Adventures in 3D Printing, episode 480...

And I'm still not getting things right.

I won't say that I'm an expert in all that is FDM 3D printing, but I'm confident in most of the basic things to know about 3D printing. There's one thing that still gets me.

Proper bed leveling. 

I honestly don't know how many times I've had to relevel a heated bed in order to get a proper layer put down. It seems that every time I think I have the level fine, the print I want to do starts to drag layers around, ruining the print. 

I think I've come up with a solution...stopping short of upgrading the mainboard and installing an automatic bed leveling sensor...which will happen hopefully soon.

First off, I do the usual leveling using paper or a shipping label tag. I get the four corners of the bed leveled, taking my measurements from about an inch or so away from the actual corner of the bed. After that, I run a bed level check print that I got from Thingiverse, fine tuning that first layer until all parts of the print (usually 5 or 9 points) have a decent looking first layer. Pretty much at that point, everything should be good to go for several prints.

I'll usually redo the bed level if I feel that the print I'm doing isn't looking right or, in my case with this particular print I'm trying to do, the first layer drags around. It was doing fine up until an area that I thought I had just right, but I was wrong. 

Too tired to figure it out now, so I'm gonna have to do the bed level check print again tomorrow. 

...insomnia sucks...

Showing the Xbox One some love...

I hung out with my friend and while we were catching up at his place, we played around looking at all the stuff on Xbox. We were checking out the shop and I noticed that a game that I've wanted to play (Assetto Corsa) was on sale for super cheap. My friend, being awesome, bought it for me. 

The next day, I powered on my Xbox One and downloaded it...remembering after that I only had 500GB hard drive. I had just enough room to download the game and the DLC involved with it. I did have a little more room, but there were a lot more games that I've wanted to play, but I had to delete games to add more on it.

...

I had enough. I needed to upgrade it just so I could play it more. The 2TB drive that I put on my PS4 a while ago still has room for a few more games. I was gonna do the same with the Xbox One...I didn't get the same drive that I got for the PS4 (Firecuda SSHD), I just opted for a standard 2TB HDD. 

I checked some tutorials on YT and opted to follow Xfix's tutorials, since he made the script to prepare drives properly and also backup my original drive.

I ordered a 2TB HDD online, then proceeded to take apart the Xbox One to get to the internal hard drive. Stripping the case also allowed me to get the internals dusted off, as well as get the cooling fan clean, which it really needed.

The day I received the hard drive in the mail, I also started the backup of the original drive. After getting it backed up, I opened up the box for my new drive...only to notice that I bought the wrong form factor; bought a 3.5" drive instead of a 2.5" one.

...

Mad at myself for not reading the damn item description right, I ordered the proper sized drive. It took 2 days to get it shipped to me. After getting it opened, I followed the script again to properly format the new drive, then again to restore the contents of the old drive to the new one. 

I reinstalled the hard drive and put together enough to test it. With just one "Oh, Crap!" moment, the drive  proved to be in proper working order, and the games that I had installed on it worked perfectly. After powering down, I was able to reassemble the Xbox One back together and was finally able add some of my games back on the drive to play. 

The only hiccup that I had in the backup process was that one of the drives didn't copy over. The "Temp Content" drive failed the backup process. I tried out the drive anyway, and it seemed to work.

I could always use a secondary drive, and my wife needs a new computer to edit videos, so the 2TB drive that I ordered by mistake may come in handy for her.

There may be a recap project for both of my PC Engine Duos, but I'm still needing an RGB amp and possibly an audio amp. And I'll try to remember pics next time.