Project 34

Blog

  • How to start the seafile service

    This is ones again a note to myself.

    Best way to start the seafile server on my linux server

    • SSH into the webserver
    • Using su – seafile to change to the seafile user
    • cd to the seafile directory
    • execute the following command: source python-venv/bin/activate
    • cd seafile-server-latest
    • execute: ./seafile.sh start
    • execute: ./seahub.sh start
    • and disconnect.

    Please note, this works for me, it might not work for you.

  • Top 2000 of 2024

    Since end 1999 every year a radio station and tv channel create a top 2000 based on viewers/listeners top 35 list. Every year i participate in it, but every year i start with my list when the site is open for votes, and after the list is done and compare it to others i think: That number is better then one in my list.

    I started this list last year half way through the year. So for this is a copy of last years list, with some additions and removal. The complete list will have 35 numbers.

    The list will be in a top 35 style, but for the top 2000 list it doesn’t matter if it’s on number 1 or 35.

    1. Slayer – Angel of Death. [243] Of course the song has a dark tone, but in this case it was a way to make fun of the top 2000. Really heavy songs weren’t a thing and someone wanted the make fun of the list. So a lot of people voted for that song and since 2012 (accept for 2013) it’s in the list every year, even making it to place 171 in 2015
    2. Metallica – One. [27] Not a big Metallica fan, but still love this song. If you see the clip and listen to the song, we are glad that soldiers defend for us, but when they come back not in one peace we don’t really know how to handle it.
    3. Wim Sonneveld – Het Dorp. [57] This is an oldie. It’s about an old village where everyone knew everyone and everything was simpler, but they had to go with the times and modernize. For me it reminds me about going to my grandparents and going down a small alleyway behind the housing block and grandpa and grandma were always happy when we were there. Also from time to time i think the current time we are living are to complicated. Top 2000 a gogo
    4. Radiohead – Creep. [54] This song was around when i was at an adolescent age. Radiohead summed it all up in this song.
    5. Pearl Jam – Alive. [73] When i was around 16 my dad had bought a moped to sell it again. When he didn’t sell it, i started using it. Eventually crashed the moped in a car and breaking my collar bone and busted all gristle underneath below my knee cap. After the accident i was happy to be alive.
    6. Red hot chili peppers – Under the bridge. [109] For me the only real good song of RHCP.
    7. BLØF & Geike – Zoutelande. [165] Not a fan of Blof, but the song with Geike Arnaert (a Belgian female singer for Hooverphonic), is an easy listening that takes you to a place in Zeeland to an old sea shack where you are with a couple of friends and you are having a good time and make memories that last. Top 2000 a gogo (The docu is about the original song: Bosse feat Anna Loos – Frankfurt Oder)
    8. Within Temptation – Ice queen. [242] I think the main public learned about Within Temptation when they released this song. Top 2000 a gogo
    9. Falco – Jeanny. [170] A pretty intense song about an abducted girl. It’s a cross between English and German, for an 8 year old that understood a bit of English and aa bit of German it was an intence song.
    10. Blur – Song 2. [669] A nice uptempo song with a nice Metal style sauce. Apparently the song is a parody on the music industry or the grunge music stream, it depends on who you ask. Top 2000 a gogo
    11. Marillion – Kayleigh. [216] In 80’s the songs were really played by bands and not produced the hell out of them. Marillion is such a band with good songs that are not over produced. Top 2000 a gogo
    12. Volbeat – Sad mans tongue. [342] At the end of 2004, my GF broke up with me, just before we would start to live together. Met old friends again and the BF of a friend told me: “Listen to this!”. It wasn’t this song, but the cover of Dusty Springfield’s “I only wan to be with you”. If you don’t know Volbeat, think Metallica meets Johnny Cash meets Elvis Presley.
    13. Doe Maar – Watje. [X] When Doe Maar first broke up I was i think 7 years old. Although I liked the music I didn’t really have an issue with it. Through the years would listen to Doe Maar a lot more and when the reunion was there I wanted to see them. They released a new album and this one was on that album. It really describes the madness that until this day is in our society.
    14. Alice Cooper – Poison. [412] I think this is one of the best metal love ballads, without being a love ballad. Top 2000 a gogo (The docu is about Desmond Child, who co-wrote poison)
    15. DJ Paul Elstak – Rainbow in the sky. [266] It doesn’t matter what music genre you like, everyone has a guilty pleasure. Sometimes you need to listen something else to reset. Mine is this song, also because of Shaydie
    16. Evanescence – Bring me to life. [447] Just a good song that came out and in the charts when Nu-Metal was at it’s peak.
    17. Johnny Cash – Hurt. [60] In every top 20 there should be a Johnny Cash number. This song is a cover from Nine Inch Nails, and although Johnny Cash didn’t write it himself, i think it really tells a tale about the life of him. Trent Reznor (NIN) thought Johnny Cash’s version would be a bit gimmicky, before he saw the clip. Maybe not the greatest hit (in the way that the most people know it), but I think the best song ever, from the “Man in black”.
    18. Tenacious D – Tribute. [496] Who can’t love Jack Black an Kyle Glass. With Dave Grohl (Nirvana/Foo Fighter) in the role of Satan. The song is probably the most metal song without distortion.
    19. Europe – Final Countdown. [642] The song with the most recognizable synthesizer intro in the world.
    20. Jeff Wayne & Justin Hayward – Forever Autumn. [1517] When I did my internship at a computer company my colleague had the CD “War of the Worlds” with him, and we listened to it a lot. The more I listen to it, the better it gets, even now. Have seen the show once and would like to see it again.
    21. Peter Schilling – Major Tom (Völlig Losgelöst). [487] Every year during the TV presentation of the Top 2000 there are small documentaries about some songs. I heard this song in early 1980’s on the radio and I really liked the chorus, which are a bit spacy. The song was a tribute to Space Odity of David Bowie. The song (and album) even was translated to English for the world wide audience. The song is on the reserve list for now, but will be in the top 20 before the end of the year.
    22. Johnny Cash – Ring of fire. [381] Johnny Cash’s most famous number, I don’t put more then 1 song per singer/group on this list, but for the man in black i make an exception.
    23. Stiltskin – Inside. [X] Unfortunatly Stiltskin was a one hit wonder. The song they are known for is a nice rock song with a sweeping voice. The singer (Ray Wilson) was even the singer for Genesis from 1996 until 2000.
    24. R.E.M. – Losing my religion. [126] A nice uncomplicated song.
    25. The Prodigy – No good (Start the dance). [1572] I think every metalhead has a hate/love relationship with the Prodigy. Their songs have a liner of metal in them, if you check them live, they always have drummer and guitarist/bass player with them. The hate for me is the song Smack my bitch up… man i just can’t listen to that one.
    26. The Sweet – The Ballroom Blitz. [X] A fun ballad song with pretty heavy (for a charts song) parts in it.
    27. George Baker Selection – Little Green Bag. [1477] A bit of dutch heritage, which had a revival thanks to Quentin Tarantino.
    28. Everything But The Girl – Missing (Todd Terry Remix). [X] Not a dance enthusiast, but i like this introverted song, that although the remix is not a happy song.
    29. Boudewijn de Groot – Testament. [345] A dutch song by one of our greatest singer/songwriters. The song is about a guy that gives away all material stuff, but the memories he keeps them to himself, because nobody has any use for them.
    30. Kosheen – Catch. [X] This one is another one out of my comfort zone. Have seen them live. The bands main focus is/was drum and bass, but the implementation of (real) drums and (real) bass made it a bit more a rock sound, and the voice of Sian Evans isn’t a real clean voice normally used in this genre
    31. The Offspring – Self esteem. [754] 1994 there were 2 punk bands that made it into the charts: Green Day and The Offspring. The first album of both did pretty good, was and still am in “camp The Offspring”. 1994, was a kid with not the biggest self esteem, so a bit of mirror in lyrics.
    32. Guano Apes – Open your eyes. [1709] A great Alt rock/Nu-Metal/Skate rock song. I think i even danced (if you can call that dancing what i did) on this song.
    33. Di-Rect – Through the looking glass. [311] Never been a fan of Di-Rect, not with the old singer and not with the new singer. This song i for me is a good mix between sound, tekst and music.
    34. Alice in chains – Would. [575] One of the biggest bands during the grunge era. Never was a big fan of them, was more a Nirvana guy. In the last couple of years I started to really like Alice in Chains. Where Nirvana was a pure grunge band, Alice in chains still has a big foot in de rock sound.
    35. Herman Brood – My Way. [927] Herman was a functioning drug addict that played in bands and also was a painter. In 2001 after the years of drugs abuse, his body was wrecked and kicking of the drugs didn’t work, and that was the time for him to end it. It is a cover of a song by Frank Sinatra and like Hurt done by Johnny Cash which was originally from Nine Inch Nails, the song gets a bit other meaning. Franks version for me is more like a way of looking back at what he did and what still was to come, and Hermans version was more like this is it. have a good one guys. I know this song will come back in the next year.

  • It’s irfanview!!

    Note to myself! It’s irfanview.

    I keep on forgetting the (for me) simplest application to batch manipulate images.

  • Reading info of a mountpoint in a home folder of a user in CheckMK.

    I use CheckMK (CMK) for a while now. I find (if you only want to monitor stuff) zabbix and other tools a bit to complicated. With CMK is do an install of SNMPD on an vm, change a couple of values and voila, add the server to CMK and you can check the device.

    Now i wanted to monitor my personal pc. Same trick: Install SNMPD, change the snmpd.conf file, add the pc to CMK and done! Well not really. One of my mounted disks wasn’t found. I could see it in snmpwalk, but it didn’t register in CMK.

    The reason I added an separate disk below an user folder, was simple: My main root disk is an SSD and a lot of not frequently used data (games, scripts etc) can be run from the HDD.

    Well, like I Said, the disk was detected in SNMPwalk, but you didn’t see it in CMK. I thought my issue was in CMK. Not really information was found in CMK. Eventually did a deinstall of SNMPD and did a reainstall with the (debian) package ‘snmp-mibs-downloader’. This package installs a lot of MIB files, so the number system is converted to a more readable entry:

    Without MIB:
    .1.3.6.1.2.1.25.2.3.1.3.66 = STRING: /home/USER/Data

    With MIB:
    HOST-RESOURCES-MIB::hrStorageDescr.66 = STRING: /home/USER/Data

    With the MIB description I started searching again and found a post on the website barryp.org. Here Barry P (I hope that’s his name) described a bit my issue.

    The solution
    (!!) Please note, the PC is only used by me, so I’m a bit less stringent in how I solve the issue.

    The issue lay in that when i tested it with SNMPWalk i had enough rights to access the path to the mounted mountpoint. The SNMPD service didn’t have this rights, so i had to check the complete path. The /home folder had already the correct mod (0755), my home folder was only accessible by me, so with ‘chmod 0755 /home/USER’ I got that the CMK could detect the folder. After that I did a rescan of the the host in CMK, and it was there!

  • 3D info post

    I’ve bought a 3D printer a couple of years ago. Although i’ve read a lot pages and info, i forget a lot of info. That’s not because of the information, but sometimes that’s how my brain works. Here I note al the info, a short explanation (2 lines max) and maybe a link to the article.

    This document will never be complete, and maybe the explanation will also not 100% correct, but maybe it can help you, I know it will help me.

    3D Printing type

    • FFF/FDM  – Fused filament fabrication/Fused deposition modeling. Is the process of laying down a plastic material. WIKI
    • DLP – Digital Light Processing. A resin solution is hardened by using a projector. The object needs a couple of post processing steps. The detail is higher then FFF/FDM. WIKI
    • SLA – Stereolithography. It’s comparable with DLP, only SLA uses a laser instead of projector. WIKI

    3D Printing Material

    • ABS – Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene. It’s a petrolium based filament. It’s melting temeparture is between around 220-250C, but lower is also possible. WIKI
    • PLA – Polylactic acid. It’s biologic degradable and the melting point is between 170-230C. Downside is that when you print something, it can degrade in a hot car. WIKI

    3D Printing techniques

    • Support – Support is a technique where you start printing a column for a part of the print that otherwise would float in midair. WEB
    A 3D print of a brain with supports.

    3D Printing software (Slicer)

    Slicers convert a 3d object to a printable object. A slicer also adds settings for the 3D printer, like temperature bed temperature, layer height.

    • Slic3r – One of the first slicers. Although the website is still available and you can download the software, the last update is from 2018-05-10. WEB
    • Prusaslicer – Prucaslicer is a so called fork from Slic3r (the name is still in the application), created by Joseph Pruca for it’s Pruca printers. Although created for it’s own printers, you can use it for every printer. WEB

    3D objects portals

    • MakerWorld – Mainly for Bambu Labs printers, but (as they call it) raw models are also downloadable. WEB
    • Printables – Made by Prusa, but only source files, so you can slice them and then print them. WEB
    • My Mini Factory – A large site with a lot of STLs. WEB
    • Thangs – A pretty large collection of 3d objects. WEB

    3D Indexers

    • Yeggi – A web side indexing different 3D object portals. WEB
    • STLFinder – Other indexing site. WEB

    3D printing techniques

    Youtube – Makers Muse

    • Best way to make support layers. WEB

    3D Benchmarks

    • 3DBenchy – The standard first print to check if your print is working. It has some tests to check if your 3d printer is aligned correctly. WEB

  • Top 2000 of 2023

    Since end 1999 every year a radio station and tv channel create a top 2000 based on viewers/listeners top 20 list. Every year i participate in it, but every year i start with my list when the site is open for votes, and after the list is done and compare it to others i think: That number is better then one in my list.

    Now we are almost getting to the end of first half of the year, i want to start my top 20 list early. This, so i can remove songs, add songs and write why i have added the song. The list will be in a top 20 style, but for the top 2000 list it doesn’t matter if it’s on number 1 or 20.

    1. Slayer – Angel of Death. Of course the song has a dark tone, but in this case it was a way to make fun of the top 2000. Really heavy songs weren’t a thing and someone wanted the make fun of the list. So a lot of people voted for that song and since 2012 (accept for 2013) it’s in the list every year, even making it to place 171 in
    2. Metallica – One. Not a big Metallica fan, but still love this song. If you see the clip and listen to the song, we are glad that soldiers defend for us, but when they come back not in one peace we don’t really know how to handle it.
    3. Wim Sonneveld – Het Dorp. This is an oldie. It’s about an old village where everyone knew everyone and everything was simpler, but they had to go with the times and modernize. For me it reminds me about going to my grandparents and going down a small alleyway behind the housing block and grandpa and grandma were always happy when we were there. Also from time to time i think the current time we are living are to complicated.
    4. Radiohead – Creep. This song was around when i was at an adolescent age. Radiohead summed it all up in this song.
    5. Pearl Jam – Alive. When i was around 16 my dad had bought a moped to sell it again. When he didn’t sell it, i started using it. Eventually crashed the moped in a car and breaking my collar bone and busted all gristle underneath below my knee cap. After the accident i was happy to be alive.
    6. Red hot chili peppers – Under the bridge. For me the only real good song of RHCP.
    7. BLØF & Geike – Zoutelande. Not a fan of Blof, but the song with Geike Arnaert (a Belgian female singer for Hooverphonic), is an easy listening that takes you to a place in Zeeland to an old sea shack where you are with a couple of friends and you are having a good time and make memories that last.
    8. Within Temptation – Ice queen.
    9. Falco – Jeanny
    10. Oasis – Wonderwall
    11. Marillion – Kayleigh
    12. Volbeat – Sad mans tongue
    13. Doe Maar – Watje. When Doe Maar first broke up I was i think 7 years old. Although I liked the music I didn’t really have an issue with it. Through the years would listen to Doe Maar a lot more and when the reunion was there I wanted to see them. They released a new album and this one was on that album. It really describes the madness that until this day is in our society.
    14. Alice Cooper – Poison
    15. DJ Paul Elstak – Rainbow in the sky
    16. Evanescence – Bring me to life
    17. Johnny Cash – Hurt. In every top 20 there should be a Johnny Cash number. This song is a cover from Nine Inch Nails, and although Johnny Cash didn’t write it himself, i think it really tells a tale about the life of him.
    18. Tenacious D – Tribute
    19. Europe – Final Countdown
    20. Jeff Wayne & Justin Hayward – Forever Autumn. When I did my internship at a computer company my colleague had the CD “War of the Worlds” with him, and we listened to it a lot. The more I listen to it, the better it gets, even now. Have seen the show once and would like to see it again.

    Reserve list (for now)

    • Peter Schilling – Major Tom (Völlig Losgelöst). Every year during the TV presentation of the Top 2000 there are small documentaries about some songs. I heard this song in early 1980’s on the radio and I really liked the chorus, which are a bit spacy. The song was a tribute to Space Odity of David Bowie. The song (and album) even was translated to English for the world wide audience. The song is on the reserve list for now, but will be in the top 20 before the end of the year.
    • Johnny Cash – Ring of fire. Johnny Cash needs to be on any list. Although this song was first in the Top 20, but i’ve moved this one out of the top 20, and added Hurt to the list.
    • Stiltskin – Inside. Unfortunatly Stiltskin was a one hit wonder. The song they are known for is a nice rock song with a sweeping voice. The singer (Ray Wilson) was even the singer for Genesis from 1996 until 2000.
    • R.E.M. – Losing my religion. A nice uncomplicated song.

    This list will be updated through the year. Songs moved into the top 20, some out, some maybe back in. I will document what has changed.

    Update 2023-05-17:

    • Johnny Cash – Ring of Fire. out of the top 20, Johnny Cash – Hurt in the top 20.
    • Doe Maar – Sinds een dag of 2 out of the top 20, Doe Maar – Watje in the top 20.

    Update 2023-05-25:

    • Stiltskin – Inside: Added to the reserve list.

    Update 2023-11-22:

    • Added R.E.M.

  • In Linux the read on a file is different then a read on a folder and nextcloud is a ….

    I’ve been implementing syncthing (ST) as a backup utility. ST say themself that the application isn’t a backup utility, but for me it does the trick.

    Nextcloud is a …….
    Yesterday i was implementing ST on my nextcloud server. I only wanted to backup my data to the ST server. The data directory had a mode of 770 for www-data:www-data. So another account didn’t have access to the directory. After changing the mode to 774, other accounts should have read access to the directory. After a couple of minutes the mode was back to 770. Of course you think you did something wrong, or you chmod the wrong directory, but after 5 times i knew the rights were set OK.

    So the  nextcloud software was setting the mode back. After checking if there was a setting in de GUI, i couldn’t find any. Then the big google it is. Thankfully it lead to a page with a config option: https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/latest/admin_manual/configuration_server/config_sample_php_parameters.html
    One option is: ‘check_data_directory_permissions’
    Default it is set to true even if it’s not explicitly set. After adding the setting to config/config.php in the main folder the chmod of the data folder staid the same.

    NextCloud is a nice peace of software! 😛

    Syncthing doesn’t read folders ….. AKA In Linux the read on a file is different then a read on a folder

    After fixing the first issue i wanted to sync the data structure to ST, but it only synced the first 600MB of the 185GB. In the logging the underlying data directory still wasn’t scanned because there was an issue accessing the underlying directories. Checked the directory mode: still 774 (rwx/rwx/r–), so it should be able to access the directory, because it could access the files had mode 664 (rw-/rw-/r–). After almost an hour i finally found it. The mode of the directory can have the same mode as a file, but the effect is different. Main issue is that you need the X right to access the directory. If you only have read you can read the content of the directory, but not the files or directories in the directory. The problem starts at the data directory and not at anyone of the sub-directories.

    After changing the mode to 665, ST could read the subfolders and the sync is running nicely. Not fast (backup server is a Raspberry Pi 3, with an USB 3TB harddisk), but i rather have a backup that i can restore by placing the external disk to another PC, then to not have a backup at all.

  • Storing face_encodings in a database

    I’ve been interested in Python for a while now. One thing i like is the possibility to do face recognition. Made a python script based upon a youtube clip from sentdex. The script worked fine and after some tests i was confident that i could extend the original script to what i want it to do.

    The main thing that annoyed me was that every time you run the script, the scripts went through the same intensive process of checking if there is a face, encoding this face to a 128 value variable type that make up this face. The 128 value variable (“encoded face”) didn’t change between run 1, run 2 and run 100. Only if you would change something to the image, maybe the library (for better processing), that could be a reason to recheck the image.

    One other thing that annoyed me was the size of the files. When the files have been processed and you have the “face variable”, there is no need to store those files anymore. because the information that we need (and have), is much smaller then the file.

    A couple of hours later i just couldn’t find any reliable and usable info about how that data is represented. There is a lot of information what the data means, but (at least) i couldn’t find the correct way to store the data in a MariaDB database. Well, then start from the beginning: What is the data type that comes out of face_recognition.face_encodings?

    First start at the beginning:
    Let’s find what the type is:

    encoding = face_recognition.face_encodings(image)[0]
print(type(encoding))

    This results in the output:

    <class 'numpy.ndarray'>

    After a lot of searching (again), there was not an easy solution:

    • sqlite3 has an array data type, which MariaDB doesn’t have.
    • You can use pickle to convert the data something to store in the database, but i just couldn’t get it working with a normal insert command
    • Converting it to base64 gave me the same issue as pickle.

    Eventually i found the solution to my misery: it was as, but it took me a while: str(encoding.tolist())

    encoding = face_recognition.face_encodings(image)[0]
encodinglist = str(encoding.tolist())
print(type(encodinglist))

    This gave me the following output: <class ‘str’>

    Well, strings is something MariaDB can work with. Created a column as varchar(4096) and voila the data can be stored.
    Well, the 3 part process is now for 2/3 done (getting info and storing info) now we need to get the data back. The retrieval is very straight forward, select the correct columns from the table and storing it into a array again.

    Because the data is now stored as a string and not an array, the face_recognition.compare_faces process can’t do anything with it. To convert the string back to an array is very easy:

    KNOWN_FACES.append(eval(row[1]))

    The eval part converts the string back to an array and puts that array in the KNOWN_FACES array.

    So now after processing the images the main info is stored in the database and you can throw away the images if you want, or not, do what you like.

  • Microsoft Visual Studio and GPU

    For a while i’ve been running the Distributed.Net client for RC5-72 decription. Because i knew my video card (Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 TI) could do a bit better then the standard 900 Mkeys/s i installed MSI Afterburner and tested a bit around with the core clock speed and it could do 300MHZ faster but standard i give it an extra speed of +200Mhz (so running around 1.415Mhz).

    Lately i’ve been picking up on my Python skills and installed Microsoft Visual studio Code. Eventually noticed in Afterburner that my GPU speed had dropped to 845MHZ, well below the standard speed of 1215Mhz. I couldn’t change anything with Afterburner, could add 500Mhz, when i pressed apply, the speed maintained at 845Mhz. After elimination i say my GPU speed picked up after closing Visual Studio Code (changed the core clock speed back to +200Mhz before testing). First i thought it was because of Python that was running with DLIB (using CUDA, a GPU enhanced library for images), but then is saw that DLIB wasn’t using the GPU, it was compiled withCUDA disabled. So the image processing was done by the CPU.

    It took a while to make DLIB work with CUDA in Windows (Python and DLIB’s main focus is Linux, so information is not great about issues in Windows), but eventually got DLIB working with CUDA.
    But my main problem wasn’t still over: my GPU going down from an overclocked 1.415Mhz to 845Mhz when starting Studio Code. Apparently this is due to hardware acceleration in Studio Code. Disabled this and my GPU is purring nicely at 1.415Mhz after starting Visual Studio Code.
    If you run into the same issues here is how to fix it:

  • Start Visual Studio Code
  • Press CTRL+SHIFT+P
  • Run the command Preferences: Configure Runtime Arguments
  • go to the last line in the tekst file (probably something like “crash-reporter-id”: “4673aa6c-242b-4a54-abb1-XXXXXXXXX”
  • add a comma behind it, press enter and add “disable-hardware-acceleration”: true
  • After this, save the file (CTRL+S), close the file (argv.json) and restart Visual Studio Code

    • Your Visuals Tsudio Code, should be snooping any Mhz from your GPU anymore.

    I don’t know what the effects are for othe things, but because i’m running some Python, Powershell and PHP scripts, i don’t really think i need hardware acceleration in my Visual Studio Code.

    Ow PS with the change to +200Mhz the amount of Mkeys went up from 900Mkey/s to about 1.05Mkey/s. so, NICE!

    Found the information on: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29966747/how-can-i-disable-gpu-rendering-in-visual-studio-code<

  • 3d printer

    A while back (i think at least 1.5 years ago) i bought a second hand printer. It was an upgraded Anet AM8. Although i wanted one for a while, i just was hesitant to start using it. Thought i needed some kind of checklist for the first time to run it, just to make sure i did everything OK. And guess what, there isn’t any. Last Tuesday we had a national Holiday (kings-day) and i just thought: Just start the damn thing!

    Created a test cube using Prusiaslicer, imported in pronterface and started printing. The base layer was OK, but after a wile is saw that there were no additional layers added. After checking if there was any filament was extruded i saw nothing. I also didn’t see any hole any more, don’t really know what happend. I tink the bed and nozzle hit each other, but my knowledge is yet big enough.

    Ordered a couple of new nozzles and they came in today. I wanted to change the nozzle so i lifted the z axis, and noticed that the right lead screw jammed a lot in the first 5 cm’s. First thought it would be de lead screw itself, so released it and turned it upside down and tried again, same issue. Then released the tension on all the screws of the coupler and fastened them again, still the same issue. In a way i had the idea that the stepper motor and the nut that attaches to the horizontal bracket weren’t aligned. So removed 3 screws that held the stepper motor in place and released the 4th one so the stepper motor could rotate and set itself. Moved the horizontal bracket 10 cm up and down, no problem. Moved the bracket 10 cm up, attached one screw to set the stepper motor more stable in it’s place. Moved the horizontal bar down and up again, no problem, new screw, and then again. Everything goes like a dream again.

    Because i was afraid there would be filament stuck in the heatsink. Attached the new nozzle and cranked up the temp to 285C, so i could push filament through the hot end….. At 80C the printer stopped functioning with a temp warning that i had te reset the device. Tried everything, checked all cables, until i found the page of Hobby Hoarder, where he explained how the hot end, heat break and nozzle should be attached. Apparently somehow i screwed the hot end and heat break against each other. And the heat break is made of aluminium, and so it cools the hot end very fast. After attaching the parts correctly the increase of temperature was very fast and it hit 285 without problems.

    So what I’ve learned today:

    • Make sure you align the stepper motor, coupler, lead screw and nut!
    • Assemble your hot end correctly.

    Up to the next learning part.