Writing Book Volume 2

[Ryan Carlyle]

New book-writing discussion megathread for 2nd book in the 3D Printer Engineering series. 

Current chapter status:

• Foreword (same as Vol 1, basically done)

1. Introduction - 11700 words, mostly done with rewrite
2. Gearboxes - Outlined (short chapter, may pull content from Intro or move later in book)
3. Line Drive Principles - 18700 words, need to split in three and significant editorial work
4. Belt Drives - split from #3
5. Cable Drives - split from #3
6. Screw Principles - 12100 words, need to split in two and significant editorial work
7. Screw Drives - split from #6
8. Delta Principles - 17600 words and illustrated, need to split in two and significant editorial work
9. Delta Robots - split from #8
10. (Rack and Pinion - not sure if I'm going to write this or not)

[Daren Schwenke]

Tripod and Core XY kinematics?

I got a nice looking Tripod cable one for you.  This time I can actually take decent looking new pictures as well.

I did finally get the bed fixed on the M1 finally (what was preventing good pics for the flying extruder setup).

[Ryan Carlyle]

CoreXY is in the Line Drive Principles chapter for sure. Haven’t thought too much about Tripod yet for this book but there’s probably some kind of place I could put it...

Always appreciate good pictures :-)

[RanchRifle]

I dunno, rack an pinion may not make much sense for typical desktop printers, but if you are looking for large scale stuff....

Of course things like BAAM and the various concrete printers are probably a bit out of the scope of this series.  ;)

[Whosawhatsis]

I think of setups that use a belt anchored at the ends of a linear guide and wrapped around a motor pulley near the center as a variation on rack-and-pinion drive. Using a belt with a couple of idlers to allow the belt to wrap 180 degrees around the pulley fixes some of the inherent problems with a real rack-and-pinion drive. This is a discussion worth including, that would require some backgrounds on rack-and-pinion drives. Not sure they warrant their own chapter, but you could discuss them in that context elsewhere if you decided they don't.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "3DP Ideas" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to 3dp-ideas+...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to 3dp-...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/3dp-ideas/1f8b8131-cb52-4545-a19a-0fa79e8ceb6c%40googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[ekaggrat singh kalsi]

what is the tripod kinematics just out of curosity

[ekaggrat singh kalsi]

what is the tripod kinematics just out of curosity

On Tuesday, May 14, 2019 at 10:20:30 AM UTC+8, Daren Schwenke wrote:

[Daren Schwenke]

Think linear delta, except instead of moving fixed length arm ends up and down, you change the length of the arms.

https://youtu.be/v1TQYhRJY1Y

[Ryan Carlyle]

I'm definitely talking about "belt rack and pinion" or "omega drive" arrangements since they're probably the best approach for belt-drive CNC machines, and useful in some printer contexts like moving beds. Will have to think about actual gear rack and pinion a bit -- I probably don't have a lot to say on the subject. Not enough for a full chapter anyway. I'll hit basic gear stuff like tooth pitch / module and pressure angles in the gearbox chapter. 

On Tuesday, May 14, 2019 at 3:00:18 PM UTC-5, Whosawhatsis wrote:

I think of setups that use a belt anchored at the ends of a linear guide and wrapped around a motor pulley near the center as a variation on rack-and-pinion drive. Using a belt with a couple of idlers to allow the belt to wrap 180 degrees around the pulley fixes some of the inherent problems with a real rack-and-pinion drive. This is a discussion worth including, that would require some backgrounds on rack-and-pinion drives. Not sure they warrant their own chapter, but you could discuss them in that context elsewhere if you decided they don't.

On May 14, 2019 at 07:11:42, RanchRifle (mdd...@gmail.com) wrote:

I dunno, rack an pinion may not make much sense for typical desktop printers, but if you are looking for large scale stuff....

Of course things like BAAM and the various concrete printers are probably a bit out of the scope of this series.  ;)

On Monday, 13 May 2019 08:20:53 UTC-6, Ryan Carlyle wrote:

New book-writing discussion megathread for 2nd book in the 3D Printer Engineering series. 

Current chapter status:

• Foreword (same as Vol 1, basically done)

1. Introduction - 11700 words, mostly done with rewrite
2. Gearboxes - Outlined (short chapter, may pull content from Intro or move later in book)
3. Line Drive Principles - 18700 words, need to split in three and significant editorial work
4. Belt Drives - split from #3
5. Cable Drives - split from #3
6. Screw Principles - 12100 words, need to split in two and significant editorial work
7. Screw Drives - split from #6
8. Delta Principles - 17600 words and illustrated, need to split in two and significant editorial work
9. Delta Robots - split from #8
10. (Rack and Pinion - not sure if I'm going to write this or not)

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "3DP Ideas" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to 3dp-ideas+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

[Ryan Carlyle]

Book progress update:

• No progress.

I'm working on getting a new house up to my minimum standard of livability. Got a ton of little repairs to do. (Raise shower head, swap out incandescents to LEDs, etc.) My workshop is all packed up and I don't have a desktop PC right now, so I'm not doing any book work. 

[Daren Schwenke]

Yeah.. what's up with the midget shower head position in most homes...

[Ryan Carlyle]

Trying to get some momentum going now that I have an office and desktop again. (No printers functional though...) The intro chapter is more or less edited and done, but I'm struggling with whether I really want to write a gearboxes chapter. It's a subject that is fairly well-worn on the internet, but it also helps set up a lot of concepts for timing belt drives. Mainly just don't want to spend months adding a chapter at this point. Need to think about it a bit. 

[Ryan Carlyle]

Pointless procrastination comment:

One thing I have to do when I go back and edit my older writing is replace all usage of "rule of thumb" with guideline or heuristic. There is a belief out there that the phrase "rule of thumb" originated from it being legal in England to beat your wife with a stick thinner than your thumb. Wikipedia has deets on the history if you want them; basically the claimed historical origin of the phrase is probably not true, but people THINK it has an offensive origin, which de facto DOES make it offensive. Belief is all that really matters when it comes to offending people. 

So, "rule of thumb" is out. 

[Steven Butterfield]

I heard that years ago and forgot about it until you mentioned it.

I told my wife the history and she laughed and said good luck trying.

I think your target audience knows your books are about engineering. People get offended very easily and it's really hard to eliminate every possible offensive word or phrase. I wouldn't worry unless people make a big deal about it.

[JasonB]

This reminds me of the use of master and slave in industry to describe a controller and its remote devices on all kinds of networks.  Some companies have updated their documentation to refer to master, member but it doesn't seem to be catching on yet.

[Ryan Carlyle]

My wife doesn't like it, therefore it's out :-)

[Ryan Carlyle]

Chapters 1 and 2 more or less done. Will probably add a section on rocker arms and turntables, but not sure if it's a short chapter or just a section in the intro chapter. 

In theory, that means vol2 is "content complete" but considerable editorial work is still required for chapter splits.

• Screws --> 2 chapters
• Belt and line drives --> 4 chapters
• Deltas --> 2 chapters

I don't think there's much CONTENT writing involved in this, probably just a lot of connecting matter (intros etc) and re-ordering type work. 

Then on to illustration. 

Then tech review.

Then layout.

Then proofreading.

Then publishing! Woo. Home stretch? haha

[Ryan Carlyle]

Not gonna lie, between moving to an older house that needs a lot more work than we thought, and my kids being a difficult age, working on this thing is hard. My main motivation to finish at this point is that I already published "volume 1" and it looks bad if vol 2 never comes out. Which WAS part of the point of calling it that, so I can't complain too much. 

Vol3 on steppers might end up as a public Google Doc file though, gonna be real hard to get motivated a third time after half a decade of doing this

[Ryan Carlyle]

Screws chapter split has been implemented. Took about 10 hours in two days, of which 3 hours was just refreshing myself on content I wrote a long time ago. Netted +1000 words or so. 

It's really hard to do this kind of heavy [re-org / flow-fixing / gap-filling] work in small chunks. Gotta have a lot of content fresh in your head so you can edit it effectively. Don't know if there's a better way to do it... maybe hyper-outlining or something. Don't know. What I do know is that I make a ton of progress when I take the whole day off to write, and make basically zero progress when I try to grab an hour here or there. 

[Ryan Carlyle]

Got the belts/cables content split into four chapters and beefed up content a lot. Netted +6300 words which is a lot more than I expected. The CoreXY and cable drives content needed a lot of fleshing out. Will do the Deltas content chapter split tomorrow. I think it's in fairly good shape though, I did a rough split on it a while back and it also has full draft illustrations. 

Vol 2 specs snapshot:

• 10 chapters
• ~78,000 words. Which is weirdly similar to Volume 1. May grow a bit more.
• Right now I'm at 232 pages in Google Docs with only about 20% (?) of illustrations done. Will probably rise to ~300 pages after fully illustrating. May inflate a bit more after that during layout but my Google Docs page count on Vol 1 was fairly close to the final press page count.

[Ryan Carlyle]

Chapter split editing done. I am still missing a lot of summary sections (bleh) but otherwise the draft is good enough to illustrate. Now I need to set up the image numbering structure. 

[Ryan Carlyle]

I find a lot of really interesting images when I'm looking for open source / permissive license stuff to use for book illustrations. Here's an AWESOME drawing, with one irritating error that makes me not want to use it.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:3D_printing_calibration_%E2%80%93_3D_printer_belt_tension_and_backlash.png

Put all that work into making a nice illustration but couldn't get the flat part of the circle in the right orientation?!

The very small print light grey label / attribution text is also annoying. 

All I really wanted was a photo of a flattened circle on a print, but I'll be darned if I can find a permissive license photo of one anywhere. Might have to queue up my R2x with some loosened belts, which is just a hassle. 

[Patrick Barnes]

I think "What You Should not Do to Your 3D Printer" sounds like a fantastic YouTube series. :-D

(maybe with a Steve Irwin vibe, "wrestling them" could be episode one.)

On Thu, 28 Nov 2019 at 14:14, Ryan Carlyle <temp...@gmail.com> wrote:

I find a lot of really interesting images when I'm looking for open source / permissive license stuff to use for book illustrations. Here's an AWESOME drawing, with one irritating error that makes me not want to use it.

Put all that work into making a nice illustration but couldn't get the flat part of the circle in the right orientation?!

The very small print light grey label / attribution text is also annoying. 

All I really wanted was a photo of a flattened circle on a print, but I'll be darned if I can find a permissive license photo of one anywhere. Might have to queue up my R2x with some loosened belts, which is just a hassle. 

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "3DP Ideas" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to 3dp-ideas+...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/3dp-ideas/2e30ded8-cb4c-4c1a-9ddd-127ab8a67080%40googlegroups.com.

[Ryan Carlyle]

Couple book illustrations

[Whosawhatsis]

Minor nitpick, in the second image, you have what I'm sure is supposed to be a NEMA17 mounting plate with slots for adjusting belt tension, but since the plate doesn't extend out in any direction to connect to anything else, it looks like it's just supposed to be the mounting face of the motor, which makes the slots look really weird. Also, such a plate would almost certainly be built with a fifth slot for the motor's pilot. I COULD be made with a slot only for the shaft, which the belt pulley would just about cover up, but that would really just make assembly/disassembly unnecessarily difficult.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "3DP Ideas" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to 3dp-ideas+...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/3dp-ideas/69349bea-83b0-403b-8494-ebde2c8dc3bc%40googlegroups.com.

[Ryan Carlyle]

Yeah, I didn’t like it very much either, but got lazy and moved on. I’ll spruce it up later.

[Ryan Carlyle]

Who wants to do book technical review this time around? Getting close to having the first batch of chapters illustrated. Tech reviewers get a free signed copy and a review credit at the front of the book. 

[Steven Butterfield]

I'm interested in doing a technical review. Send me some more details and we can see if I would make a good technical reviewer.

[Dushyant Ahuja]

Would be interested.

[David Crocker]

I'm interested too.

[Ryan Carlyle]

Awesome guys. Got you three, plus one private reply, and will probably ask a couple people from a 3DP facebook group. That'll be plenty. It's good to have a mix of technical expertise too. 

The rules of tech review are, "read the book in a timely fashion, write notes as you think of things, and don't be offended if I don't implement suggestions."  I'll write up some details for you when I email content links. I'm thinking the first batch of chapters (~150 pages?) will be ready in a few weeks. Let me make sure I have good email addresses for people...

[Russ Taber]

I’d be interested. I was a technical editor for Abacus Software’s Commodore 64 books in the 80s as well as their graphic artist.

[Dushyant Ahuja]

Please use dush...@ahuja.ws

On Mon, 30 Dec 2019, 3:31 am Ryan Carlyle, <temp...@gmail.com> wrote:

Dushyant,

Email address confirmation. You prefer dusht...@gmail.com or something else?

I will be switching to ry...@3dpeng.com for book correspondence. 

Thanks,

Ryan

On Saturday, December 28, 2019 at 4:16:04 PM UTC-6, Dushyant Ahuja wrote:

Would be interested.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "3DP Ideas" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/3dp-ideas/9EfOdUtZ6q8/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to 3dp-ideas+...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/3dp-ideas/592a8405-4f61-486f-a342-8ab714f7aad1%40googlegroups.com.

[Ryan Carlyle]

Got Ch1-2 sent to everybody but David at this point. Waiting on an email back, just in case my @3dpeng.com address hit a spam filter or something. 

[Ryan Carlyle]

I gotta say, I HATE how many times I have had to update the "as of 20XX" year comments in my book. Just changed a 2019 to 2020... I can't even finish the dang book without it reminding me how long I've been working on it. Started writing in 2014!

In other news, chapter 3 is done and I'm working on illustrating 4 now. They're both "screws" chapters so I'll send them for tech review together. 

[Ryan Carlyle]

Got both screws chapters done last night. Belts next...

[Ryan Carlyle]

Quick update. I had to do some international travel for my day job, so I haven't made much progress on Chapter 5 (belt/cable principles). I think I'm going to skip ahead to tech review on the Delta chapters (9-10) since they're 90% illustrated already. 

[Ryan Carlyle]

Pandemic shutdowns got me working from home with two small kids now. I don't know how I'm even going to keep up with my day job. No chance in hell I'm making much book progress. Illustrations on hold for now.

My main motivator right now was having a manuscript to show at MRRF, and that's postponed for the foreseeable future, so. 

[Steven Butterfield]

I'm in the same situation. Schools shut down for 6 weeks and I've been working from home for about 3 weeks. They keep changing the voluntary work from home recommendations so who knows when we'll be back in the office. Luckily I have a job that I can do from home. They have been especially cautious because we're in Washington about 10 miles from where the first cases were reported. Good luck with home schooling and everything else.

[steven.butt...@gmail.com]

Hey Ryan, 

How's the break been? Can we convince you go continue writing book 2? I've been active with other groups and man I miss reading your posts and some of the other guys from this group and quite frankly a lot of the "experts" are just wrong in these other groups. I don't know where they come up with this stuff but man its pretty terrible. For instance one guy keeps arguing to go with the ender 3 because its the best! Anyways, how's the book coming and how can we help you get it finished? 

[Ryan Carlyle]

Oh man, it has been frustrating to have Vol2 so close to done and then make zero progress for about a year. My childcare situation is terrible, and my day job megaproject is keeping me perpetually slammed and won't really slow down for another year. My wife is a vaccine misinformation consultant so she's slammed right now too. I seriously considered volunteering for a severance package in the big wave of oil industry layoffs last year just so I could take a few months off to knock out the books. 

We're going to hire a nanny soon, and then I think I'll be able to pick it back up and get Vol2 wrapped up. I'll also have to see what Michael Hackney (publisher) is up to, since he got kind of busy working for Desktop Metal last year.

I'm thinking after Vol2 is done I'll release Vol3 (motors) as free website content or something... it's the most technically complex material and the least useful to the average printer builder, so I'm really struggling to justify the effort to polish it up into a dead-tree book. Publishing in an editable format (and not charging admission) takes the pressure off of getting it >99% perfect the first time. 

Wish I could say I had a better plan. 

[Ryan Carlyle]

No change since February. Still plan to wrap up vol2 at some point here. We're homeschooling our kids another year because of the delta variant and our governor being an asshat who is blocking schools from controlling Covid.