Randomly wondering why they went for 3d steel printing for something that looks like it can be carved much more easily by a very simple 2-axis CNC, since it has no overhangs or anything.
We are using Shapeways.com to turn them into metal for us and it was the option they had. Haven't tried getting it CNC'd but thinking we might need to change the model up a bit to allow the tool to get into some of the gaps that are possible. If anyone wants to try with a CNC machine then love to know what the results are like
Why is it so hard to find companies that you give an STL file, choose material, tweak some settings, pay and give address? First thing I see on shapeways is get a quote, which means I have to go into a sales funnel by signing up and waste time instead of actually printing a 3d model.
I used it several times and despite the name, "Get a quote" is merely a preview webapp to upload the model and see how much it would cost in each material (and directly add to cart when you're happy with the result), no talking to sales involved.
They run more tests on the model after you order (to make sure it's physically possible to print it), but even then, never had to talk to anyone.
Fascinating. I, too, decided not to use them after the "Get a quote" button was the only CTA. Usually that means I have to wait for a call back and I really don't want to talk to people. Instead I called my friend with a 3D printer. Haha, who would have known that "Get a quote" was "Print your Design".
I wonder if everyone else who wants 3D printed stuff is just better informed about this. I literally bounced off the page because of it.
They should rename it then. A "quote" is something I avoid like the plague. It makes me think I'm going to have to talk to a hard-selling sales rep, and, further, that the prices are fudgeable and that I'd be a sucker for paying the quoted price.
because 3D printing arbitrary geometry, especially with arbitrary materials is Really Hard
a human has to look at how it's printed- two very similar shapes might take vastly different times to print and require different amounts of support material, etc.
I think it can switch drill bits to make fine-passes, and sanding/deburring. I could also be wrong, but I'm lazy enough to want that automated, so CNC probably does it.
Deep pockets with fine corners are very tricky to machine, since it's hard to make an end mill that's all of long, narrow, and tough enough not to break. I'm sure it's possible, but it would be expensive, and that's before we even talk about the complex tool paths and consequent setup overhead that'd be involved. (And that's assuming there's nothing so deep it'd require EDM, in which case don't even bother asking, you won't be able to afford it.)
There's no mechanical reason why these parts need a fine surface finish anyway, since they're just display pieces. So it makes sense IMO to just do everything via Shapeways, since they already have support for a "white-label" manufacturing service that should make the whole process very easy.
(Hero Forge uses this, for example. It's not true white label since they do mention the partnership, but it may as well be; once you finish designing a model, you pay for the print through the Hero Forge site and a month later you get a box in the mail from Shapeways.)
That said, it looks like Github just gives you a .stl file to do what you like with; the prestige piece in steel looks to be just a one-off for the originator of the software they're using to do the "skylines" feature in the first place. In theory, I guess you could take that STL into Fusion 360 or something and turn it into CNC tool paths, and then you'd just need to find a CNC-equipped job shop that'll turn it into a paperweight for you. (Good luck! And don't expect it to be cheap...)
It's a shame the feature can't seem to see private repository contributions; most of the code I work on daily is hosted in private repos on a Github org, but those commits don't show up here, and that makes for a pretty sad result given that I barely touched any of my personal public repos last year. Nice soundtrack, though!
Related: I finally remembered enough of this to look it up successfully! While it's quite old - as I recall, I first saw it posted, in classic photocopier-samizdat style, on a wall of my grandfather's machine shop, when I was a tiny child and he nearing retirement age - I feel it may have new relevance, in these exciting days of computer-aided design and machining, and so post it here for the benefit of all and sundry.
"The Designer" - Author unknown.
The designer sat at his drafting board
A wealth of knowledge in his head was stored
Of what can be done on a radial drill
Or a turret lathe or a vertical mill.
But above all things a knack he had
Of driving gentle machinists mad.
So he mused as he thoughtfully scratched his bean
"Just how can I make this thing hard to machine?"
If I make this body perfectly straight
The job had ought to come out first rate
But it'd be so easy to turn and to bore
That it never would make a machinist sore.
So I'll put a compound taper there
And a couple of angles to make them swear
And brass would serve for this little gear
But its too damned easy to work, I fear.
So just to make the machinist squeal
I'll make him mill it from tungsten steel
And I'll put these holes that hold the cap
Down underneath where they can't be tapped.
Now if they can make this it'll just be by luck
Cause it can't be held by dog or by chuck
And it can't be planed and it can't be ground
So I feel my design is unusually sound.
And he shouted in glee, "Success at last!
This goddam thing can't even be cast."
Thanks again for all the messages on Twitter - and to GitHub for this token.
You can find out more about my journey through the interview or blog post on my GitHub profile - or get weekly emails through GitHub Sponsors (another thing I appreciate about GitHub) - https://github.com/alexellis/
3D printing would probably be rather expensive but you could put the file up on 100kgarages or similar and get it machined for you (not sure on the price but the bids usually significantly undercut the online services)
There are companies that offer such visualization commercially, e.g. Sereene. They might not be very useful but management goes crazy about them I heard :D
It's also super interesting to see how my productivity has waxed and waned over the past few years. Due to the way the metric is derived and the differing natures of the various projects I've worked on, I don't think it makes sense to compare across projects - but I can definitely tell where I was engaged and happy versus where I was struggling to keep going.
I'm in the process of downloading and printing all of mine back 2007 or so. When I'm done I'll be able to point to them and say "I remember when this was all fields!" :)
Awesome. Loving the recent proliferation in web 3D. Q for folks at GH -- is this vanilla three.js? Looks like Babylon in dev tools. You guys should consider using react-three-fiber!
Also nice little easter egg in the developer console :)
Me too, but I desperately want real metrics that demonstrate real work being completed against a project. Otherwise, my darker side fears it is the end of the industry as we know it.
Specifically I'd like to see us semantically identifying code objects and rather than doing commits in lines of code or whatever, print things out like "submitted a highly connected object" or "made amendments to some fields on a class" or "updates comments in a text file".
The current GitHub metrics reflect all of these changes as identical little "events of participation" but they're not indicative of the amount of work or effort put in to them.
Nicely done! I have been trying to learn Threejs and WebGL. I was really impressed with the github globe[1] and wanted to do something like that for my company.
Hmm, interesting. Working on Firefox some folks (heard about GPU perf issues on Firefox when running on a M1 processor that we are looking at as well). Will take a look and see if we can replicate your issue. Do the individual links work for you? (https://skyline.github.com/martinwoodward/2020)
WFM on firefox 85.0.1 on ubuntu 18.04. No problems looking up a user and getting the 3D model. (well, it's slow because it's in virtualbox on an ancient Macbook Pro because my new one died and is away for service but's that's tangential... unless the slowness is a factor in it working -- I've seen stranger!)
Oh yeah, but that would mean I have to copy or mirror all of my gitlab repos to github. I will settle for the commit log printed on a simple coffee mug for the moment :)
This thing looks like a toy project by a group of designers and frontend developers. Are you suggesting that their skills could have improved the search somehow?
> It's a travesty that there's no UI for something so basic in 2021
Or the simple explanation is that the data from years back is maybe not in all caches and it's a lot easier to launch the feature with the currently already fresh and cached data.
Runs at about 18fps in Firefox/Ubuntu 20 on a 4k monitor with Titan XP GPU. Seems a little slow for this scene. I would be interested to know what is slowing this down, unfortunately not proficient enough at WebGL profiling to find out.
And the flat version - https://twitter.com/alexellisuk/status/1362369733052551168?s...