Skybound's Journal

[Weaselcracker]

True -for some/most strains, but not if you can’t even get them through bloom long enough to make it to harvest, ha ha ha....

 

[ilikemsticky]

I would if he doesn't I would try one at my buddies over the winter then I would try them in the spring with my Greenhouse it would be cool to see how they do indoors and in a greenhouse

ill get back to ya!

 

[ilikemsticky]

I have no interest in growing autos, but when I eventually start my new room, I will be seeking seed donations to get some new strains in my rotation. I only ever ordered from Herbies and the strains I get seem to be really basic in what they grow. Some chunky and sweet, but none were good and frosty.

The soil is still holding up well, in fact let me snap a pic. It's been 3 days and the top still does not look dry.

The first date is when she rooted and 9/8 is when I put her into the dirt. She still looks good, but like I said, it's only been a few days. Maybe tomorrow I'll hit them all with a nice fishy foliar spray, they love that, plus it's got a lot of P. Whatever though. I'm in a rush to be done with hydro. I need to flower more than 3 at a time so I can chop more frequently than once every 3 weeks. That's not a bad frequency when I'm harvesting pounds per, but the small harvests are really hard on me and my needs.

This weekend I'll order the rest of what I need to make the kit to the best of my ability. I expect that it won't be identical to Doc's recipe, but I feel if I can get close enough I'll be in good shape as I have the materials to make minute adjustments and most of the knowledge needed to make those decisions. I try to stay optimistic, it make failing more palatable.

I like it they look good sky are you happy this is going to be fun they look plenty green btw everything you give them go diluted baby steps your on your way bud!

 

[ilikemsticky]

The original PC strain, which I still have alive but seems to always have issues after being cloned and cloned and re-clone for five years, remains the stickiest plant I’ve ever grown. Nothing else in my grow has ever come close to that epoxy glue-like texture -where you touch the thing and it’s just revoltingly sticky - like you want nothing to do with touching it /

sounds good id touch it lol!

 

[Skybound]

I got ahold of the hydro again as I'm phasing it out. That soil is still heavy, but that's because the roots are local to the rockwool, but nothing in the soil to drink up the wetness, and the plastic pots don't allow air flow to do too much. I ordered some 2 gallon cloth pots in hopes that the water will wick off the soil faster and speed up the drying of the soil. I designed and printed a half dozen of these little solo cup holders to build a little bit of root mass in rockwool cubes so I can keep a steady supply of clones and young rooting plants, then put them in the 2 gallons of soil. I hope 2 gallons is a reasonable size. A lot of the veg vigor will be accomplished in the rockwool, so transitioning to the soil then filling out the soil I hope will be a reasonable amount of time. After that 2 gallons is overgrown, they go into the 10 gallon fabric pots to finish in.

That's the plan so far. Let me know your thoughts or suggestions.

 

[ilikemsticky]

sounds like a good plan to me be careful with watering they don't need a lot at first I probably wouldn't do any foliar until those pots dry out maybe direct an easy flo fan rite at the tops of the soil that would help dry those I have to say in imo your starting out real well just be careful!

 

[Weaselcracker]

I like those little cuppies. Reminds me of those funny hats some people have to wear when they graduate from school. You could print yourself one of those too sometime, have a little Hydro grower’s graduation party? A little pat on the back



I remember in your old journal we discussed the idea of clear/see-through containers, nested inside opaque ones- so you could pull them out and see the roots. Not sure the limits of your printer, but looks like maybe now you could print some outer cup holders for clear cups. Not sure how much need there would really be for that, but still kind of fun.
Can you print me a 3D printer?

 

[Skybound]

I like those little cuppies. Reminds me of those funny hats some people have to wear when they graduate from school. You could print yourself one of those too sometime, have a little Hydro grower’s graduation party? A little pat on the back



I remember in your old journal we discussed the idea of clear/see-through containers, nested inside opaque ones- so you could pull them out and see the roots. Not sure the limits of your printer, but looks like maybe now you could print some outer cup holders for clear cups. Not sure how much need there would really be for that, but still kind of fun.
Can you print me a 3D printer?

That's what those prints are, for blocking the light and holding the inner cup which is a clear 9oz Solo cup. Previously I printed a cup holder for holding 2 20oz Solo cups and I used an opaque cup and a clear cup. I learned since then and incorporated the outer cup into the design.

Not only can I print a printer, but I was also able to print the CNC router as well. You still need rigid frame parts, rigid travel parts and electronics, but all of the conjoining parts are printed. I bet printers are dirt cheap in Canada now that Trump is corn dogging the hell out of China, they NEED new buyers to stay afloat. That said, I bet you can find them in the $150-$250 range in Canada, maybe even cheaper and a printer is THEE handiest thing I've ever owned. a roll of filament costs less than $20 and is 1kg of plastic, and a little goes a long way. Especially you living so far out, you have no access to things and a printer would allow you to make your own needs, or make the machines that will make those things. With my shit $200 printer, I printed the parts for a bigger better printer, but I still need to gather all of the metal and electronics. But the CNC is fully built and operable. The CNC can cut wood, plot with a pen, run a lazer or be modified to run a plasma cutter which is the direction I ultimately wish to go. To CNC custom logos and lettering into a 4x8 sheet of diamond plate would take my machine a few hours and I bet the labor could be sold for a grand. Models to check out;

Creality Ender 3
Tevo Tarantula (cheaper and the updated version of my model)

 

[Weaselcracker]

That’s really cool. You’re right, the time I’ve wasted pissing around handcrafting little machinery parts and whatnot out of whatever random materials I found in the yard - I could waste pissing around with a 3D printer- probably with better results though :
My girlfriend and I got an old sailboat and it’s full of a ton of teak. Made in Asia back in the day when it was cheap. It would cost a million to buy all that wood now. Anyway- there are a lot of these cool inlayed/recessed handholds and finger holes in locker doors and drawers - kinda hard to explain but it got me thinking how a CNC could carve those in minutes, where it would take me a couple hours to make just one.
I’m going to start keeping an eye out, thinking about applications.

 

[Skybound]

HERE's a link to the free CNC machines. There are actually 2 different designs though the MPCNC is printed and the Lowrider2 I think involves some machined wood, so you'd likely need to print the MPCNC first to make the Lowrider. FWIW, they also sell the printed parts if you want to skip buying a printer and printing the parts. I didn't machine anything on mine yet, but I have verified the functionality. I still need to buy an end mill set, but them fuggars are expensive and like most of my other projects the MPCNC got put on the back burner for a few months.

HERE is the printed printer. Of course you need at least a shit printer to print the parts. I have the set printed and in a box and sent to the back burner before I built the MPCNC. The Hevo still demands about $400 in parts before I can assemble and I just don't have the funds to waste on it yet, but when I do, the Hevo is a way more solid printer than my shitty Tevo and the Hevo can print a lot faster.

HERE is my other Thingiverse account with my other printer and CNC related designs. For privacy, I keep my grow room designs with my Skybound account.

Any kind of CNC machine is a game changer for the tinkerer. CAD software is a lot more main stream now and most have very functional free versions. I choose to design my things in a code based application which the majority of people hate. I think it's easier for designing simple functional things, but those differences aside, you can design an idea in an hour and have it printed out to spec down to fractions of a millimeter in a few hours after that. Solid printers like the Hevo can print faster, but not having yet built mine, I haven't experienced this yet. Still though, even with my slow printer, I am happy to be able to produce whatever I can design. It SOOO functional and about the best $250 investment I ever made.

 

[Dankman_420]

What size are the shanks for the end mill set. I might have a cutter for you. I do some machining

 

[Skybound]

What size are the shanks for the end mill set. I might have a cutter for you. I do some machining

The spindle is just a Dewalt DW660 rotary tool and it comes with 1/8" and 1/4" collets. Other spindles could be used, but I just went with the Dewalt to get my feet wet with. Also, before I fire up the spindle and cut something, I insist on having my dust collection worked out and that is also on the back burner, lol, but if you have some small end mills to donate, I'll gladly accept as they are not cheap. I think a basic starter set is close to $200, and at such small sizes, they break easily if the feed rates are too intense.

 

[Dankman_420]

I'll go through my box today and see if I have any 1/8" or 1/4" end mills. I might have some. Occasionally I have to run mills and lathe's at work. Is your setup with ball screws or belt driven

 

[Hydroholic]

We use to own a fabrication company and had a 5x10 CNC with 4 axes. If you start looking into building a larger table look at candcnc. He sells all the electronics and the software. We built our own and saved 20k and got more. The support is out of this world.

 

[Skybound]

I'll go through my box today and see if I have any 1/8" or 1/4" end mills. I might have some. Occasionally I have to run mills and lathe's at work. Is your setup with ball screws or belt driven

dual belts for the X and Y axis and Acme screw for the Z.

 

[Skybound]

We use to own a fabrication company and had a 5x10 CNC with 4 axes. If you start looking into building a larger table look at candcnc. He sells all the electronics and the software. We built our own and saved 20k and got more. The support is out of this world.

Unless my budget drastically improves, I have to do everything on the SUPER cheap. I plant to build a 4x8 (5x10) plasma table, but was planning to source all of the electronics from Amazon and run Marlin if that's possible as Marlin is OpenSourced and free. I'm watching a guy name Jeremy Fielding on YouTube and he's building a 4 axis plasma table that can also rotate a pipe between centers and plasma the pipe to make a round sign and I want to try and build something along those lines, but for a lighter duty application. I'll look into the CandCNC to see if I can make it fit into my goals. Who knows, maybe when I start harvesting a plant every week I'll have a couple pennies to play with? Thanks for the lead!

 

[Dankman_420]

dual belts for the X and Y axis and Acme screw for the Z.

Nice! Screws for the Z is more percsion I would think. I'll have to look into that setup. I assume you write program yourself and load them or is it all M code's

 

[Skybound]

Nice! Screws for the Z is more percsion I would think. I'll have to look into that setup. I assume you write program yourself and load them or is it all M code's

There's an app that generates the tool paths, but it's nowhere near as streamlined as the tool path software for printing, but that might be because of the need to use multiple different tools to finish a job whereas with printers, it's always only the one tool, the hot nozzle. ESTLcam is the tool that generates the tool paths for CNC. You just input your particulars, shaft dia, shank length, feedrates, thickness of the part being cut etc and it plots out the paths. It's about 85% the same as 3d printing so learning the transition isn't so bad.

 

[Skybound]

When I build the 4x8, I plan to build/design a direct drive where the stepper engages the drive wheel that itself grabs onto a toothed track that will be mounted to the X and Y. Belts are fine for printing, but is an evident design flaw for milling, even light duty milling.

 

[Dankman_420]

I'd like to get a hobby lathe from harbor freight. They look handy for small projects. They have a mill/lathe combo too. I think they carry cutters too