Skybound's Journal

I'm going to run Megacrop's Vegan formulation for my last few hydro plants. I've never had my P that low before, but have great things about low P. I'm also a little concerned how that high N will express. Also, I've not seen any MC with rockwool grows, so not much in terms of feedback. I may also rewrite the sheet to add more silica, but am still on the fence. FWIW, this is what makes DIY hydro so awesome and fun, having the ability to emulate any other brand as long as you can track down the Guaranteed Analysis, you can reproduce the formulation.

MegacropV Targets NO Si.jpg
 
ilikemsticky said:
I liked the looks of that mega crop so I ordered some it will be hear tomorrow im planning on top dressing with it I think it will work good that way!
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I think so too. Their formulation is not that far away from mine, and MC's numbers already saved my grow when I was having problems with NH4 : NO3 ratios. I hated their first 2 formulations, but I like the 3rd and the grows I follow that use it are all doing very well.
 
Dankman_420 said:
Your name should be "Mad Scientist" instead of skybound :laugh: I'd have to stop smoking just to keep it under control and not fuck it up :rofl: I better just stick with dirt so I can stay high :headbanger: Hydro frightens me
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Hydro Buddy does ALL of the thinking. I just input numbers, and since I can save unlimited amounts of profiles, it's not even hard remembering what I tried previously. And since all hydro blends are figured out as is this case, I just aim to hit their numberss and Hydro Buddy gets me right there.

Edit - I even had to remove gypsum and Epsom from my contents list to make Megacrop.
 
Hey Skybound, what are some useful things you’ve made, or could imagine yourself making, with a 3D printer? Maybe seems like a dumb question but I’m trying to figure out where it might come in useful, and mostly drawing a blank. When I look at most of the parts I need for building stuff, fixing tools, vehicles and boats, they’re all mainly either metal or wood.
 
Weaselcracker said:
Hey Skybound, what are some useful things you’ve made, or could imagine yourself making, with a 3D printer? Maybe seems like a dumb question but I’m trying to figure out where it might come in useful, and mostly drawing a blank. When I look at most of the parts I need for building stuff, fixing tools, vehicles and boats, they’re all mainly either metal or wood.
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Well, the potential is sort of limitless really. I've made all sorts of otherwise useless, but to me priceless little doo dads, brackets, thing-a-ma-bob holders, templates for verifying screw hole placement, printer parts, I printed another better printer, and when I can afford another set of electronics plus metal parts, I can build it out and leave my starter printer in the dust. FWIW, I been using my starter now for about 2 years. I also printed and built a cheap CNC machine that I assembled and tested with a Sharpie. I still need to get endmill bits and them fuggars are pricey, so the CNC is serving as a nice printer stand. The printer is also on the frizt now too, so I gotta fix that as well.

Essentially though, the CNC and printer both move the same ways, just to different dimensions. That said, I can convert the CNC into a printer and the printer into a CNC, it's all the same, uses the same electronics, motors, drivers and free firmware. All that's different is the tool being used. For the printer, there's a hotend which is a heater block with thermistor. But you could take off the hotend and put on a laser, drag knife for cutting stensils, a router (obviously) and a plasma cutter. Yeah, that's right, we can build a DIY plasma table and the tool could be a plasma torch. That is my goal because I bet a 4x8 sheet of diamond plate steel with a business logo cut into it might go for a pretty penny.

But yeah, all ya gotta do is dip your toe in with a cheap 3d printer. The new Tevo Tarantula is better, bigger and cheaper than the one I bought 2 years ago at about $230 USD on Amazon. The Creality Ender 3 might be a better machine, but it costs $100 more. I just saw a good review of the new Anet A8 on YouTube last night. All of these printers cost less than $500, and like I said, a printer is priceless, and I live in a US city. Up there, I would estimate that a printer would be worth more than some humans. The only caveat though is that you need to be willing to get your hands dirty with wiring things, you'll need to become a lot more familiar with AC and DC circuitry to ensure safety as well as to protect your investment as I seen plenty of new users completely cook their 3d printer, and in some cases, the room the printer was in. Each of those printers above has their own facebook group and in the group an estimated 50,000-100,000 users so you'll have plenty of feedback and advice on how to proceed and safely set up your machine. Once you finish your first build, you're hereby a technician and can build anything else that is CNC.

All of that is just to setup the machine. There is also the SLICER app you need to learn, as well as a CAD software to design whatever custom thing you want to print. There are lots of free options for both SLICER and CAD from basic to advanced, but each require time to get accustomed to. I can give you a lot of pointers, answer critical questions and steer you right, but it's literally a months long growth process, so most of your learning will have to be on facebook asking questions to the world and getting ansers from the world, some of which is downright hurtful, or rude. Some folks are cold assholes, but ya gotta keep at it to learn what ya need to know to keep your machine working for you.

My Grow Designs

My Printer and CNC designs

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Thank you very kindly for all that great info Skybound. I’m going to go online now and check out those machines and see what they’re capable of, and what the limits of the plastic material are. Like I said I don’t use a lot of plastic in my life, but it’s also one material that fills a certain niche. I know there are situations where hard plastic is the best possible material. I will keep my eyes open for applications.

One thing I thought of where a 3D printer might come in handy is in jewellery making, which I do a bit of.
Usually for silver and gold casting it means making the first item, the positive, by designing, then cutting, filing and sanding a piece of metal. Then that piece is used to make the mold.
With a 3-D printer I can go right from the design on paper/computer, to making a positive out of plastic- without actually ever needing to create the initial piece out of metal. Not sure if it would really be any better or easier in the long run but it’s still an interesting idea. Whatever small item the printer makes, I could cast in silver or gold

I only wish I had more time in the day and room in my head. There reaches a point where so many things are going on that nothing really gets enough time- which is pretty much the story of my grow. We recently bought an old but beautiful 45 foot sailboat which is full of stuff I have yet to learn about. Busy dissecting and cleaning the diesel motor one piece at a time. I can see that to really travel with it, we will have to become experts on every little mechanism on the boat. It’s just a huge amount of stuff. There might be some parts of the boat I can use printed things for.
 
You can most certainly print your positives to cast in a mold, then burn out, just like wax once was. The good thing about printing is if you fudge your design, you can tweak it and print it again until your dimensions are perfect. I often design test fit jigs to verify geometry and dimensions before committing those dimensions to the final design and print. For PLA general use, I estimate indoor use to 5 years and outdoor use to 2 years, but there are about a dozen other materials that can be printed with to suit your application. I find tolerances to be about 0.5mm, but that's due to the weaknesses of these cheap machines. If you build beefy solid super square machines, the accuracy will go way up. That free printer linked above will print more accurate than the 3 cheapos, but ya gotta buy better quality to get better results. Chinese machines are a great entry point, but the quality components are coming out of Europe. The Prusa MK 3 is the low end European model from Josef Prusa and it has been known for many years to produce greater quality than anything Chinese. The Prusas start around $750 and is far out of my range, so I gotta stick with Chinese till I finish building my own with Chinese shit, then day dream about replacing each Chinese component with something from anywhere else, lol. Like everything else, we're alive for the beginnings of a lot of new technology and our generation and the ones before us struggle to adapt to this electric new world.
 
Drive-by


Don't tell me your trying to print out a gun? JK
 
Norcaliwood said:
Drive-by


Don't tell me your trying to print out a gun? JK
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That's a waste of time. The smart way is to get a ghost gunner and machine the parts from metal.
 
I’ll keep my eyes open, and I figure I’ll start seeing uses. For making actual jewellery I. need super fine tolerances and so for now it’s probably easier to just get my hands dirty and make stuff the old fashioned way.
But there have definitely been times in life I’ve busted molded plastic components and had to groan.... they’re totally unfixable. You usually can’t glue the stuff and and usually there’s no way to replicate them by hand in any practical way.
I just got excited when (I think) you said it’s the most useful thing you have bought. I have a few of those ‘most useful’ tools. Most recently a full set of squeezy clamps. I can’t believe I went so many years without the squeezy clamps- now it’s like I have eight arms.
 
Dankman_420 said:
Hey sky I know you like sulphur... I thought of you when I saw this video. Maybe it's helped you all alone
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Would that affect cannabis plants in a negative way ? Looks easy enough could it be used during flower or just in veg. ? :surf:
 
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