case with the Lumos. The only way I’ve found to reduce the risk of fire is to use lower power and multiple passes. While it can cut thin wood, etc. this is not the kind of laser you want if you’re going to be cutting a lot of flammable materials.
Sidenote: Smoke and fumes are always an issue with lasers. The smoke and fumes generated from using lasers with almost any material is dangerous and can be highly toxic. Plus, of course, it will set off every smoke detector in your house. The Lumos has a very powerful extraction fan that blows into a large flexible pipe that you can either shove out a window or attach to an extraction fan, like I do. Or you can feed it into a filtration system of some sort. But you absolutely have to do something to deal with the fumes. Unlike other lasers I’ve worked with, the extraction fan on the Lumos is powerful enough that it does a reasonably good job even with the cover open.
As long as I’m on the subject of safety I need to talk about the dangers of laser light to your eyes. Exposure to laser light or radiation can and will damage your eyes. Most of these modern lasers come with some sort of enclosure that has plastics that block dangerous levels of laser radiation. But in the case of the Lumos it is necessary to operate it with the shield raised up in order to use the sliding table or the rotary tool. So you are absolutely going to need eye protection. And unlike every other laser I’ve bought, the Lumos doesn’t come with any. No glasses, no goggles, nothing.
Unless you already have safety glasses, you’re going to need to go buy some if you’re going to use the Lumos with the shield up.
Other things… As I said before I don’t like how the rotary tool attaches to the frame. It bolts not to the actual frame of the Lumos but to the small removable plate that’s inset into the base. That means the rotary tool can be tippy, which is something you absolutely do not want. It’s also very awkward to try to get those fiddly little screws attached to the base. They really need to come up with a better way of attaching it.
My biggest complaint about the Lumos isn’t the hardware, though, it’s the Wecreat software that comes with it. The software has a lot going for it, especially if you’re a “member” or whatever they call it and the AI functions become active. (I suspect that they’re going to demand I pay some kind of subscription fee once my initial membership expires to keep the AI functions working. At this point I’m not sure if that’s going to be worth the expense or not.)
The AI functions are actually quite good. It can generate complete images based on whatever you type in, and it does a reasonably good job of it. The AI can help to “process” imported photos to help get better results as well.
The software does everything it needs to do, pretty much, but it is unnecessarily awkward to work with. Different functions and settings that should all be gathered into one place are scattered all over in different pop up windows and menus for no rational reason I can come up with.
The font search for the text tool doesn’t seem to work at all. I could type in the exact name of a font exactly as listed in the list, and it couldn’t find it. I’d have to scroll through an apparently endless list of fonts to find the one I wanted.
The materials settings were even more frustrating. You can bring up a list of materials and when selected it’s supposed to change the engraving/cutting settings to the ideal settings for that material. This is a common feature with the software that comes with most of these lasers these days. Only absolutely none of the recommended settings actually worked. None of them. I found myself suspecting they just copy and pasted the settings from a different one of their engravers and never bothered to see if they actually worked.
I ended up wasting a hell of a lot of material just experimenting to try to figure out the ideal settings for the materials I was using. If I went with what the software recommended, I’d get results that were so light they were almost invisible or, even worse, that literally started the material on fire.
Copy/paste of objects between different work spaces doesn’t work at all. Select an object in your currently active work space. Create a new work space and click “paste” and… nothing.
The most irritating thing I found with the software is that it doesn’t let you save your designs in any format other than Wecreat’s own proprietary format. You can work for hours designing a nice engraving, and then you can’t save it in a format that will work with a different laser. Even the Falcon from Crealty lets me export a design in .SVG format so it could be used elsewhere.
I’m hoping that a future version of the software fixes this. But at the moment anything that I design in the Lumos software can only be used with one of Wecreat’s lasers, it seems. Be aware of that if you do your own designs. If you only work in the Lumos’ software, you’re locked in. If you get another brand of laser or Wecreat goes out of business, all of the work you put in designing those engravings is going to be lost.
This isn’t a big deal for me because I do almost all of my design work in Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator. Then I export it to a .PNG or .SVG file and import that into the Wecreat software for actual use. But a lot of people, especially hobbyists, don’t have access to those tools and depend on the software that the laser comes with. If you use the Wecreat software to design engravings, you’re locked to the company. If the company goes out of business or if you want to switch to a different brand of laser, at the moment there seems to be no way to move your work over to a different machine.
Supposedly the Lumos is compatible with Lightburn, which is more or less the software package that most professionals and serious hobbyists use these days. I don’t have Lightburn and I’ve never felt a need to get it. I’m quite comfortable using the tools I already have to do basic design work and then import it into whatever software the laser I’m using comes with. However, if you’re planning on doing laser engraving for actual production work for a business, it is something you should look into.
And that’s about it. If I come up with anything interesting in the future while I’m working with this laser I’ll keep you informed.
One of the things I do is sort, clean, and grade albums that come in as donations to a local charity and I thought hey, I’m bored. Why don’t I write brief reviews of some of the stuff that comes through the doors? So here goes.
Bear in mind that these are personal opinions and everyone’s taste in music is different. Also the price that I eventually put on a record is solely based on what I think it will bring in the store. General rule of thumb for the store for almost all of the items we sell is we look at the average used sale price and we charge 1/3 of that. Why not charge the full used price? Because we wouldn’t get it, first of all. Second we need ot move product through the store fast because we don’t have a lot of shelf space or storage space.
You Gave Me Love by BJ Thomas.
I’m not a BJ Thomas fan to begin with but this one was bad even for him. Mechanical, emotionless, wooden performances across every song on the record. Basically it’s generic background music with a semi-Christian theme. Entirely unappealing. At best ignorable. Is this really the same guy who did “Raind Drops Keep Falling on My Head”? Apparently it is. Sadly, the disc itself is in good condition so I don’t have an excuse to just chuck it into the bin. We price our albums at about 1/3 of what they’re going for, on average, on the internet outlets like eBay, etc. This one is going for a whole three bucks on eBay so we’ll put it on the shelf for $1.
Happy Man by BJ Thomas
Yes, another one. Sigh… This one is all Christian and even though the liner notes make a big deal about him being an enthusiastic Christian, he doesn’t seem to be able to summon up enough of that enthusiasm to sound interested in anything he’s singing on this album. Despite cover damage the disc itself looks pristine almost as if it’s never been played. Considering the uninspired musical accompaniment and Thomas’s dreary, unemotional singing, “Happy Man” isn’t going to make anyone very happy. The longer I listened to this thing the more I had an urge to throw a rock at the turntable. $1.
Air Supply Greatest Hits
I admit I’m not a big fan of Air Supply but even so, after dealing with those two Thomas albums, having this one turn up is refreshing and some of their stuff was genuinely good. And unlike Thomas who’s performances were so stiff and mechanical he might as well have just stayed home, these guys at least put a lot of effort and heart into their singing and some of it is genuinely enjoyable. And the disc itself is in nearly pristine condition. The price reflects that. Where Thomas’s stuff is going for about $3 on the used market, this one is averaging around $15. This one will go out the door for $5
The Sound of Music. The original first edition of the sound track including two copies of the original
The Sound of Music is a bit divisive, if you’ll forgive me for using that term. People seem to either love the music and the movie or they absolutely loathe it. I have to admit to being a bit prejudiced because I have fond memories of the movie and the music. When it first came out the nuns at school actually went and hired a bus and schlepped my entire class up to Green Bay to see it which meant getting out of class for almost an entire day. It is silly, ridiculous, nonsensical, illogical… the list goes on. But it’s a musical and musicals are generally all of those things to begin with. Would I recommend someone actually spend money to buy the album? Not unless they were already a fan of cheesy musicals in the first place. Would I spend money on this? No. It was pleasant to listen to. Once. As for value? Despite the fact this is the original release of the album, that it includes two pristine copies of the booklet that almost always gets lost, and that the record is in very good condition, it still isn’t worth much. It’s going for about $7 – $15. At the store I’d put $4 on it.
Angels of the Deep by Sweetbottom
I’d never heard of these guys before and to be perfectly blunt, that cover didn’t give me a great deal of confidence because… Well I mean just look at them. They look like refugees from a 1980s porn film. This was a pleasant surprise, though. Turns out they’re local, a fusion jazz band from Milwaukee. The music is pleasant, fast paced, upbeat and generally well done. Not something I’d buy myself but if I was visiting someone and they put it on the record player I wouldn’t be so irritated that I’d throw a rock at the turntable as I probably would if someone put one of those BJ Thomas records on. Their albums do show up on the internet. Looks like they average about $7+ used so this one will go out the door for $2.
Bobbi Sue by the Oak Ridge Boys
Hey, it’s the Oak Ridge Boys. What can I say? At their best they’re a fun band. This album is about average for them, a mix of pretty good with some mediocre filler. Alas, their stuff doesn’t go for much on the used market either. Looks like average price is about $7 so even though this one is in pristine condition it’ll go on the shelf for about $2
Free Room & Board by Don Wharton
First I want to make a distinction between true, traditional gospel music and what I call “modern Christian” popular music. I love gospel music. It is full of life and love and enthusiasm and joy and emotion. It is a celebration. We host Gospel Fest here in Hilbert every summer, a two day celebration of gospel music that is full of life and faith and love. Even if you aren’t a believer yourself the music can be amazing.
Meanwhile there is what I call “modern Christian” music which is… Well it’s this garbage. Insipid, dull, tedious, and being sung by someone expressing all the emotional range of a potato. It’s generic, emotionless pablum. Even worse is the fact that Wharton isn’t a good singer to begin with. He’s off key more often than not. I didn’t think I’d ever say this but he makes the two BJ Thomas albums I started this off with sound good in comparison. I should add that this is one of the worst quality pressings I’ve ever seen. Paper thin vinyl, the spindle hole is punched off-center, etc. I’ll put $1 on it but if it were up to me this one would have gone straight into the bin.
Mountain Music by Alabama
Okay, what’s going on here? Another genuinely good recording? Someone actually donated some good records to us? Apparently yes. Alabama Mountain Music. I’m not a big fan of country style music but I still like these guys. IMO this isn’t one of their better albums but it’s still pretty good. Alas, this is another one where quality of the music isn’t reflected in the price. Looks like this one is averaging about $6, $9 used so this one goes out the door for $3.
The Partridge Family Sound Magazine
Yes, it is the abomination that was the Partridge Family. It is difficult for me to express how horrible the Partridge Family really was. None of them actually played any of the instruments they were shown with. The only one who was permitted to actually sing at first was Jones. Everything else was lip synched and voiced by studio singers. Even in their “live” performances. But after a time Cassidy was finally allowed to sing his own parts once he repeatedly demonstrated to the producers that he, like Jones, could actually sing. Show up at the store and we’ll let you have this horror for $1. Frankly, though, it should be buried at the crossroads, at midnight, with a stake through it so it doesn’t come back to haunt me again.
Strange in Town by Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band
Hey, it’s Bob Seger. It’s the Silver Bullet Band. It’s the Stranger in Town Album. First song on the album is Hollywood Nights. Followed by Still The Same. Do I really need to say any more than that? Ome of my favorites. The disc, alas, is not in perfect condition but it’s still acceptable. This one will go for $6.
Let’s end this on a high note. I still have about 25 records left to sort and there’s another box full up at the store waiting for me so I need to get cracking here.
I know it’s been ages since I wrote anything here but that’s because it’s been crazy busy here at grouchyfarmer.com’s palatial headquarters. The gardens were spectacularly prolific this year and dealing with all of that has been a struggle for me and MrsGF. It’s October 4 as I write this, it is 91(F) degrees out there, and we’re still harvesting peppers and tomatoes. Plus the brussel sprouts are now starting to come on strong and we have something like 15 big butternut squash ready to pick that we’re going to need to deal with.
We’ve given up trying to process the stuff ourselves. We ran out of freezer space and canning jars long ago. We’ve been giving it to two or three of the local food pantries and they’ve been very grateful to get the stuff. The food pantries have been struggling to keep up with demand over the last few months as it is, and because of recent funding cuts the demand has only been increasing. We took about 40 lbs of tomatoes to one pantry and about 15 pounds of jalapeno and bell peppers and our friend who volunteers there said it was all gone within a couple of hours.
Still the end is here for both the tomatoes and peppers. We’re going to do one last picking of both and then the plants are going to get yanked. The tomatoes stopped blossoming some time ago and the existing fruit is almost done developing. The peppers are still flowering somehow but have slowed down to where there’s no point to keeping it going. We’re going to wait until the weather cools down a bit before we tackle all of that though.
Speaking of weather, it has been seriously strange. It’s the first week of October. It should be in the low 50s at the most, with temperatures getting down close to freezing or even a bit below that this time of year. Instead we’ve been locked in this streak of hot weather for weeks now with daytime highs pushing well into the 80s or more. Normally we might get a few days of warmer weather this time of year, but not this warm and not for this long.
When I haven’t been puttering in the garden I’ve been busy cranking out a whole new line of hopefully amusing drinks coasters and re-drawing the artwork on the old ones to reprint some of those. Looking at the artwork on some of those first ones I made makes me wince today. So before re-printing any of those I’ve been cleaning up the artwork or even re-doing it entirely.
I also have other stuff in the works, like engraving coins, making specialty tokens and quite possibly custom glassware and other goodies. Thanks in part to a new acquisition, that weird looking thingie over there on the left.
That’s a Wecreat Lumos 3W infrared and 10W blue diode laser that comes with a flatbed conveyer thingie and a rotating thingie that I have yet to play with but will hopefully get set up yet this weekend.
Ooo, it’s got a rotating thingie! Cam’t wait to play with that.
It definitely is not going to be replacing the Falcon laser engraver/cutter. This one is entirely inappropriate for jobs I use the Falcon for. This one is going to be for specifically doing metal engraving and, hopefully glassware and jewelry.
Keep an eye out for a full blown review of the Lumos in the future. It is both enormously useful and great fun to use, and enormously frustrating at the same time. Which seems to be about par for the course for these things.
It’s main use here is for metal. Even as we speak it’s engraving “challenge coins” for a small scale production run. It’s not fast, true. I wouldn’t want to have to use this to try to crank out a significant number of items. But for a run of a dozen or so items it’s not too bad.
Anyway, more about that later as I said.
The new EG4 12000XP inverter is more or less installed and working just fine. It’s still in “testing mode” so to speak as you can see in the photo because we haven’t finalized the wiring. Those of you who are yelling at the screen about the wiring not meeting code and all of that, I probably know the NEC better than you do and I should point out that when that photo was taken we were still testing and hadn’t yet finalized the wiring. So before you launch into some kind of rant about it in the comments, just don’t.
There were some teething issues with the 12000XP, but they were minor. The first was it wasn’t “talking” to the batteries. That turned out to be a communications configuration error that was quickly corrected. The second was an odd glitch where the AC side would trip out with an overload error if there was power coming from the solar panels, and if the batteries were at 100% SOC an if there was an AC load of more than about 200W. And only if all three of those criteria were met. That turned out to require a software update and as soon as the firmware was updated it was working just fine indeed.
Now we just need to get the new solar panels up on the garage roof. They’ve been sitting in the garage since February waiting for eldest son to clear up some time on his calendar to work on it because MrsGF won’t let me do more than climb a step ladder after she caught up up that tree last spring stringing up an antenna.
And that’s about it for now. Thought I’d better post something to reassure the people who thought I was dead or something. Hopefully the Lumos review will be coming up in the near future.
I gave up on commercial television several decades ago and that was a decision that I never regretted. I’ve never seen Friends. I’ve never seen Seinfeld. I’ve never seen Big Bang Theory. Name any of the television shows over the last few years, and I can confidently tell you that except for possibly a few seconds accidental exposure, I haven’t seen any of it. And guess what? It hasn’t killed me, hasn’t resulted in me being ostracized from society and. indeed hasn’t had one single detrimental thing happen in my life. In fact one could argue that it’s been enormously beneficial. I read several books a week. I garden, I dabble with electronics, woodworking. computers, engraving, needle work. cooking,, photography, drawing…. And people don’t understand how I have the time to do all of that. It’s because I don’t waste years of my life watching the drivel being served up by the commercial television producers.
And having to sit through the evening news from one of the big networks the other day made me vividly remember one of the reasons why.
News starts. Teasers telling me of important stories that really aren’t all that important and don’t actually give any information in the hopes of making me keep watching. Lead story about the flood in Texas that lasts about a minute. Another teaser about an upcoming story. Duration about 2 minutes total before cutting to 3 minutes of commercials for prescription drugs and “supplements” that basically are nothing but snake oil.
Return from commercial. Thirty second blurb about something Trump said. Cut to 4 minutes of commercials for more drugs and a health insurance scam.
Thirty second blurb about something Rubio said. Cut to 2 and a half minutes of commercials for laxatives and two more drugs with side effects more terrifying than the illness they treat.
Thirty second blurb about Gaza. Cut to 2 minutes of commercials for more “supplements” and an ad for a drug.
One minute story about how hot it is. Cut to ad for scam Medicare Advantage insurance and two minutes of drug commercials.
Thirty second blurb about deportations. Cut to 3 minutes of commercials.
The “lead story” finally appears. An “in depth” story about tariffs that lasts all of a minute and a half before cutting to… you guessed it, more commercials.
Back to the 30 seconds of news followed by minutes of drug commercials…
In that entire half hour the actual amount of real information that was shown could have been presented in less than a few paragraphs of text that I could have read in about five minutes.
Dear sweet lord, why do people put up with this crap?
Some motor vehicles become iconic. Almost everyone, at least in the US, will instantly come up with an image of the Ford Mustang in one of its many forms. A classic shape that Ford has more or less stuck to since it was first introduced in the 1960s.
Another automotive icon is the Jaguar E-type.
That up there is the image most people think of when someone brings up the car brand.
Jag has always produced cars that are stylish, sporty, elegant and, of course, bloody expensive. And often not very well made, I’m afraid. My experience with Jag is that it is a company that has always valued style over substance. That beautiful E-type up there? I never owned one but I have driven two different examples of that car back in the 1970s when they were still relatively new, and I can tell you from first hand experience, that while looking at one is fantastic, driving one is something else again. Both of the ones I drove were utterly awful in every single way. Over the last 20 years or so that’s changed, the cars certainly handle and perform better. But, alas, they have earned a reputation for unreliability that has hurt sales badly.
Jaguar’s biggest problem though has always been that it can’t seem to be able to actually sell cars. At least not enough to remain profitable. The company has changed hands more than once over the last few decades, and since 2007 has been owned by an Indian conglomerate called Tata. And it is doing worse than ever, I’m afraid.
Jag’s solution to the problem is to stop building cars entirely. Seriously. It is completely shutting down all production of all current models and in the future it is going to completely retool and produce only newly designed EVs. So what is it going to do to tide itself over while waiting to bring out the new models?
This is what Jaguar dropped on an unsuspecting world a few days ago:
I’ve watched that ad about six times now and I still don’t know what the hell it’s supposed to be. No one else seems to know WTF it is either.
The ad sparked a firestorm of controversy on social media, as I’m sure you can imagine. The comments on FB, X, Youtube, etc. have been scathing, and often they have descended into downright abusive language and even hate speech directed at “woke” ideology and LGBTQ persons. It’s all really rather sad.
Basically all Jag has going for it right now is its brand, Jaguar, a maker of over priced, over powered, stylish and not very good cars that seemed to be aimed squarely at the kind of fellow in upper management who takes his Jag to a secluded resort in the Catskills to cheat on his wife with his trophy girlfriend, and the golf clubs in the back so he can go golfing with his boss on Sunday while trying to explain why he doesn’t have all the receipts for his expense account claims.
What this ad tells me is that Jag is desperately trying to change that image. And I mean seriously desperate. It also tells me that they don’t have a fucking clue as to what the hell they’re actually doing. They have no sense if direction, no market that they’re aiming at, no technology they are trying to push, and worst of all, no cars. They got nothing. So all they can do is put out whatever the hell this is to try to keep the brand name alive until they have something, anything, they can try to sell.
But this? This is supposed to give consumers confidence in the brand? This is supposed to somehow make people curious enough that they’ll wait until Jag can retool and start producing cars again? No. Sorry.
Stop it. Just stop it. It’s time for Jaguar to just hang it up and retire gracefully instead of trying to hang on far, far too long like an aging quarterback who refuses to admit he no longer has the ability to compete.
So I’ve been watching movies of late. Netflix has dropped a whole bunch of (shudder) Hallmark style holiday romcoms and I (god I don’t believe I’m admitting this. I’m never going to live this down, am I?) have watched pretty much all of them. I could probably come up with a lengthy essay about that all on its own, but that’s not where I’m going with this.
I want to talk about the multiverse. You know, that theory that claims that there are many, many universes out there. All of them just like this universe, only a bit different here and there. Somewhere out there is another universe where you’re filthy rich and Musk is your personal toenail trimmer. Or where you are a small, intelligent duck named Roger who lives in his mother’s basement. Or where you’re a ferret herder in Canada. You get the idea.
Specifically I want to talk about the movie industry and the multiverse.
So let’s get back on track, shall we? One of the reasons why I was watching those romcoms was because I needed to do something to recover from watching the Deadpool/Wolverine movie that I’d watched earlier. After watching two hours of bad jokes, dozens of disembowelings, beheadings, and an eventual body count that that surpassed that of a small war, I needed to do something to get all that gore out of my head.
For those of you who have been living in a cave for the last year or so, the biggest event in the movie industry (arguably) was Marvel/Disney dropping the new Deadpool movie on an unsuspecting public. And if you aren’t a fan of the franchise, you probably don’t know why this was such a big deal.
After the wildly successful Avengers movies, Marvel put out a few flicks that were, to be blunt, stinkers. The Eternals did badly. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was disappointing. Instead of following up the mildly successful Captain Marvel movie with a decent sequel, we got something called “The Marvels”. I’m still not quite sure what Marvel was trying to do with that movie. And as for poor Thor… The last time we saw Thor he’d been partnered up with a 9 year old girl. Seriously. They’re apparently trying to turn Thor into a kids show? The last Dr. Strange movie was – was just odd.
So basically Marvel needed to do something. They needed to do something big. And even more importantly, they needed to do something to make gobs and gobs of money because they got bought by Disney and Disney needs the money. Keeping Walt on ice in the secret vault under the Magic Kingdom ain’t cheap, after all. The only two superheroes whose careers Marvel hadn’t ruined yet and which were pretty much guaranteed box office gold were Deadpool and Wolverine. So, someone said, let’s team the two of them up! Our two most popular characters, the only ones who’s reputations and careers we haven’t driven into the muck yet, together in one massive blockbuster movie? Heck, they could have put DeadPool and Wolverine in tutus dancing in Swan Lake for two hours and a lot of fanboys would pay money to see it.
There was only one problem. Wolverine/Logan was very, very dead. A fact that was abundantly made clear when in the opening minutes of the movie we see Deadpool using Logan’s rotting corpse to dispatch several dozen bad guys in a variety of very entertaining ways.
No problem, though. This is Marvel, after all. Need to replace a hero who was killed off in the previous movie to make people all weepy and sad? Just trot off to an alternative universe and find a new one.
Yes, more “multiverse” crap. Sigh… Kill off your hero? No problem, just pop into a different universe and find the alternative version of said hero. There are apparently an infinite number of them. Just whip out your Walmart alternative universe twiddler and pop off and bobs your uncle. Take your pick…
Sigh… Look, okay, it was kind of neat the first time they pulled this stunt but it got old fast. Both Marvel and DC have been pulling this crap for years now and we’re getting tired of it. It’s hard to get movie goers to invest emotionally in the tragic death of a character when we know damn well that chances are good that in the next film they’re going to whip out another one brought in from an alternative universe.
grouchyfarmer 