The 501st legion, which is the biggest of these groups, was founded in 1997 so it predates the release of the prequels. If you’re into building things, the stormtrooper armor is a lot more interesting than most of what is a available on the rebel side.

The 501st is all about Star Wars fans who like making costumes working to get others into Star Wars and giving back to the community.

I’m going to directly quote Wikipedia here:

Giving back to the community is one of the 501st Legion’s highest priorities. Because of this, the 501st Legion proudly refers to themselves as the “Bad Guys Doing Good”. Members regularly participate in events to raise awareness for charitable causes, from walk-a-thons to blood drives, and provide opportunities for fundraising through events such as their “Blast-A-Trooper” game, where donations are collected from the public to target armored characters with Nerf blasters.

In September 2016, the 501st Legion announced their commitment to a first-of-its kind international endowment in a unique partnership with Make-A-Wish. The 501st Legion Make-A-Wish Endowment Fund will allow Make-A-Wish America and Make-A-Wish International to grant more Star Wars-related wishes to children diagnosed with life-threatening medical conditions. The endowment fund allows Make-A-Wish to grant wishes, alternating between the United States and international locations every other year – a first for an endowment of this kind. The Endowment relies on contributions from its members, as well as the public. With a goal of $150,000 in the fund by 2021, the Endowment fund will grant wishes from the interest accrued; as the fund continues to grow, so will the number of wishes granted by the endowment.

The 501st Legion never charges a fee for an appearance, but they do welcome donations to a charity in honor of the Legion or the local Legion unit. If an event host does not have a charity of choice, Legion members frequently direct the donations to the Endowment Fund. In cases where the event host is itself a charitable organization, a donation is usually not accepted by the 501st Legion as they volunteer their time for that charitable organization.

In 2016, the members of the 501st donated over 182,000 hours of community service, raising over $889,000 USD in direct donations, and participated in events that helped raise over $46 million for charities worldwide

Be sure to get one for long hair cats if necessary! I didn’t realize this was a thing until I tried using our short hair deshedder on our long hair and she promptly got very pissed off. She’s still not a super fan of the long hair version, but she will tolerate it.

And you’re right - tons and tons of fur comes off when I groom our kitties every few weeks in spring.

Ah, galvanic corrosion. Sealing the heat sets would be a pain as they’re open to water on both sides. I also don’t tend to take these apart, so I’m tempted to just leave them alone.

I do! But I also know that rebar tie wire is intended for static situation. This whole thing moves around quite a bit when it’s covered in leaves on a windy day

All has been revealed.

Your tuning looks great btw, look pretty nice even in the worst case lighting conditions, adhesion not an issue doing this way?

Thanks! I will make a “same print, terrible lighting vs good lighting” post in the next day or two. No, adhesion wasn’t an issue. I run klipper with z calibration, so my first layers are very consistent.

My dad asked me to print some stuff he designed for his beekeeping tools, has a bearing surface that’s awkward to print accurately, I’m probably going to resist that with this as inspiration, other than the helper ears I see on the build plate anything else you did?

Most of what I print is self designed. I do my best to make sure the designs are (reasonably) easy to print. For overhangs, printing a part at 45 degrees is basically a cheat code, but it comes with the tradeoff of more iffy bed adhesion.

I printed these with a skirt and some tree supports to improve stability. Beyond that, I didn’t do anything special and don’t put anything on my bed.

To ask questions, for the application does dimensional accuracy actually matter? AFAIK rebar isn’t exactly the tightest wrt tolerances (I know flat products, not long products, but knowing what hotroll coils look like I’m assuming it’s similar), could probably have gotten away with a different orientation and could probably have avoided supports (I find arches print nicely).

These are ASA parts with 0.3mm high layers. If you haven’t printed ASA before, it’s a bit more melty than PLA. You’re right that rebar isn’t super dimensionally consistent, but a 14mm radius cylinder wouldn’t have printed very well flat.

Having said that though, thinking strength might be another reason to print the way you did, face down and you have shear & torsion in between layers, thinking that’s still a concern if you printed it standing, but yeah, just thoughts.

I don’t think layer lines matter a ton in this particular print. Most of the stress is going to be torque caused by one bar trying to rotate relative to the other bar.

also spy kapton tape, did you find the bubble insulation made much of a difference? I’m putting what’s basically heat barrier fabric on the interior as a first try, I grabbed some rock wool and bubble insulation but it’s thick enough that I’m mildly concerned with it interfering with the gantry, having everything off for some refurb and wow I forgot just how close everything is, they really didn’t waste space eh?

A few answers here.

First, swapping to ACM panels bumped my chamber temps. If you dig through my post history you can find a temp graph comparing before/after. Second, adding a radiant barrier did help, but was less significant than the ACM panels. I do need to do the back panel and want to make my fridge door double pane using one of the stock acrylic sides. Third, I have magnetic panel clips that I modified to give me a bit more space to accommodate the radiant insulation. You would never be able to fit this stuff in with the stock panel attachments.

Happy to hear the photos revealed the mystery, lol.

Believe it or not, the outside fence, which is super jankey, is pretty effective at keeping deer out. Rabbits, not so much :(

I hope so! The zip tie solution only made it one season :(

ASA

45° is a great cheat code for overhangs assuming you can keep the parts on your bed.

It’s the center section of a rebar clamp for a plant support structure in my garden. I’m hoping to get a photo of it installed today.

First try. I’m running klipper with z calibration with a bed mesh, so my first layers are very consistent.

I manually painted the trees in two locations. The first was below the cylinder cutouts even start to give the print a touch more stability, but I probably could have gotten away without them. The second was for the small overhang at the top of the cylinder. This is ASA, which tends to sag on overhangs a bit more than PLA. A bevel would have been a great way to eliminate the need for the second set of trees.

The prints are the middle section of a rebar clamp for my garden. I’ll try to post a photo of the completed unit in a day or two. So not a jig per say, but functionally very similar. Good eye!

10/10 explanation. I would add two things.

First, there is a massive amount of variation in “normal” people. I’m personally of the belief that we spend too much time classifying people and that can set unreasonable expectations. Just because someone was/wasn’t diagnosed as <x> does not mean they will neatly fit in that box.

Second, there are cultural norms and elements that interplay here. I am a New Englander living in the Midwest. I consider my communication style to be direct and frank, which means that I try to objectively say things as they are. I grew up being interacted with this way. This style of communication is somewhat contrary to the norms of the Midwest, which can result in people interpreting me as being confrontational and lacking empathy.

I updated the OP. The dimensions in the arch is the feature that matters for this print.

The prints really do look pretty good under normal lighting. The orientation did not impact print quality. Elis has a nice demo of this on his site

Only kinda sorta dangerous, I’m not leaning into chaos random. I’ll update the post with a better view of the final part. The two cylindrical recesses are the dimensionally important features and bridging would hurt that.

You already got some replies, but there’s an indicator buffet uses to identify when to (or no) invest: the ratio total stock market value to GDP.

I ran into this at work today. Proposed a very simple approach for something to an architect and an engineering lead. Engineering lead said this was a practical solution that solves a problem that’s been plaguing them for two years. The architect nearly immediately said, “well, the real source is a mainframe that was stood up in the very early 80s. Let’s ignore the fact that changing it takes an act of Congress or that we have multiple modern downstream systems between it and us that are a much better home for this new function.”

It really seemed to amount to, “I didn’t come up with this, therefore I don’t support it.”

Ah, corporate politics.

Same for mobile, but I also use the website when I’m on a computer.

My initial response to this was “ehhh”, but a quick look at the consoles I grew up with shows you’re right. The only exception I saw was the PS3 thanks to it’s pretty bonkers CPU.

The Super Nintendo user a Ricoh 5A22, which was based on the W65C816S used in the Apple II.

The Sega Genesis used a Motorola 68000, which was popular for Unix computers. It also made it into a number of PCs like the Apple Lisa, Macintosh, and Amiga

The PS1 and PS2 both had a R3000A-compatible 32-bit RISC CPU that was used in a lot of workstations of the era, but none of those would be familiar to an x86 user.

The PS3’s processor was the stuff of hype and legends. It bore no resemblance to PCs of the time

I’m sorry - what strategy finally got us gay marriage?

Gay marriage is presently legal in the US at a federal level due to a Supreme Court ruling, not a law. It seems inevitable that this will change given the present makeup of the court, similar to abortion.

I am all for LGBTQ rights, but until something is passed by Congress the current situation seems precarious.