NevBlog

Neville's Digital Surrogate Brain

Archives for June 2014

3d printing a broken blinker support arm on my scooter

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With my 3D printer I can print all sorts of stuff off the internet from free sites like Thingiverse. Well I had a unique item I needed….and I couldn’t find any sort of bracket/support/mount to exactly fit the specifications.

So one lazy Saturday I tried solving this. You see……since about 2003 I’ve always had a scooter to get around downtown, since driving a car and parking it are quite chore in heavy traffic or during large events. This is my current scooter is a 2013 Aprillia Scarabeo 100cc.  Here it is sitting in the garage:
photo 1

 

However my little friend here tends to be the victim of clumsy motorists every once-in-a-while, and gets knocked over whilst they park.  This does minimal damage, but each impact generally takes one of the front blinker lights out.  You can see both of them hanging off by the cords like rabbit ears here:
photo 2

 

Unfortunately they’ve BOTH now been broken in such a way that I can’t just screw them back in, and no repair shops have any easy solution for this. In the past I was just supergluing the hell out of the connections to keep them solid.  The superglue is a GOOD solution, but the small surface area for adhesion mixed with a 7″ blinker arm that is constantly bouncing around means it only lasts for a few rides before giving way:photo 3

 

WELL…….I thought: “I OWN a 3D printer!!  And I sooorrt of know how to 3D model very very basic shapes.  Lemme make my own custom mount!”

So I hoped onto my favorite browser-based design tool that’s super-easy to use called TinkerCad.  I slapped a few shapes together and came up with this design: Screen Shot 2014-06-28 at 12.39.22 PM

 

I then ported it over to the MakerWare software (that prints directly to my MakerBot Replicator 2), and scaled it to the size I needed, and mounted it upside down for easier printing: Screen Shot 2014-06-28 at 12.39.30 PM

 

Well the first version came out horribly as you can see below.  The wall thickness was too small, I didn’t use supports, and in general the whole structure was too small to fit around the entire blinker arm:
photo 4

 

On a side note, I had to make several trips up and down the elevator to get from my apartment to the garage for measurements…..so I just brought the whole damn scooter up to my place……good decoration eh?  :-)
photo

 

So on Version Two of my custom mount I did some re-tooling of the mount on TinkerCad to beef up the wall thickness, and got a successful print:
photo 1 copy

 

Unfortunately my measurement estimations were a bit too small so this one failed also:photo 2 copy

 

The 4th variation of the mount I designed finally worked.  Here are the three failed experiments:
photo 3 copy

 

Eventually I got it shaped “kinda” right….and with some modifications (shaping the bracket by warming it up under hot water and padding the arm with tissue paper) I was able to get both blinker arms back in operation.  It’s kind of a ghetto patch…..but not bad for a first-time custom design of a functional support :-)
photo 4 copy

 

 

photo (1)

Thanks 3D printer!

This isn’t as cool as my 3D Printed Chess Set, but it makes my scooter road-legal again!

 

P.S.  In the off-chance that someone else in the universe has a broken blinker arm on an Aprilia Scarabeo, here’s the .STL file so you can print your own mount!
scarabeo-mount.stl

Mrs. Gansky was my 3rd grade math teacher. She was deaf.

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Mrs. Gansky was my 3rd grade math teacher.  She was deaf.

It was so cool how I could mouth the words to any question like, “Can I go to the bathroom” from across the room and she would read my lips!  It’s like she had a superpower.

She could speak well enough for us to understand, but it was the obvious slurred-voice of a deaf person.  She used her hands to communicate a lot, and was particularly good at it.  To the point where you could pick up information through her hands.

It’s like she spoke a universal form of Sign Language even 3rd graders could understand.

SO….how can we steal the secrets of my deaf 3rd grade math teacher to improve our businesses to make more??  (did saying that make me a horrible person)??

Well I think the secret to Mrs. Gansky’s awesome teaching was partly to do with the unusual nature of the communication (the slurred voice and lots of hand gestures) which made class much more interesting.  In turn, the students learned faster.

Now a STUPID person would simply say:
“OMG if I just start talking with a slurred voice and using hand gestures I’ll communicate better!!”

But a SMART person would quickly notice the real reason behind her success:
Mrs. Gansky was far more energetic than any other teacher, very helpful, and just in GENERAL an all around great teacher.  If she could speak and teach normally she would’ve been just as great of a teacher.  The slurred voice and hand gestures were a temporary novelty, but that would quickly wear off if she was a sucky teacher.

That’s like when I get questions like this:
“Hey Neville can you make this page convert better by writing some of that magical Kopy of yours?!?!?”

What I hear them telling me is a moronic statement more like:
“Hey Neville, can you make this shitty one-page offer for a useless product make me money without me having to do any extra work!?!?!”

Very often people have this Magic Bullet Syndrome where they think doing some single Magic Bullet can make their crappy product to bring in bazillions of dollars.

But that doesn’t work.

Anything successful will have a multitude of things going right for it such as:
-the copy on the page.
-the layout of the page.
-the actual thing being promoting.
-the way people got to know about you.
-if people are even in the market for what’s being sold.
-yadda yadda…..

Basically, it’s not just ONE magic thing.

I love the concept of learning skills, especially for people who don’t know what they wanna do in life.

……its the way to ensure you can be of value to society and create a living for yourself.  I’m no exception.

In the last two months I’ve picked up a few skills:

 I bought a full-sized electric piano with weighted keys.  This doesn’t necessarily improve me business-wise, but learning ANYTHING new keeps you sharp.

 I learned how to use Wishlist Member, a piece of membership software for WordPress.

 I learned how to a use a WordPress framework to build a WordPress site instead of just a theme.

Those last two things I learned together.  I could’ve paid someone to do these for me….but I was genuinely interested to see how these work.  At first I stumbled through by watching videos, reading how-to’s and just monkeying around on the software.

Now two months later I’m an EXPERT.  If I need to put together a new course or membership website I can do it in less than 10 minutes.

I’M NOW A MORE VALUABLE PERSON BECAUSE OF THIS SKILL!!!!

So lemme ask you:

What skills are you currently working on to improve your life?? Lemme know in the comments!

Sincerely,
Neville Medhora – Horrible piano player

P.S.  If you’re NOT working on any of your skills, I’m gonna forcibly make you listen to me practice piano chords ;)

June 2014 Goals

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Well May 2014 went off well, hit all my goals.

Now onto June 2014!

Here’s my goal sheet for the month.  Just two major objectives:

june-2014-goals

 

Happy June :-)
Neville