Project RAINDROP – Virus or not we press on

OK… I have a plan. I am an IT guy and know how to make secure networks. That is what I do for a living. But one thing that people don’t necessarily think of is that I also protect people from “insecure” networks. After our last post when we tried to install a driver to update our board we getting virus messages that looked like this:

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I got gun-shy and didn’t want to continue until I figured out what to do.

I mentioned that I own an IT security company. Surely I must have a way to address this in a way that won’t compromise my real work in any way.

So I look up the driver and lots of people are seeing the same thing I am:

http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?1,606755

Apparently there is something in the driver that is making it look like a virus. Well even if it does have a virus I don’t care. Remember a few posts ago? Well, me and the girls built a computer just for 3D printing. I think all of the software should probably go on that machine anyway so I should just power that up and get it connected.

Before we get all into bringing up the RAINDROP-PC (The computer for this project) me and the girls need to get a few more parts install on the printer itself. I mentioned glass in an earlier post. Oh and then there is that cool “welding curtain”. I want to work on those for a bit.

The first thing is the glass. The one thing that bothered me with my pieces of glass is that they had very sharp edges and my kids are going to be around this thing. I was thinking of just putting some tape around the edges to protect any little figers that may slide across it, but that will be getting pretty hot and I don’t know if that is the correct way to go. Also, the glass will need to be cleaned and having tape on the edges even if it did’t melt or burn off would just get washed off. I need to do something about the edges.

I complained to my buddy Charlie about this and he mentioned that I could just sand down the edges to make them smooth. Now I have lots and lots of sandpaper, all different grain sizes for sanding drywall mud or finishing off polyurethane to make it look like a mirror. The problem is, none of that is here. All of that good stuff is at my old house because it is being fixed up to sell.

But, I do have a Black and Decker sander. So I pull that out and try it on the worst piece of glass I have just to test it.

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I start it up and sand away and it does exactly what I wanted it to. It smoothed out those sharp edges really nice.

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I didn’t do anything with the other glass because I was afraid to gut those corners off for fear of cracking it like I did the one I worked on above. But then I found some piece of really fine grit sandpaper upstairs the kids had for some reason. I got all excited and brave and trimmed off the corners of my “perfect” 12×12 piece of glass and started sanding.

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And now I have this!

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That piece of glass looks terrific, unlike my other one. I was super careful with those corners. I like it, so I will use that one first and save the other for a backup in case this one breaks.

Yesterday (Friday) I was out at Charlie’s company and he gave me the “Welding Curtain”. This will insulate the heat bed from underneath so heat doesn’t get sucked away by the aluminum plate. I think it looks really neat.

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Before me and the girls put this into place on the printer, I want to do a heat test. So I grab a lighter and try to burn one of those frayed edges.

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It didn’t start on fire, so I think it is going to work well. Here is a out of focus picture of the fray after the trial by fire.

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Now there is something you cant see from all the pictures. It is the workshop and it is a disaster. I haven’t cleaned it since we started putting this printer together. It is an absolute mess. There are instructions all over the place. The remaining parts that we need to put the rest of the printer together are in no kind of order. Soon I need to get the PC plugged into this project and I don’t want to set that up in the middle of a mess. I need to organize this mess before we do anything else.

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I will do that next.

More to come!

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