The Tool Case Project Part 1

Tool Organising, or The Adam Savage Obsession – TOOL CASES 

Okay I admit it. I watched Adam and realised that my workshop was hopeless – I don't actually have a workshop in fact. I need a space that can be organised as a workshop but more than that, it needs places for all of the tools I use and they must be organised so I can find them. I have suffered though moving house and as a result everything shop was packed in cardboard boxes and shoved in a tin shed until now. Then I decided to start making things again. I ended up buying tools I already had again because I didn't even know what I had, and even if I remembered it, I couldn't find it: a nightmare.

I won't get this problem again if I make my tool boxes well and so this is that project.

This is not a new idea for me either: I have been saving some cases from old video equipment I found years ago for exactly this purpose – they are mainly plywood and even if I only use the metal corner bits and hinges it will have been worth it.

I looked at buying tool cases but there is nothing that meets my needs – either they are impractical, too expensive or both. Lots of blowmould plastic: Nope. I will be getting some organisers for parts like nuts & bolts but none of the tool cases I have seen make sense to me.

I don't really want any big freestanding tools like a sawbench since I don't expect to do that much sawing – and I would rather find or make some sort of compact, folding alternative instead – I know I will have to move house again sometime and if any item is too big it will just be a burden, and don't even think about the cost. Those things are expensive.

DESIGN

I first set out some categories for my tools so that I could decide how many cases and what for:

I came up with six : (1) marking, (2) drill/tap, (3)saw/file, (4)join/clamp, (5)electrical and (6)paint.

As I learned from Adam, the best cases can either be sat at the back of the workbench for easy access or they become the workbench itself – this I intend to do for the electrical case. 

I also want to avoid making layered cases where you need to open layers to get at the tools behind: that means you can't see what you have got. Everything should be visible at a glance.

The cases must also be hand movable which limits the weight, so I might need to split the power tools up. 

It is also a good idea if heavier items should be lower down in the case for stability.

I expect to make them mostly out of plywood so I will need a saw with straight guides for that: not sure exactly how that will be done yet. I may need to buy a new tool for this !

There is one more issue to mention: expansion. I expect to be getting more tools as time passes or replacing tools that fail, so there must be some room for expansion and ways to modify or replace the tool clamps as needs arise, so the cases should be like this: there should be a solid main case body and then tool clamps screwed or otherwise removably attached to that.

As always I begin the design phase by measuring and modelling in Blender to get an idea of how things will be packed in and so forth.

Here are the two basic design ideas as described:

Basic case

Case/bench combination

 Yep, that means I now have a whole heap of projects to keep me busy every spare moment  - and this one could stall the others for weeks  - but it has  very good reasons why. I don't ever want to dig through piles of rusty tools for a chuck key again. It's kind of a metaproject: all others will benefit from it.  

Special thanks to Adam Savage for reminding me of my maker roots. Maybe other people have their ethnicity or something to identify themselves with, but me? I'm an engineer, a maker.

The Cabinet Part 3

Plans have changed again. Having swam through a lot of 3D printing vids and blogs I realised that I really wanted to be able to print flexible and soft materials for things like tyres,seals etc.

Actually I got right into the detail and ended up with three basic specifications for Filament type (FDM) 3D Printing machines:

First, GP/ Decorative – materials are not particularly strong or durable but the models are high quality finish. Of course, this machine could also be used for general purpose printing

Next, Strong - this one needs a high temp chamber and temperature control, materials such as PE that can be used in high strength applications – but this needs a lot of specialised equipment to do properly. Prints must be gradually cooled after printing to keep their shape and there are a lot of technical challenges.This could get very expensive.

Third, Flexible – printing soft and flexible materials requires a direct drive printing head (the filament drive is attached to the hot end) and this is not common since it makes the printer head heavier and thus the machinery must do more work to move it around and the process of printing can be slowed down by this. This is why I suggest a specific machine just for this type of material. 

Actually, I really like the idea of a dual head machine for flexible materials since then you could use PVA or something similar for support material – but that is whole new machine again.

I am not going to start building a “Strong” machine: that is well beyond my current needs and abilities due to not having the tools or workshop – but I can certainly get the other two, which led me to buy a second machine with direct drive extruder – the Sidewinder X1. This machine has about the same build volume as the CR10S and good metal construction but it is a lot cheaper.

It also does not have auto bed levelling - but I will see about that - it may be possible to add it later.

Middle space showing 10mm holes for the mid panel nuts.

To get the middle panels on it was necessary to drill holes big enough to get the nuts through and then into the slots in the extrusion bars. The alternative was to try and attach all three side panels together then slot them in as one part (not an easy job) and do up the bolts – but then if you want to take a panel off later all three must come off. It would also require very accurate hole drilling and my hand work is good, but maybe not that good.

Since the design has already changed from my original and the cut panels cost so much I hope to avoid buying more – so the door for the lower chamber had to be made from two parts, joined with a strip. I also fitted the solid feet at the corners this weekend and moved the wheels inside of them using bars to support them – this is because the cabinet needs to very solid. This need drove me to order more parts and I discovered that 45 and 135 degree brackets are available so these will be used to add three diagonal braces to the bottom when they arrive. There is only one bolt hole so maybe I will drill extra bolt holes – but regardless, this will add stiffness. 

Base showing wheels and feet, which can be raised with a spanner.

When taking these photos I put the lower door on where it is intended to mount and discovered that it won't fit flat: the metal right-angle brackets collide with the nuts on the inside of the door. This can be fixed with countersunk bolts but it means using a 45 degree chamfer drill on the plexiglass. Cutting it was bad enough – my first cut was cracked in five places. Using the right tools makes all the difference - well, that and being patient. I will need to do a test drilling or two.

Cabinet redesign with diagonal braces

View from the other side showing air duct system

 The lower chamber will now house the second printer so there is also an air duct for this area too. 

I also have a window exhaust duct designed exactly to fit my window and go around the blinds - but of course it needs to be 3D printed !

Window exhaust duct

The aluminium extrusion building system used here was all bought from eBay – all of the bits from different suppliers, and I am impressed by it: there are a wide range of sizes of the extrusions, the nuts and bolts, brackets and various other parts too. I found a store that precut the bars to my preferred lengths and a supplier for the panels that did the same, and good thing it was too: I don't have the equipment to do these cuts myself – well, not as neatly as the suppliers. Because the parts are all fixed in the slots, you can adjust their positions as required which is great for flexible projects like this – and all of the frame parts can be reused later if desired. Nearly all of the 3D Printers I have seen are made of this extrusion although they do drill and tap holes in it for solid fixings as well. I have even seen factory techs in China building automation equipment from this same system. 

There still as lot to do to get it finished - but progress is happening even if I only have about one day a week to work on it. There is also the enforced delay of waiting for ordered parts to arrive - but then there is an advantage to working this way: I have a lot of time to think about everything - as you can see, the design has already changed in major ways. I have also simplified the design since it is then more flexible.

Finally a special tip of my hat to . . . . . Microsoft. The latest update of Windows 10 includes a screen clip tool that works right – just press Win-Shift-S and you can snapshot your screen just like on a Mac. Ooop. Didn't mean to say that – well, since Apple has left us creative folks out by pricing the new Mac Pro so astronomically that only the elite can afford one (when it eventually arrives) we must make do - except that actually it's not at all bad. See my previous posts for more about going from Mac OSX to Windows 10 if you are interested.  It's actually better in significant ways.

The Cabinet Part 2

Design Ideas

I have been working on cabinet modifications in spare time – easy to do onscreen, a lot more work in real.

To print well in stronger materials you need to be able to get the build area warm but you also need to keep the electronics cool - and there is also a need to be able to vent the build area to outside or a filter, so this means ideally you need four areas:

1. build area with a vent valve
2. circuitry area with cooling airflow
3. intake area
4. exhaust area with extractor fan
   
   So here is the idea modelled: 
   
   
   
   

There is also a change I made here where I put the filament roll directly under the build area – it just seemed natural to do it that way. This means the bottom of the cabinet is empty for now but then the whole thing may be too shaky for normal operation  -  3D printing is dependant on having a very stable surface to operate well – any shake in the table or bench the printer rests on will result in vibrations of the print head and this produces “ghosting” - rippled print surfaces.

I will only find out how good the printing is when it is actually running.

I have identified the air intakes and exhausts on the CR10S Pro case and thus located inflow cooling ducts at these two points. This means a lot of small pieces glued together and I am still unsure how well they would seal onto the CR10S case – ( how airtight do they need to be? ) and also the various parts need to be accessible and I am not certain how practical this would all be. 

I put the second intake where the power cord goes into the case so that covers one matter but there is still the question of just how to remove or replace the surrounding parts around the printer when things need to be looked at – for example, at the moment there is no way to access the USB port on the printer when it is in the cabinet and the power switch will have to be left on and turned on/off at either the power board or a wall socket. I might add a door just where the power board is located which would also have a cutout for the power cord. The power board will also provide for adding lights and any other powered extras I might add later. 

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At some point it becomes tempting to pull the whole printer apart and get rid of the metal case and fix the frame inside the cabinet, thus all electronics can be in their own area with isolated cooling. The trouble with this kind of thing is that I can easily progress to tossing the whole thing out and building a completely new whizz-bang machine with better, more expensive parts and I am in danger of starting a big project I may never finish . . . . 

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Stage 1, or what will definitely be done for starting the machine and getting it running, is completing the upper enclosed cabinet with door and fume extractor. This means cutting a hole in the floor of the chamber and that lead me to buy some new bars of 2020 to support the printer more directly: there is some question about how well the panel sheets will take weight when they get warm and I don't want to cut a hole in the back wall only to need to patch it up later. 

Stage 2 – Getting the printer fully upgrade with all of the extras I have already bought

Stage 3 - adding the Octopi remote controller, lights and camera

Stage 4 - improving the cabinet, including relocating the spool holder and addingthe air ductwork.

Seen in my local supermarket #2: What exactly is "creme"?

The Cabinet Part 1

The bare frame

lower corners showing brackets

Here is the frame complete. I am very happy with this, the parts were all easy to get and quite cheap considering and it only required the correct tool tips to bolt the whole thing together.

Actually if you wanted to you could make anything out of 2020 extrusion and brackets, it is very strong and easy to assemble. 

Okay, it was not all easy: the corner brackets and the nuts I bought to attach the panels are special locknuts that can be dropped into the slots in the 2020 then when turned, the nut is supposed to twist and thus lock into the slots. There is just one problem: they don't always do that. If the nut is too far up the thread to twist or if the bolt hole is not exactly in line with the slot, the nut can just sit there and not twist at all. In the corner brackets you could either mark a dot on the end of the bolt or even cut a screwdriver slot into it to not only make sure the other end locks but turn it if it didn't, but for the panels I had to make do with trial and error, pulling the panels to see if they were locked on. 

Locknut and M5 bolt

The panels were a little more difficult: although the frame cost about $200 the panels were much more expensive. This was a surprise to me. 

For a cabinet that could take a lot of heat I would have needed metal plates and glass windows but that seemed to be too hard and not worth it since the hassle of fitting glass doors with handles and hinges alone would be a pain. I asked one supplier about 45 degree temperature and acrylic panels and he replied that glass and metal would be the only option. I ended up going to another supplier for panels made of plastic coated in alu and I hope it will be good because along with cutting the panels it all came to $450 which is serious money. 

I don't have any way to cut the full size panels myself so it wasn't really a choice – I just liked the metal coated panels better than plain plastic. I think they will last better.

I actually bought a lot more connecting parts than needed, that seems to be the norm when I am working on a project though. Maybe they will end up getting used later.

The project does seem to be expanding though.

I fixed most of the panels to the cabinet today and put wheels on. They make it much easier to work on. I noticed that the panels need fixing about every 250 mm apart or they will rattle.

Raspberry Pi with cooler in fornt of my keyboard for scale: it is tiny!

This is fine apart from the area where panels overlap: I designed the middle area so that the panels could be removed easily since that is where the most complicated bits will be housed: the power boards, raspberry pi and the air ducting. Since the frame is only 2020 there is one slot for nuts so at the moment the idea is to drill 10 mm holes in the inner panels then put the bolts and nuts on the outer panel so the nut passes right through the 10 mm hole. The hard part is drilling 10mm holes in the panels without wrecking them: the metal coated plastic maybe okay but the acrylic clear stuff has a real danger of cracking. Apparently the idea is to drill gradually bigger holes . The holes also are only 10 mm in from the edge so after drilled there will be 5 mm of edge left. I will have to test drill some scrap first to see how well it turns out.

Cabinet with wheels and some panels

I got some 38 mm wheels to make the cabinet more practical and I was pleased to discover that the bolt holes on them fit the flat plates I already had for the bottoms of the corners.

 This is where the filament holder is going for now - it stil needs a 90 degree bender to feed correctly and this is intended to be temporary until I have the filament store underneath done but it is another example of how handy this extrusion system is - since the CR10S frame is also made of extrusion it was easy to fit and it's always adjustable.

A major reason I got the CR10S Pro is that it has automatic bed levelling out of the box.  If there is one thing you do not want to spend time doing it is levelling your printer bed. This auto leelling depends on a sensor stached to the print head that detects the bed very accurately. The CR10S comes with a capacitive sensor and some folks online have compained about it being inconsistent especially when delaing with hot build plates or other variables.  I am also concerned because I am going to replace my build plate with the magnetically "stuck" WhamBam plate - so my answer is to get the reputedly more reliable BLTouch sensor which has a small retractable pin that literally touches the bed to detect it. Tehre is also a video showing how to fit it and a special firmware version available for y specific model of printer which made it a sure thing for me. 

 I bought a BLTouch sensor from 3D Printing Canada who also have a good video on how to fit it to a CR10S Pro – but it was $137. 

There was supposed to be a local firm selling them but they are now calling themselves “Wombot” and selling 3D printers draped in Aussie flags - and they are covering their machines with the same metal/plastic sandwich panels as my cabinet. Their cheapest machine starts at $5k and I am curious to see a review of their products since that seems way more expensive than anything else: perhaps they are aiming for the “professional market” but I can't see that as being viable. Still, what do I know? Perhaps their support will be fabulous and they will outsell all other machines locally. I can't see that happenning myself since the market for serious 3D printers is limited and the big guys (Stratasys etc.) have it pretty much stitched up. Is there a market for more average, small fab machines costing that much? It seems to me that I have seen this all before.

So there it is: What are people doing with their 3D Printers? Making Cosplay Ironmek (Don't wanna get sued here) outfits?  I'm still not exactly sure what I will be doing with my machine once it is running smoothly,  but I have a few ideas. 
All suggestions welcome.

A New Project: 3D Printing

Which Machine?

Previously I thought about getting a Taz 6 but they come at $2500+ and for what you get, that is a lousy deal: major parts are 3D printed plastic and I would rather have metal where possible. Also the slight size advantage is not important to me for a first machine – if I move to a bigger format machine later I will go a lot bigger than that.

Better is the CR10S Pro which at @ $1000 has much better construction quality.

It may take some mods to bring it up to full standard but that is okay there is plenty of info on how to do that online and the parts are cheap and available.

For ABS you need an enclosure and a ventilation system to outside or the room will stink of plastic. (actually I suspect this will be needed regardless of the filament)

Also ABS is not UV resistant - get ASA instead for that, or Carbon X (need a stronger print head for this but the results: strong parts! That's what I am after. The exact material is less important than the strength and durability of the parts.

Originally I thought of getting a big printer but there are two reasons why that is a bad idea, at least to start out: first, 3D printing takes time. The bigger the print, the longer it takes – and if anything goes wrong, that time is probably wasted.
By instead making a large model from several smaller parts, a failure in any one part only means you need to reprint that part , not the whole thing. Also, big printers are very expensive and I have yet to find good uses for the one I have (but I am sure that these will appear).

I bought the CR0-10S Pro for a total of $907 AU delivered.

It came very quickly (within 3 days). I opened the box and prepared to assemble it by doing up the four M5 screws but there was a slight problem: one of the threads had a burr on it that meant the screw wouldn't thread. I bought a set of taps and dies for a whopping $30 and it si taking a week for them to arrive – funny when the printer was so fast getting here.

I have watched several YouTube vids by other CR10S Pro owners which made me decide on getting some extras:

1. Three quiet cooling fans for the case from Noctua (who else? The Noctua fans in my PC are excellent)

2. A WhamBam build plate - this permits easy removal of finished parts without needing a spatula.

These should arrive soon.

The Cabinet

I like the idea of building a cabinet to put around the whole printer for various reasons:

(a) Temperature control – even inside my house the temperatures can vary a lot winter/summer and printing some materials e.g. ABS works a lot better if the chamber is at least temperature stabilised.

I am not sure how far I would go to set this up but it may be a future development.

(b) Safety – I prefer not to have machinery moving about in my workspace uncovered.

(c) Gases – Some plastics give off gases when printed. I would like to have the chamber exhausted to outside or at least filtered for long term health.

(d) Also, I might add lights and a camera for remote monitoring inside the cabinet.

(e) One final extra is that I could then mount a filament store underneath the cabinet in a sealed box and feed the filament up the back of the whole unit rather than having one roll on top. It seems that keeping filaments dry and warm is important for good results so this would take care of all that in one unit.

This Printer cabinet would need to be about 700 x 700 mm square and there does not seem to be anything that size on sale so the whole thing would need to be custom made. 

This (naturally ) lends itself to be made with 3D printed parts. I am thinking the flat parts might be plastic sheet with insulation on most of the insides while the edges could be aluminum extrusions and then the corner blocks would be 3D printed in something strong e.g. ABS. 

This is, of course, a work in progress.  Not sure how the cabinet idea will work out - it is more a matter of how much I end up using the printer - if it gets a lot of use then the cabinet will be worth the effort.

More coming once I get the printer up and running.  

Speech, Free or Otherwise

On the box down here they are advertising VPNs – The big sell here is that you can connect via the VPN (Virtual Private Network) and pretend to be connecting to the net from any country you want. This will apparently mean that you can view content that would otherwise be blocked to you in your native country. Of course, you have to trust the VPN itself that they will not be recording or tracking your access. Can you see anything wrong with this service? 

I have seen a number of people online who say that keeping your net surfing private is essential and that you should encrypt all of your files and your net traffic to do so.

Well, I don't see how is this supposed to work: Why do these folks assume that the spook agencies haven't already got ways to see through your encryption systems and easily read whatever you are trying to hide? They have plenty of money and manpower to do this and a very big head start on you and any other geek who might want to try it. They also already own the server farms and the big data corporates.

I also don't see why this is essential, unless you are doing things you feel guilty (or at least nervous) about over the net. Oh yes – if you really want to do naughty things, why not just not do them over the internet? You know, the old fashioned way?

Censorship is increasing thanks to some truly insane legislation in various places that now appears to permit any old dropkick with a grudge and a big mouth to accuse anyone of copyright infringement or "hate speech" resulting in the big providers e.g. YouTube blocking your content while the accused has apparently no way to disprove this and must appeal to the complainant to get the block lifted.

Until recently I watched a lot of YouTube, then suddenly it all disappeared: well, a lot of the people I watched on YT got disappeared, to be exact. I don't care so much if they were making money off it, but they were not doing anything apart from providing entertainment and sometimes comedic critique. Actually the idea of making a wage from YT videos has never been comfortable for me: that money has to come from somewhere and if it is not coming from your subscribers then where?

So the advertisers (which I never saw since I paid for a sub) put pressure on YT to block anything that might affect their sales, riiight? No, it's not that simple.

This whole matter expands quickly into the question of free speech: do we have any? How much is enough? How much is too much? On the one hand I think free speech is important since without it we are just another repressed dictatorship – and how do we stop big players e.g. media corporations, private interests and spook services from monopolising the networks just to push their ideas?

The answer is we almost can't – but we can vote with our feet: don't watch that shite and find somewhere else to go on the net that is more free and open. Yes, it still exists - at least for now.

I recently watched a vid on how to set up Tails on a computer - along with other scandalous stuff about how you are being watched online etc. etc. but there is one fundamental matter for me: I don't need or want to tour the “darknet” : I don't need to know how to get illegal things and I don't have any secrets or hidden guilt for things in my past or present. I got rid of all of that a long, long time ago because it only made trouble. Same goes for all of the fringe criminal people I knew in the past – being around them didn't do me any good, in fact the opposite was true. Hang out with a psycho and you could become one too. Yeah, sure the big media is all owned and they feed whatever the (CIA, NSA or other Three- letter acronym) or some Corporate tells them – but anyone with enough of a clue knows its all bullshit. There are still some sources that report truth, you just need to look for them. Yes, there does seem to be some faction of nutters conducting attacks on people who want to speak truth – but that has all been going on for a very, very long time: those things stay the same even now. It's just expanded lately and got crazier than before. Apparently Fakebook is the worst offender here but then I never liked it and I'm not on it so it doesn't affect me: I was on the net long before Facebook existed and I expect to be here long after it is gone (hopefully soon).

So it looks like the shrill voices of fear have won: many of those kicked off YouTube have gone over to BitChute which would not be bad except someone here in Oz has decided we should not see BitChute or D-Tube which were the two touted alternatives to YT. If you look on Wikipedia it claims that Bitchute is full of “rightwing extremists” - except that is not correct – instead the people being kicked off YouTube are anyone who the new "Nartsties" don't agree with. I am not either “right” or “left” - “wing” and most other people aren't either – but this pogrom is definitely not sane or reasoned so don't expect rational explanations of who is banned or why. Some have managed to get their channels reinstated but I wonder how long that will last.

In perspective, I see a fundamental fault in YouTube that did need to be fixed: people were getting caught up in making YT vids and making a living off it because YT was paying them on a per-view basis. I think this was stupid of them. 

The correct model is that people should be paying subs as one can do with Patreon or Paypal if they see a channel as being worth their money – and of course, then subscribers can get special content that only they can access. Fine. But please note that this says nothing about the nature or quality of content: What annoys the heck out of me is the censorship.

I have long enjoyed watching wild and varied content related to unusual subjects such as UFO's, the paranormal, etc. etc. - this does not make me crazy or even paranoid. Mostly it is entertainment and just plain silly fun when one looks at how way out some of these people's claims are while they are completely unable to support these claims with any evidence – a bit like religion – but for some unknown reason YT has not only defunded them (don't care about that) but banned them – and that is what I think is a step too far. Sure, don't pay them, but why ban them? That's censorship and it isn't even censoring anything important or threatening to the Powers That Be . . . . . or is it?

The New Mac Pro

The New Mac Pro – Not for the normal computer user

I have been waiting for this for years. Well, so much for that. 

My first thought was: “Where is the air filter? “

My original 2012 Cheesegrater Mac Pro 5,1 required opening it up about once a month and blowing it out with a can of compressed air. This process is not a lot of trouble but it really made me wish for a case with a nice big and fine air filter on it so that I could just vacuum it on the outside when I dust everything else and not need to open the case for anything apart from uprades.

I really don't understand why this is not a standard feature on PC cases.

Next, I looked at the base 8 Core model that they have actually priced: 6K US bucks for it. What big advantage would I get over my current rig if I bought one of these new Mac Pros?

For the moment I will ignore the pricing, and just look at the specs since there aren't any prices yet apart from the base 8 core model which I would not bother with. Okay, so we have . . .
 

Faster memory, with ECC - well Linus of Linus Tech Tips asked Intel if he could test the difference between ECC and non- ECC memory . . . but Intel didn't want to do it. I suspect that for all normal uses (since there are already other systemwide features designed to deal with memory errors) that ECC might even be slower for the same clockspeed since it needs to do more – or putting it another way, if you are building a server, yes, fine, but for normal users there is probably no need anyway.

Special Video card – I don't edit 8K video so it doesn't really mean anything to me – but then that IS the point wit the New Mac Pro : it really is for “Pro” users.

Cooling – here we hit what has been a complaint from many buyers of recent Apple PCs and laptops – a lot of them thermal throttle when put under load which, if one looks at the design of the iMac or Macbook should not be a surprise since they seem to be made to be thin rather than cool.

The New Mac Pro has three fans at the front and one inside cooling the CPU. We won't get to see how well it cools or how loud it gets until the online geeks get their hands on them - but to me it looks like Apple will have to do some serious wizardry to keep all that hardware cool and quiet at full power. It better though, for the prices they are asking.

A few real “Creative Pros” asked in a Verge column said they wanted Nvidia GPU support since AMD just doesn't make powerful enough GPUs for them.

Even ignoring the prices, Even if I didn't need Nvidia GPU power for my preferred art tools, would I get one then?

Well, more CPU power is always good - another ten cores surely wouldn't hurt. Faster clocks? Same. 

Mac OS? Well, now that I have been using Windows 10 for some time I don't really see any great advantage to Mac OS. Windows has more software, more options and is no less or more secure than Mac OS. Supposedly the Mac OS is more stable and better able to handle task switching.

I guess this could be important if you were looking to do "serious" work – but I don't have that problem.

The price – well, it just means I won't be getting one. Ever. This is not the sort of price I can accept for the machine they are providing – and I am not the only one who is saying that either: the net is full of computer geeks saying the same as me. Sorry Apple, maybe you are only making this one for the elites and corporate video editors because you sure aren't doing it for the majority of users. In simple terms, even a tech pro would probably be better off making their own PC from parts, the prices are so astronomical.

Finally, the aesthetic element. The old Cheesegrater case actually looked good. No, it looked GREAT and still does. It was also very practical in the way parts were easy to remove and upgrade: if I had found any more upgrades for mine I would have kept it, but the limit was hit. (I have looked on eBay and the same basic config as my final upgrade is apparently still for sale at about 2K$, the price I sold mine for.)

The new Mac Pro looks . . . well, it REALLY looks like a cheesegrater. Other than that, nah, I don't really like its look – and it has no air filters and no way to fit any either - well, not that it really matters, after all I just hide the box behind the screen and look at that instead.

Oh. That new screen? Maybe my eyes are just not as good as the experts, I can't really see myself spending that much on a display regardless of how perfect it's lighting and colour is, and even that is a matter of some debate as apparently some tech geeks say it doesn't fit the specs everyone else is running on. Oh well, that's the Apple way huh?

You can bet that Apple's own TeeVee Network will have banks of 2019 Mac Pros for it's production crews.  Oh, riiiight, THAT's what this is REALLY for.  Look, drool and pine, o poor plebs in your trailer homes, this is what they use at Apple HQ to make the shows you watch on your 2020 iPads.

 As a long  time Mac User and owner it makes me a little sad to see Apple price its best equipment way, way, WWAAAAAYY out of my price range.
Bye Mac, it was nice knowing you.

Found in my local supermarket. 'nuff said.

THE BIG PICTURE

1. We don't know how old the universe is, nor whether it has a beginning or an end. There is no evidence to support the Big Bang. Any ideas about this are pure fiction and despite preposterous amounts of money being spent to “prove” it, there is no real evidence or any way to prove the big bang ever happened. Besides, what meaning is there in it?

2. Our world and Solar System have been modified. Our Moon is not a normal or naturally occurring moon. It is much too big and does not orbit the Earth in a normal orbit compared to other moons in our own Solar System. What exactly it is remains to be discovered.

3. We are not alone. There is a constant stream of sightings of UFOs that cannot all be explained away and thanks to the plentiful supply of mobile phones with cameras there is more evidence than ever before of many somethings or someones in our skies and out in space.

Life on Earth exists in almost every type of environment – extremes of heat and cold, high and low altitudes: why would we then assume that it stops when we leave the surface of Earth? More likely life exists everywhere in forms we don't yet know of, even out in space.

4. Humans have been on Earth for a very long time. There are fossils that prove humans, or something resembling humans have been living here for millions of years. Not thousands, MILLIONS of years.

5. We are not the same as all other life on Earth. Humans have two genes fused together which all other animals have separated. There are many other biological differences that suggest we are at least partly modified from standard Earth stock. Our mental capacity is clearly limited – we can know this yet we cannot surpass some serious limits.

6. We are probably not the most advanced culture to ever exist on this planet. There is plenty of evidence of previous cultures that could create advanced technology in our past.

In various places there are examples of advanced metalwork, stone and ceramic works that prove someone was here in ages past and they were not primitives.

7. Our societies are awful and primitive. Our sciences are primitive and so bad we haven't even got a workable theory of gravity. There is evidence that suggests previous cultures had nuclear power and nuclear weapons were used in places in Earth's distant past. Mars also has suffered from nuclear explosions in its distant past. Clearly these previous cultures were no better at keeping peace amongst themselves than we are. It looks like all previous cultures were smashed either by natural or man-made catastrophes and that this has happened repeatedly on this planet.

8. We are not just meat machines. There is plenty of strong evidence that we as beings remain in existence after body death and at least some of us come back again.

In addition there is the unsettling discovery that those who are killed violently may return with traumatic physical deformations that match the way they died in their previous life.

This means that any violence caused to people in one life can continue to adversely affect them beyond the grave – the message is clearly to be good to your fellow humans.

This also suggests that this world is only a small part of some bigger reality: the main problem we then have is that we don't know why or what is the point of the whole thing.

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Here I can theorise that we are here to learn how to get on with each other nicely despite our differences, do good things for each other and so on – and this then grows into much bigger questions we must deal with as humans – morality and justice, for example:

but these are all ideas formed from this existence. The fundamental problem is that we don't know what this other existence is all about.

Some think we are just here to experience but that does not have meaning for us here since we have it regardless.

The best overall theory of existence I have is this: Life here on Earth for us is a sort of training ground. We are being trained for some other, more complex existence. This may well be only one level of a series of training “schools”.

Where are the “Teachers”? They are never seen, never heard by us. If someone gets outside of the playground limits they may clean up the mess but we will probably never hear or see it happen. We will never get to the same level of “technology” as them because that would cause trouble for the Teachers. Perhaps these are what some people call the “Men In Black”?

We might make technological or social progress but the important part of this “school” is that we must learn how to deal with things like justice, morality, inequality and suffering, thus all of these things will remain with us here on Earth since they are “baked in”.

Key to this is our limited mental capacities and our combination of both intellectual and emotional minds in the one form.

These limits are one of the crucial matters to consider: in any game, the limits are what make the game. If we have a world where people can easily read each other's minds, for example, there is little need for verbal communication and if these mental messages are always perfectly remembered there is no need for writing or physical records of any kind: as long as someone around can remember what was said all those years ago, why bother writing it down?

Complete telepathy with all life would create a situation where killing or causing pain to any other creature would cause instant pain for yourself too: this could cause many other connected beings to die at the same time. This would therefore not be terribly practical.

This is by no means the end of the story: things are far more complex than the simple sketch provided here, there are more questions than answers but it does give me a starting point.

All of the claims 1 to 8 above are supported by real evidence but I am not going to provide bibliographic references: do your own research. 

You could, of course, email me and I'll provide clues , but I'm betting that you won't, so come on, prove me wrong!

The Myth Of Magic

This is the essence of all of the grandiose claims by religious or mystic types: that they (and you too, if you pay enough!) can influence reality simply by thinking about it.

What is truly bombastic is when such fantasy is proclaimed as “science”.

The latest version of this is the so-called observer- experiment interaction, where somehow the outcome of a precise experiment can be changed merely by someone (or something) observing it.

Here is an example:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/02/980227055013.htm

and also

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_(physics)

The experimenters claim that they placed a sensitive electron detector near to the passage of a flow of electrons and that when the detector was activated, the flow of the electrons changed its behaviour. They claim that this detector cannot influence the flow, yet it does.

How about a much simpler theory: IT DOES affect the flow when switched on.

I bring this up because it is an example of magical thinking in science – well, pseudo-science actually. This is NOT science because it is attempting to prove a faulty premise.

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I am not a “skeptic”. I am not doing this to “debunk” anyone: I am only after the truth.

There are some things that are definitely real, yet they don't have any “scientific explanation”.

The big thing to look for is the origins of the ideas. I recently discovered that the “Big bang” theory came from a Catholic Priest! Apparently he was looking for a way to reconcile his religious ideas with scientific thinking. No wonder the idea always stunk to me: where is the supporting evidence? There is NONE. The theory was NOT derived from evidence of any kind, nor did it derive from a previous theory with weaker evidence, it was just pulled out of thin air!

The point is that if any human could really affect reality directly they would be something more like a god: but not only that, the strong suspicion that such a thing was really possible would mean societies, governments, corporations and individuals would immediately start work on duplicating this power for themselves: a magical arms race. The fact that there is no power that can really do this is proven by the total lack of any evidence to support it.

I suspect that most, if not all of - the stories disguised as “science” that try to convince us that things such as “observer – experiment effects” are true are actually lies to confuse and cloud the picture of what is really going on.

It gets fools hard at work searching for this phenomenon so that they may waste years and millions looking for it.

It also allows those who have more “mundane” technologies to conceal them by claiming that such phenomena are caused by much more spectacular sources, thus keeping their technological advantage. - and that may be the real game: keeping the “secret weapons” secret while trying to get everyone else wandering around in the dark looking for magical sources for the results of far more real weapons and processes.

Is there a deliberate planned dumbing down of our science? That is a hard question to answer. I can point to some clear indicators that suggest that progress has been crippled by bureaucracy and the needs of people to collect a wage and hold a position, but that is not to say any of that was planned.

Consider the progress of a young University student: first, to get into University level physics, he or she must have already absorbed the official models and methods of science and been able to regurgitate them on demand. Then to reach further up the ladder to masters degree and beyond to become a professor, he must not only have the official views down but be able to make new and slight variations on it BUT nothing that challenges the views of his seniors or their fellows as this would be heresy. All papers must be submitted to peer review for approval and if that committee of “peers” is already decided that your idea CANNOT be true, tough luck: no funding, no commercial contracts, no degree, no job, nothing. Just take a look at what happened to Pons and Fleischmann when they tried to get official science to look at an effect that was outside of the narrow norm. I won't go into the details of it here - they were careful researchers and had no interest in deception, but that didn't count for much.

This system ensures that any idea which does not conform will not get support - and if the idea threatens any of the existing corporate bodies, it will either get absorbed or squashed: no water powered cars or never-run-flat batteries will get funding from the big boys. Don't get the idea the patent system will help here either: anything of significance will either get co-opted by the military industrial complex or you won't get a patent in the first place – or both.

It seems more likely that the social systems we have constructed cannot cope with too much progress and tend to stop all scientific and technological progress once they are established.

This is not all bad mind you, and we should note that we have recently been through a very anomalous event where the progress of microelectronics has sped forward – but this is now probably not going to continue at the same rate as before because of physical limits being reached.

The suspicion is that we are looking at a sort of progression of social units: when young and flexible, they will try anything but as they grow older and bigger they also become more conservative in their outlook until the structure becomes burdened by bureaucracy and fixed ideology. The next step would then be the collapse of the rigid structure when faced with unavoidable truths that prove the ideology false . . except that when we look at religion in the modern world it seems to mutate and adjust when new facts appear rather than collapsing outright. It took centuries for the Catholic Church to admit Copernicus was right and even now, they still exist. 

Thus I must conclude that the only way forward for those of us who want a better world and a better world-view is to do it ourselves and not even bother trying to convince the fixed minds of new ideas - make them, use them and show people that they are real and workable.

If you dare. 

I previously posted Rupert Sheldrake's Dogmas of Modern Science:  

Make no mistake, dogmas are not a good sign. 

 

THE GPU COOLER PROJECT PART 2

From the start, my GTX 1080 Ti video card would overheat. It had one of those blower style coolers and obviously this was not good enough after less that a minute running full power. (How do they get away with selling a card that overheats when run at full power? I don't know ) - but this must be fixed.

(Before the coolers)

I had already bought two different GPU coolers and three fans with the intent of using them to get the GTX 1080 Ti card running properly – but there were problems with these ideas:

First idea: Noctua NH-D9L – a great CPU cooler but needs a special mounting plate made to fit it to a GPU. Also takes up so much space that only one GPU can be fitted. 

Second idea: Raijintek Morpheus II - a very good cooler, up to 360 watts TDP and it fits on the GPU and comes with lots of extra parts to cool the card chips that need them BUT it takes up more than three PCIE slots (more than 60mm wide with fans on it) so once again, you can only have one GPU unless I want to replace the entire motherboard and case.

Soooooo . . . . . 

Having looked over the specs and carefully checked everything, I bought a second used GTX 1080 Ti Blower design and two Arctic Accelero III coolers, which DO fit inside the 3 PCIE slot 60mm width and thus allow me to have two 1080 Ti's that can run full power without melting down.

Okay, so they don't blow air out the top of the case as I wanted in the previous post but hey, at least

they work.

HOW I INSTALLED THE ARCTIC ACCELERO 3 COOLER ON A GTX 1080 TI

After doing the first card I decided to make lots of notes for anyone out there who wants to try this.

First, please remember that THIS WILL VOID YOUR WARRANTY. Don't know why some folks are so worried about this, but there you go, no doubts there.

You will be replacing the cooler on your card but if you are careful and not stupid you will not harm the actual working parts of the card itself in any way.

Tools you will need

Work surface (in my case, a towel. )

Phillips Screwdriver Medium

Phillips Screwdriver small

Tweezers

Fine hobby knife

Fine tipped pliers

Disposable alcohol soaked computer cleaning cloths (come in a plastic bottle)

Magnifier

Disposable gloves – wear them whenever you work on the insides of your PC.

Vernier Caliper

Earthing wrist strap (yeah, okay I didn't use one. I'm an expert :D I still suggest that you use one though. )

1. Removing the existing cooler

Take all of the tiny screws out of the card anywhere you can see them apart from those holding the end plate (the mounting plate with the output sockets in it).

Then gently remove the cooler, making sure that you don't pull it hard as there will be at least one cable and plug joining the two parts. Next, carefully remove these plugs from the board. The plugs are fiddly things and may need persuasion with a small screwdriver at either side – but don't break the socket.

Watch out for the thermal transfer paste (grey goo) as you pull the thing apart, don't let it touch anything or it will make a mess. It may also be toxic so if you get it on you, clean it off - and wear disposable gloves while you do anything inside your computer, not just for your protection, your sweat and dirt could damage electrical components.

2. Cleaning the GPU chip

This is where we get out those alcohol soaked cleaning cloths. Clean all of the thermal paste off the chip in the center of the card, GENTLY clean the surface and watch out for the tiny bits around it – those tiny rectangular bits are electronic components and if you knock any of them off you are in deep doodoo.

On the first card I did ( Asus ) there was a lot of thermal paste in the gulley around the chip and I got rid of most of this by gently brushing with an old soft toothbrush. Once again, be very gentle, you don't want to put pressure on the tiny components stuck down there – if any of them are damaged you will need specialist help to repair them. Maybe. If you can find the bit that came off. If you can find a tech who can do it.

(Bare Card)

3. Fitting the spacers

First, according to the instruction sheet you need to pick the right spacers for your card. Then you need the Vernier Caliper to measure those tiny spacers to get the right ones. These things are light and very small, make sure you don't lose any by opening the packet into the box lid. 

(The spacers with rings stuck on)

Next up is sticking the adhesive rings onto the spacers: this is very fine, I needed tweezers, a fine tip knife and a magnifier to do this.

(mounting plate with spacers, tools)

Then sticking the spacers with their sticky rings onto the mounting plate was also a fiddly task since it was hard to remove the backing paper ring from the double-sided sticky ring – I used the knife tip for this and the magnifier and it was still fiddly.

You will also need to make sure that you stick them over the correct holes according to the instruction sheet too. Fortunately there is a bit of slop and even if you get the sticky ring over the bolt hole a bit it doesn't matter, the bolt should still thread in.

Once that was done, there was a second set (this time they were black and already had the sticky rings stuck on) to stick onto the back plate. Finally, there is a black foam rectangle that is to be stuck onto the back plate in the center. 

(back plate parts)

Once that is done, you only need to screw the mounting plate onto the cooler itself.

4. Fitting the small radiators

Put the inside of the old cooler above your bare circuitboard so you can see where the heat transfer pads were – this is where you need to put all those small aluminium radiators.

(card and cooler)

Clean these off with more of the alcohol cloths or the glue might not stick. In the instructions they recommended using an eraser for this but it didn't seem to work very well when I tried it and then I had to brush the erasings off afterward. One of my cards had something like oil on it and only the cloths got this off.

Fit the biggest ones you can but don't let them overhang the board or they might come off during installation.

You can also use the clear tape to insulate parts of the board if needed too. I wish the tape was coloured though, it was hard to see.

I found the rads that had cutout bases most useful. It is a good idea to lay them out first without glue to make sure you have everything neatly covered.

(fitted radiators)

Once you have the layout, stick the rads down with the thermal glue supplied. I only used a small amount and wiggled each mini-radiator to try and spread the glue all over the chip and rad – it might not have completely covered all of the chip face but I don't like the idea of having the glue all over the board either and so far nothing has failed.

Make sure that the radiators you stick on don't touch anything else on the board – this is where the magnifier comes in handy. The glue takes an hour to set so once you have all of them stuck on you can easily spend a few minutes checking the positions of all of them and adjusting without concern.

5. Fitting the cooler to the card

First, be very careful with the cooler- it comes with thermal paste already applied and both times I managed to smear this which was not ideal. It seemed a good idea to set it back in the plastic tray it came in which has a depression for the pasted area – but both times I still managed to smear it a bit, not enough to worry me but still . . .

When you go to fit the cooler onto the card, put the cooler face down on the bench, then put the card on top, then the backplate on top of that and then fumble with one screw at a time getting them in and started before going on to the next and finally screwing them all down a little each at a time so they all go down evenly.

All that remains is to plug in the four-pin fan plug and it's done.

(both Accelero3-equipped 1080's fitted)

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Relocating the Wifi card

This had to be moved since the second Accelero 3 takes up the end PCIE slot where it was – so I came up with a way to keep it working that only required some holes being drilled for a special fitting. I picked up a PCIE riser cable to connect t to the same slot as before and all was good to go.

(ready to drill holes)

This drilling was not going to be simple since I do not want any metal filings in the computer case: that is a very bad idea. I also did not want to take everything out of the case just to drill the holes so I came up with a way to do it: I found a small box that would fit around and under the area and cut it to slot over and around the area and capture all of the metal shavings. This worked very well – after I had finished I could just throw it away and then install the card in it's new place once the GPUs were in.

(new improved tools)

There was a little more to the wifi installation, actually – I had to chop off the top of the slot fitting and drill two holes in it to bolt the card into the case. The final fitting was achieved using a rubber band and some blutack. The rubber band went around the handles of the pliers to hold the nut and the blutack went on the tip of the screwdriver to hold the screw on when fitting them. I also used a cable tie to fix the card in place before fixing the first bolt and nut because it was otherwise impossible to do with only two hands.

(Wifi card mounted with cable attached)

After all of that, I hooked everything up, closed the case and Pop! Everything worked first time which made me very happy. I adjusted the GPU cooling curve to fit that supplied by Accelero in the box but I did it in NZXT's CAM software rather than MSI Afterburner as they recommended as I like to have CAM running minimised in a corner of my screen giving me CPU and GPU temps – Afterburner seems to have no equivalent mini – display, instead having an exhaustive array of graphs and such.

The Results

I have a special DAZ Studio iRay Render file that I use to test the system – it takes about 15 minutes to render and all three processors run full steam (99 to 100 %) for that time.

CPU Temps – 79 – 83 degrees

GPU Temps – 70 – 73 degrees

Anything else I threw at the GPUs never went over 70 so I am happy with that and I am sure that I could overclock the GPUs without any problem if I choose to later on. For the price of $150, the Accelero 3 Cooler is excellent – even in the three PCIE slot space, it is so good that I would recommend it to anyone – particularly when GTX 1080 cards with fancy coolers are still very pricey: I got a used blower style 1080 Ti for $800 AU and with the $150 AU Accelero 3, I paid $950 for what could otherwise cost well over $1200 new (if you can get one) – and it is guaranteed to stay cool.

Is it quiet? Well, it's pretty quiet: there is no point even trying to make a silent AND full power computer - not unless you want to shell out BIG money – and besides, hearing the fans ramp up is a clear indicator of what the system is doing. It's still a lot quieter that any of my previous computers at full power.

So why didn't I get an RTX 2080? Because I don't think they are worth getting at the moment: where's the software to make use of the new chips, and why should I pay twice the price for less than twice the performance? Two 1080 Ti's are a better deal.

Footnote: If you are looking to game with this sort of system please note that you CANNOT get an SLI bridge onto the cards once you have put the custom coolers on.