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United Nations Development Coordination Office (UNDCO) | Drupal and JS developer | Full-time | REMOTE

DCO is seeking a talented and creative professional to lead content management and web design for the UNSDG country websites using Drupal, including supporting and oversight of hosting/maintenance infrastructure, web design of new elements of the websites, as well as working with data sources and APIs to visualize results effectively.

The work would ideally later shift its focus slightly to contributing to the main API (Node.js/PostgreSQL) and frontend (React) development as well based on the candidate's skills and interests.

We are a great little team within the UN with people from all around the world. We've successfully just launched our main platform and are excited to take it further.

I'm the Dev Lead here so if you are interested or have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me (Hadrien) at hj@devqube.io


Added a javascript version, for those who want to try it out without compiling anything: https://gist.github.com/munificent/b1bcd969063da3e6c298be070....

Online version: https://jsfiddle.net/dfu7ws69/


Morality of the death sentence aside, I think the underlying issue here is that this may also be a driver for killing people in the first place. For example, the presence of "re-education" camps was brought up again recently, in particular relating to Uighur muslims and more generally political and ideological dissidents, whereby the camps have grown considerably (despite contradicting statements on the international scene) and people seem to get "re-educated" indefinitely.


A few other advantages of working remotely, at least in my view:

- less office politics

- no forced socialization, sorry but I have absolutely no interest in your private life while I'm working, I want to get work done and be done at 5, not pretend to be a busy body for the sake of it while having chats all throughout the day

- re. saving money, tax breaks are also a good incentive

- less personal but in my view as important: road decongestion/less pollution/etc.

As the author notes however, working remotely is not for everybody. Routine and self-discipline are extremely important, and a lot of people can't do that without being on site.


Agree so hard about forced socialization. My work life and my social life should be two very separate things.


Fusion 360, which looks like is what is being used in the article, has a free license as long as you're a hobbyist or your business makes less than $100000. Fusion 360 has its quirks, but it remains my favourite tool for this type of work, and it's relatively simple to learn (though like any powerful tool it can also get pretty complex).


yup, it's Fusion 360, I've got a background with SolidEdge and Autocad but Fusion is the best for quickly making decent parts with a 3d printer that need to be made-to-measure.


My partner and I are the proud owners of a Toyota Corolla CE 2003. We often joke about how it has to be the most nondescript car ever made. It has no extra features (with the exception of the CD/radio stereo perhaps), it just drives, really well, it's very efficient, nobody would ever think to steal or break into it as long as there's pretty much any other car in sight, it requires very little maintenance, and when it does we can go pretty much anywhere and it's very cheap.

There'll come a day when we have to replace it, and I'm dreading having to pay more for something that most likely won't be as reliable, but will attempt to squeeze yet more "value" out of me. The corporatization of everyday goods and services at the expense of consumers absolutely sickens me. I can't go to the movies without having to watch 15 minutes of ads, even though I already paid for my seat (and tickets are more expensive than ever). I fear giving my email/phone number/etc. to anybody because I have no idea how they'll be used. I have to regularly remind my ISP/phone provider to stop trying to push more crap and use me as some sort of advertizing platform for my friends. And so on.

People complain about Facebook, Google, etc. all the time for their underhanded tactics, but at the very least I haven't already paid for the product before being amalgamated into it... For all the people on HN who work for these companies and help them implement these things, I do have to ask, how do you sleep at night?


I've come to the conclusion that ads will, if not countered, invade every space that has any potential of human attention. It's not hard to see the trajectory for one who's been around since the 1950's.

This is probably going to demand a new type of GMO human, one that can concentrate on main content while at the same time processing ad content.

Or, we can stand up as the humans we are and demand that ads be banned from being shoved down our throats at every juncture. In lieu of legislation (don't have much hope there): some sort of manifesto that specifies how ads be displayed (i.e. exclusively behind a 'show ads'-button), coupled with shaming of the corporations that violate such an advertising 'code of conduct'.

It should really be tried.


We actually had a pretty decent truce with ads in the pre-commercial-web days of the 80s and early 90s. Newspapers had some black and white ads next to the articles, which didn't flash or move around. They also sometimes had a pure-ads color insert, which you could take out and throw away with hardly a glance. Magazines sold their subscriber lists to junk-mailers, but sorting junk mail was similarly painless, and delivering it helped fund the postal service. TV had commercials, but we had VCRs with a fast-forward button that couldn't be disabled.

In other words, the ads were easy to ignore if you weren't interested, everyone understood that, and they were priced accordingly. There was money in advertising, but not enough that the CEOs of ad companies were competing to see who could be the first to shoot some poor human sucker at Mars on a branded rocket. Then advertising turned toward all-out war, first with annoyances like animated GIFs and pop-ups, then with surveillance-based ads that started with DoubleClick (a.k.a. Google, a.k.a. Alphabet). Advertisers became some of the richest men on the planet, somehow convincing people that tracking every single mouse movement on every webpage made advertising unimaginably valuable.

What really scares me is what the surveillance companies turn to when slinging micro-targeted ads doesn't make enough money. Google+23andme health insurance, anyone?


Advertisers became some of the richest men on the planet, somehow convincing people that tracking every single mouse movement on every webpage made advertising unimaginably valuable.

Ad-men have been some of the richest men on the planet long before the word 'mouse' referred to something other than a small furry critter.


Really? Honest question. The 19th century Robber Barons were bankers and industrialists -- Morgans, Carnegies, Stanfords, and Rockefellers. Before that it was slave-owners and more bankers and industrialists -- Rothschilds and what-have-you. Back in the Middle Ages it was extortionist thugs, a.k.a. the nobility -- Louis the nth, Henry the kth, etc. I guess the clergy were always fairly well-to-do, but most people wouldn't consider them ad-men.

EDIT: I see where you may be coming from. Newspaper barons like William Randolph Hearst? Sort of, but his papers offered both "creative" and "editorial."


Please look up agency salaries before making that sort of statement. There's decent executive comp at the top, but there's a reason for the industry stereotype of being underpaid and overworked. It is also why so many from the agency side flee to the brand side.

Ad agency pay sucks in general.


There's decent executive comp at the top

Sorry, I thought "ad-man" was a pretty unambiguous statement that referred directly to the executives of ad agencies?


I attended a sports event (SkateAmerica) recently. I was shocked that they played commercials. At the arena. Not just before things started, but in between competitors while they totaled scores.

And they weren't even topical commercials. Just...commercials. I'm a cord-cutter so I've been fairly isolated and I found the whole thing jarring. It did not encourage me to spend more time or money to give people more chances to advertise to me. (Though the event itself was otherwise great)


Fellow cord cutter. Commercials are very strange. Like seriously bizarre. Once you've stepped away for awhile you can't re-acclimatize. Talking cars, dancing animations, crazy graphics...it's all just absurd nonsense. It's like the the worst of a Salvador Dali painting.


My daughter grew up with Netflix (no commercials) and Hulu (no commercials specifically on kids programming, at least as of a year ago). She went to a sleepover when she was 6 and got incredibly confused when they were watching cable and the show stopped and a bunch of random toy videos showed up. She played it off in front of her friends, but asked me what was up with those videos first thing when she got home. She just couldn't understand why her movie would be interrupted like that.

... She also started pestering me for about a dozen different, explicitly named toys. Something she had never done before.


People who are either older than me (TV and radio era) or younger than me (mobile apps) look at me like I'm crazy when I seriously suggest ending all advertising. It's a terrible blight on society and you don't really recognize it until you haven't seen an ad for a month or two. (I use Firefox on my phone with an adblocker, and I don't use apps that show ads. I don't watch cable. I really have not seen an ad in I don't know how long.)


I can relate. YouTube has increased their ads lately, and I really can't imagine watching ads any more. I currently turn down the sound and avert my gaze for the duration of the ad. I guess it's a push towards the paid service.


The problem with that is, as other people said last time it was up for discussion, that if you are willing to pay to avoid ads, you are the demographic that is even more attractive to advertisers, meaning they will pay you even more to reach you.

The thing I don't get is, there has to be products out there that are actually useful, but I don't see advertising for those*

*exception: some sleeping headphones I saw in an app on Twitter, but they fail to meet my requirement: I want to put them on, go to sleep, and not hear a noise after that. I will pay 1k+ for this, iff they really work.


Idiocracy foretold the coming of this. Frankly, it was inevitable. As wages have stagnated and the gap between haves and have nots has grown, people are more willing to give up privacy in exchange for goods and services.


"it's very efficient, nobody would ever think to steal or break into it as long as there's pretty much any other car in sight"

My impression is that the most stolen cars usually fit that description, surprisingly enough. Old, reliable, nondescript cars are exactly the ones that have a thriving market for parts and are relatively easy to steal. I remember for instance, late 90s Honda Accords being on the list of top most stolen models at one time.

The other reason I see not to keep an old car forever is that I don't trust old airbags, especially since the Takata fiasco. Nothing lasts forever, and originally I read that airbags were supposed to last 10 years, so how do you trust a 15 year old explosive device aimed at your face?


You are right, the most stolen cars list always includes the top sellers, Civic, Accord, Camry Corolla(#8).

https://www.nicb.org/news/news-releases/2017-hot-wheels-repo...

It might just be because those models sell the most, so there are more around to be stolen, or maybe there is more demand for stolen parts because they sell more.


> It might just be because those models sell the most, so there are more around to be stolen, or maybe there is more demand for stolen parts because they sell more.

Well, it’s both. They’re two sides of the same coin.

Hard to have a thriving car theft business if there isn’t good enough demand for the parts you need to sell.

Can’t have a high demand for parts unless a large amount of those cars are on the streets (or if the cars are absolute junk and need constant parts repair)

The cars that you see in the junk yard in large quantities are probably the ones that will be stolen from the streets.


I just can't fathom a huge market in stolen car parts. I do a lot of my own work and always just go to NAPA or maybe rockauto.com and buy any new parts I need.

Maybe there is a sizable black market of major parts (engines, transmissions, body panels) etc. to unscrupulous repair shops?


I've always owned 10-20year old cars, and frequently replacement parts aren't available; I have to find them on ebay or craigslist and I've no way to know weather these were scavenged legally or stolen.

I've also used Craigslist because new parts can be 5 times more expensive than used parts. You may buy all your items new, but most of the working class people on my block, who are constantly upgrading their cars, probably can't afford it. So, I have no problem imagining a large black market.


I suspect most stolen parts would either be sold through Craigslist of junkyards. The old timers still rely heavily on junkyards for parts. I've been to quite a few, they tend to be shady.


>>I just can't fathom a huge market in stolen car parts.

There is a huge market for them. They are laundered through junk yards.


I suspect some repair shops may source parts from non-legit sources.


Honda Accords being on the list of top most stolen models at one time.

Yes, there is demand for those car parts, but most importantly, late-90’s Honda are incredibly easy to steal. They didn’t fix that until the 2000 model.

It’s so well known that you need something like a club to stop those cars from disappearing.


Exactly, those things were ridiculously easy to snatch up. My friend in high school used to be able to start his 90s era Honda with a flathead screw driver.


You're right on both points. Safety has seen major improvements since 2003. I would urge OP to upgrade for that reason alone.


I've got a Toyota Camry 2006. It's such a functional car. mid-early 2000s was such a beautiful time for car user interfaces. No crazy screens, no touch UI to control radio volume with millions of menus, no painfully slow third party navigation systems that became deprecated by the time cell phones came out.

The only modification it has is a bluetooth receiver instead of the CD part of the radio. It's so wonderfully low-tech that the key fob doesn't even work anymore, only manual keys for me.

I bought it when I could have purchased a new vehicle for a similar price using a GM employee discount. Never regretted the decision, and now seeing all this coming out, I feel even better about my camry. I'll drive it until it dies and then hopefully never own another vehicle.


I'm with you. I hate being monetized, and there's increasingly no escape.

A suggestion. When it comes time to replace your Corolla, buy an older used car and use the price differential between your "new" oldie and the newer car you might have bought to return your oldie to zero time. New engine, trannie, new hoses & tubing, wheel bearings, retrofit LED lighting...etc. Or you could do this with the Corolla you have now.

You'll sacrifice newer bells & whistles and some safety features, to be sure. But you won't have to listen to ads unless you voluntarily tune them in on that FM/AM radio.

Edit to add: And your car won't be reporting on you to whoever put up a few pennies for your life data.


In Canada, Nissan sells a car called the Micra. The 2018 base model comes with manual transmission, rollup windows and no AC. But next year they have to add a backup camera. To me this car seems like the last vestige of a bygone era in North America.


I actually own the SV model of this with the backup camera already.

It's an incredibly simple point A to B type car, but I love that about it. I can change the oil and filter without even having to jack it up, it's fuel efficient, and no touch screens. It kinda blew my mind when I was perusing new cars and there is nothing even remotely close to the Micra in terms of cost/value.


You can still get a Tacoma like that, I believe.


As I read the article I thought smugly about the three motorcycles in my garage with no more sophisticated electronics that the ignition modules - all run carburettors, one doesn't even have a tachometer... They aren't collecting _any_ marketable data on me (well, I guess the odo readings from the yearly inspections...)

But then I ride them around with a smartphone in my pocket snitching me out to the cell providers (and any nearby stingrays), slurping up gps signals and wallowing in wifi and bluetooth bands... (And with a license plate being snapped and OCRed probably hundreds of times a week...)


I feel the same way. I have an '01 Subaru Legacy. One day it will die, and it will be because of rust, not because of poor craftsmanship or engineering. And when I have to replace it, I don't know what I will do. I'm tempted to buy another one while they still exist and garaging it until needed. Because I don't want to own a car that is doing things I don't know about, or talking to someone else about me.


> I fear giving my email/phone number/etc. to anybody because I have no idea how they'll be used

I've subscribed to Abine Blur to be able to generate separate masked emails for sites I'm wary of, as well as have a masked phone number.


Wow, dramatic much? They probably sleep at night by realizing that the car they are selling you is far less likely to be its driver’s place of death than the 2003 car you’re driving.


Unless it gets hacked.

Vehicle hacking is very real.


You're orders of magnitude more likely to die in a regular old car accident than you are as a result of your car being hacked.

I'm as concerned about insecure computers in cars as the next tinfoil-wearing conspiracy theorist (that is to say- very, very much), but let's not overstate the actual numbers. A modern car getting hacked is a real risk that needs to be handled, but the actual occurrence of it in the wild is extremely low, and likely to remain that way for at least the next few decades.


Averages are great until you're the one targeted.


Being targeted for hacking only adds to the risk of being involved in a regular old accident, not replaces it; and no matter who you are, your odds of eventually being involved in a non-hacking related crash are pretty high. The difference in severity of injuries and risk of death in a car accident between a 2018 model and a 2003 model is considerable.

So unless you're Snowden and someone is actively trying to kill you, citing the risk of hacking as a rational safety-based reason to drive a 15 year-old car just doesn't hold water.

And if you are Snowden, physically tampering with a car or just forcing you off the road is so easy, hacking probably doesn't increase the risk profile much either. Granted, it's slightly more convenient for your would-be murderers.


Plausible deniability.


> I'm dreading having to pay more for something that most likely won't be as reliable

Toyota's are still very reliable, even more efficient and a lot safer... You'll be fine.


I just replaced my 2003 Honda Pilot with a 2016. What a nightmare... touchscreen controls running some bastardized Android 4.1 platform.


There is "complex", and then there is "complicated", I believe the author refers to the latter. A complex solution involves a lot of moving parts, but each of these parts serves a specific purpose, such that it is possible to break down the solution into relatively simple, understandable blocks. On the other hand a complicated solution will have inefficiencies, some of its building blocks may be too big or convoluted to be broken down further, causing implementations that are hard to understand and/or may be redundant, feeding back into the complications. I think Rube Goldberg's Inventions are an excellent example of the difference I'm trying to make.

Social posturing is certainly largely to blame for over-complications, but I think more deeply, a lot of people hate to let go, to be told that the very thing they were responsible for, that they worked hours/days/... on isn't necessary any more, or perhaps never was. And then in the other direction, there are what I refer to as "exponential requirements", for lack of a better term. You buy a large bag of coffee that you could simply use as you go and store in the fridge. Or, you could have a jar with some of the coffee in it, and the rest of the bag still in the fridge. Then a plate to put the jar on. Then a new shelf to put those plates and those jars. By the time you've followed this track long enough, you're looking at buying a new house, even though your essential requirements haven't changed from the beginning.


In Canada, also get a few of those every day, even though I barely ever give my number out. I noticed that some of those numbers are within the same area code as mine, but not the area I live in. I attempted to call some of these back on occasion, and was surprised to have an actual person on the other end of the line, absolutely clueless as to why I was calling them. I'm not sure whether hijacking a caller ID could allow that, or if some those phones have been compromised and become part of one of the great botnet...

Meanwhile, I'm still dealing with large organizations (BestBuy, Fido/Rogers, TD, etc.) still sending promotional offers through all possible media, despite Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation being in full effect since 2017 and me having never explicitly consented to that garbage in the first place.

Maybe we ought to bring the hammer down on all spammers, "legitimate" or not...


Spoofing Caller-ID is easy. So they use familiar looking numbers to appear local to get you to answer.

They seemingly call numbers at random (at least, there's zero reason to call me in Chinese). The Chinese language scammers once hit my employer and made it hard to call them for a few hours because the scammers were dialing sequential numbers, and un-assigned numbers were sent to switchboard...

Though sometimes the calls seem to be targetted. Some immigrants have gotten calls from "Immigration Canada", while non-immigrants I've spoken to have not. So maybe there was a leak/theft that hasn't been detected.


The ease of spoofing caller ID will be the downfall of POTS. Imagine what the web would be like if it didn't have HTTPS, that's where we're at with the telephone system. It's not just broken, it's actively hazardous.


Except its worse because random websites anywhere in the world can't connect to you claiming to be another site.


This happened to my work number the other day. I received hundreds of callbacks, and a full voicemail box, before I had my employee disconnect the number.


I (Vancouver-born) get the calls from Immigration Canada too - I only know this because I have to ask my Chinese coworkers what the recording on the other end of the line is saying. You'd think they'd at least throw in a little English or French to make it sound convincing...


There’s an English language Immigration Department scam that seems to be targeted. The Chinese one is not targeted at all.

I find the CRA generic English names funny. Typical scammers go by “James Morrison” or “Derek Johnson”. The real feds have names more like Jean-François Pelletier.


Long before I ported out my AT&T landline, I started using a prepaid VoIP provider in Canada for outgoing long distance. One bonus was that they provided a free number in Winnipeg.

So far, I've never received an actual spam call on the Winnipeg number, only a very rare legitimate wrong number.

Hmmm... next time a store wants my phone number, I should give them that 204-xxx-xxxx number. I don't actually live in Canada. :)


United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) | Full Stack JS Developer | Full-time | REMOTE

Within the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the Programme Support Branch (PSB) is responsible for helping OCHA country offices and humanitarian partners implement the Humanitarian Programme Cycle (HPC). PSB, in partnership with OCHA’s Information Services Branch (ISB) is currently developing the suite of information services which support the HPC. This includes online database applications for the administration of systems such as those for the Financial Tracking Service (FTS) and the Online Projects System (OPS); as well as new online systems to facilitate the creation, management and monitoring of humanitarian response plans (HRPs). These are being built on technologies including PostgreSQL, Node.js and AngularJS.

For more details and to apply, please see: https://jobs.unops.org/pages/viewvacancy/VADetails.aspx?id=1...


Commenting on this while my 3D printer is making parts for my new 3D printer, with parts I designed from the comfort of my own home. 3D printing and the RepRap movement have managed to get me truly excited about something for the first time since I took up programming 20 something years ago.

We're not quite at the fully consumer-ready stage yet, there is a lot of tinkering and know-how that would be too much for the average consumer. I'd say the current state of 3D printing is at the same level 2D printing was ~40 years ago (comparatively), but I'm confident we'll reach a similar stage within the next few years.

For those interested, the RepRap community is extremely active and there are lots of open-source projects (including hardware) to get involved with.


Same experience for me. I bought a cheap printer from eBay and slowly started re-designing and replacing existing parts by printing them out on the printer itself. Nearly 100% of the printer has been replaced, and I’m finalizing the design for a second printer. I’ve started making contributions to the firmware, slicers, and host software to get features I want, learned to model in Blender, learned about programming micro-controllers, started researching thermoplastics, material science, and the list goes on.

3D printing is an incredible intersection of software, electronics, machinery, chemistry, and an open, community-driven R&D environment. It is the most fun I’ve had since being a child building RC cars.


I want to offer additional context for other people who read this and may not be familiar with how 3D printers work. The core components of a 3D printer are not currently printable. These components are: power supply, control board, steppers, rails, bearings, belts, hotend, and the bed. When people talk about printing parts for their printer, they are almost always referring to the secondary parts like the carriage assembly, extruder gears, fan shrouds, and frame components that can be made from a large variety of cheap materials (acrylic, MDF, ABS, etc.). We are a very long way from a printer being able to actually replicate itself.

Source: own and operate 50 3D printers


> Source: own and operate 50 3D printers

Someone questioning your use for operating 50 printers reminded me about a recent raid on a Dutch drugs crime organization. They used 3D printers to custom print fake Nintendo game cases, ink cartridges and fake make-up compacts and then used those to hide the drugs.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/riverbed/2018/03/14/connecting-...

To be clear, not suggesting in any way that you do this.


How far away are we from 3D printer + CNC mill/laser cutter + robot arm for assembly?

Incremental deposition may not yield a working 3D printer, but couldn't a small ensemble of machines construct all their parts? (Minus the chips, for now)


Great question, and the answer is probably "it depends". I've got all of those except the robot arm/part picker and even if you had really expensive tools like metal sintering printers and a 5-axis CNC mill, you would still have to buy a lot of the components that are produced with specialized machinery. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that maybe in 20 years we'll be able to self-replicate machinery with raw materials inputs and a lot of work. It wouldn't be even close to economically viable to do so, but it might be possible.

It's important to remember that the majority of the core technology in 3D printing today actually dates back to the late 1980s. We're starting to see some interesting developments in materials and capabilities, but there are still plenty of limitations that need to be overcome.


I highly doubt your estimate is even in the ball(bearing) park.

Spindles, motors, circuit boards with components on them and bearings, slides and so on are all multi material or very complex processes usually only doable if you produce a lot of something in one go.

Just try to think about what it would take to print something as trivial as lacquered copper wire for stepper motor windings or a circuit board with a reasonable level of integration.

And the biggest issue with that prediction is that there is no gain from it: printing the non-commodity parts is the whole trick to efficient 3D printing, mass produced parts will have incredible accuracy and very low pricing so use them when you can and 3D print the remainder.


I don't think you're arguing against what I actually said. I said in 20 years it might be possible to replicate a printer using nothing but raw materials and a lot of work, but it wouldn't make sense economically. That's very different than saying you'll be able to print all the parts you need in one go, or that you would want to, which obviously isn't viable without molecular-level assembly. That's a holy grail in the distant future. But making PCBs is already possible without specialized equipment, metal sintering gets you pretty far on components needed for things like steppers and threaded rods, etc. If you follow the research being done (ex. [1,2]) it's pretty clear that the boundaries of what's currently possible are being pushed in interesting directions.

To me the biggest hurdle is the electronics, which currently do require special tooling to even produce basic components. You're probably right that we're more than 20 years from self-replication ability (again, not practicality), but I'd be surprised if it's more than 50 years out.

[1] https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/1.A33409 [2] https://3dprintingindustry.com/research/


If you operate 50 printers you're presumably doing some sort of business. Nobody operates 50 printers for a laugh.

It sounds interesting. Are you printing arbitrary parts that other people send you, printing parts of your own design for your own products, or something else?


Yes to all of those. It's a micro manufacturing shop (we also have laser cutters, a CNC mill, woodworking equipment, casting materials, etc.). We mostly sell products that we design and build on Etsy & Amazon, but also do small batch runs for people who need 50+ pieces of something and the economics of injection molding don't make sense. It actually started as a makerspace, but the economics of that model were not sustainable, so we scaled into small-run product manufacturing.


How can I contact your shop?


Shoot me an email - michael at rndx2 dot com


Things I learned from RC cars as a kid:

    1. Basic electricity
    2. PWM
    3. Battery chemistry and care
    4. Transmissions/gear ratios
    5. How DC motors work. Winds and turns and brushes, etc.
    6. Suspension basics
    7. Basic RF (crystals and channels and avoiding interference)
    8. Soldering
And all sorts of hard-to-list mechanics and know-how.

I didn't realize it at the time (and I don't think my parents did, either), but I learned so much more from that hobby than I did in school, for those areas.

3D printing feels the same way. I only recently got the Monoprice 120mm^2 unit, and it's working great for what I've thrown at it so far.

What are you using for all the non-plastic parts? Do you print slides and bracing as well?


The board is an MKS Sbase 1.2 with an ARM chip running Snoothie, and I’m using the integrated stepper drivers. I switched from using the typical Arduino Mega + Ramps setup because working with Marlin was really difficult, and it felt like they were fighting a losing battle trying to cram more features into an 8 bit architecture. The motors are varying sizes of Nema 17s, but I don’t remember the manufacturer.

I have started experimenting with printed linear rails, and likely V2 of the printer will have printed rails on the z axis. The bushings are printed nylon that thread directly into the bed, x carriage, etc. I would also like to start experimenting with printed wiring, but most conductive filament is more like resistor wire, so that would take some figuring out.

As far as the frame and all that; yes it’s all printed. You’d be surprised how much the part count starts to fall when you no longer have to attach different parts together and you instead start integrating them into a single, printed part.


Agreed. One of the reasons I've enjoyed robotics so much is that it presses on all three of mechanics, software, and electronics. Since there is rarely someone who is good enough at all three it gets a huge boost by community involvement by folks with complementary skill sets. The problem with robotics was that once you did the basics, obstacle avoidance, line following, balancing perhaps. You Were sort of stuck on the next thing to work on. But 3D printers are robots that can make more interesting things so they are useful in their own right.

My current favorite application is to make holding fixtures for things like breakout boards so that I can fabricate systems out of a bunch of separate boards easily.


I'm also really excited that SLA prices have absolutely plummeted in the last year or so as well. The level of quality you can get from a ~$500 machine now is stunning, but of course it comes with its own set of problems so it's not going to dethrone FDM anytime soon. I hope we get more open-source SLA development soon though.


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