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CPAP Progress

CPAP

Back in November of last year I did a sleep study, and as expected, I’ve got sleep apnea, so I ended up getting a CPAP machine at the beginning of December. Since it’s been a little over a month of using it, I thought I’d write up the experience so far…

The first week or so was a bit rough… besides getting used to the mask, I was experiencing terrible dry mouth. The dry mouth issue was due to the fact that we keep it pretty cold in our bedroom (we use a heated blanket) and the nurse I met with told me they would ship me a special heated hose which would help with the dryness. Getting the hose took over a week due to a few mix-ups, but once I got it, things were much better.

Let me just say right now… I never knew I could sleep so good.

For pretty much my entire adult life, I got terrible sleep. When I was younger, it didn’t bother me that much, but it’s gotten worse and worse in recent years. Besides not getting enough sleep myself, I’ve annoyed the crap out of my wife with my snoring. So while I wasn’t sleeping well, neither was she. In the past year both of us have taken turns on the couch just so we’d both be able to get some sleep.

So… the good sleep. Finally, some good, solid sleep. Before the CPAP, I could have “slept” for 8+ hours, and still gotten out of bed completely exhausted, but as it is now, I can sleep 6 hours, and wake up knowing that I can get through the day without falling asleep or even getting drowsy. I’m awake, alert, and more engaged. I even dream now! For years I didn’t dream much, due to the fact that I never got into REM sleep. That’s changed as well, and I’m dreaming quite a bit now.

But it’s not all sleepy dreams and happiness. Even though I’m getting good sleep, my wife is still struggling with my amazing new ability to sleep. Here’s where I get into the bad parts of the CPAP.

You might thing that the CPAP machine itself is noisy, but it’s really very quiet, so that noise isn’t an issue, but what is an issue is the mask I wear. To put it on requires two snaps. “Click! Click!” goes the mask when I put it on. So if I get in bed later than her, I’m making noise. If I go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, I need to remove the mask, and then put it back on, so I’m making noise. Alternately, I can keep the mask on, but remove the hose, and that goes “Snap!” when it attaches. More noise… But wait! There’s also the Velcro adjustment straps. “Rip! Rip! Rip! Rip!” if I need to adjust for air leaks. As for the machine, well, the power button makes a “Click!” though not as loud as the mask, and the LED display is bright enough to light up the room, so I keep it covered with a piece of fabric.

All in all, I’d love to see some improvements in the silencing of the whole process… but ignoring all that, it’s still pretty damn sweet.

Wearing the mask can be annoying, but when I think of the alternative, I’d prefer to wear the mask and actually get some sleep.

Oh, I also talked to one person who said it freaked them out, and they were worried that the power might go out and they wouldn’t be able to breathe and… It doesn’t work that way. CPAP is “continuous positive airway pressure” not a respirator. You can keep breathing (and stay alive!) even if it shuts off.

And yeah, the mask isn’t fun like a Halloween mask, but like I said, it’s worth it for the change its made in my life.

Thanks Mr. CPAP!

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MakerBot Marketing

MakerBot Industries

I meant to write this post about a month ago, but writing it now just validates the points I was going to make anyway, so read on!

Back when I wrote 3D Printing is the Future, I mentioned a number of companies, including MakerGear, Ultimaker, and of course MakerBot Industries. Four months later, I’m going to update my thoughts on them, and specifically focus on what the MakerBot folks do in the area of marketing.

Wait… Marketing? If you read the piece in Fast Company you’d know that MakerBot Industries doesn’t do marketing:

… When I speak with MakerBot’s Keith Ozar, he seems offended when I refer to such undertakings as “marketing.” His background is in underground music promotion, and he joined MakerBot when the company advertised a “marketing experimenter” position in early 2011. MakerBot doesn’t really market at all, he counters; it actively participates in the community the company seeks to both cultivate and create, involving “people who are creative, people with imaginations.” That means a presence at Maker Faire-style events, where hardware hackers congregate, and more recently at comics conventions and the like.

Here’s where I haul out the disclaimer: I work at a marketing company. I also market myself, and the things I do. Almost everyone does, even if they don’t call it marketing. If MakerBot doesn’t want to call it “marketing” I’m fine with that, but let’s be honest, that’s what it is.

With that out of the way, let’s look at the marketing that MakerBot does…

MakerBot Web Site

MakerBot has a web site. Hmmm, that’s nothing special. Let me rephrase that: MakerBot has a good web site. Their web site clean, well designed, and organized. There’s a store, there’s info on the community, including links to User Groups, Twitter, Flickr, Google Groups, etc. as well as a link to Thingiverse. Their support page has a lot of links to their wiki, and then there’s the blog.

The MakerBot blog isn’t just some “look at me!” thing where they talk about themselves (though it has been a lot of that lately, due to the recently launched MakerBot Replicator.) The blog also highlights things that members of the community are doing/making. And the blog is updated very often. Very often. That’s key.

Ultimaker

When the Ultimaker came out I heard a lot of talk about how much better it was than the Thing-O-Matic, and it may be better, but take a look at the Ultimaker web site. It just looks like a blog, and as of my writing this, it’s been over a month since it’s been updated. And before that it was a month and a half. I know blogging takes time, but for a small company it can get you the most bang for your buck when trying to tell people about your product.

MakerGear

In the world of RepRap, reprap.org is packed full of information, but if you want to buy a RepRap kit, MakerGear is a pretty well known and respected seller of the Prusa Mendel kit. They also recently came out with the MakerGear Mosaic, which is their own design, and is a capable machine from all I’ve read.

Visit the MakerGear web site and let me know what gets your attention… if anything does. There is a “What’s New?” link on the home page, that links to a page with a post that was written nearly two months ago. (With a typo in the title.) I’m a MakerGear customer, and I think they’re a good company, but I wish things looked a bit more professional. For a first timer visiting their web site (or the Ultimaker site) I don’t think they’re going to be impressed.

But then, maybe these companies don’t want to impress people. Maybe they’re only targeting the alpha nerds, who know the inside scoop, and think that MakerBot is for people who don’t know better, and the real desire is for servicing a niche market. If that’s the case, then that’s fine… I honestly don’t know.

So besides the web site, what is the “MakerBot Marketing” you ask? I’ll just throw a few things out there.

MakerBot: has good photography, has good videos (including MakerBot TV), they have a curriculum for schools, are behind Thingiverse, they’ve implemented an Artist in Residence program, did the Project Shellter thing, scanned people’s heads, and on and on.

Some of those things take a bit of money, which smaller companies may not have, but there’s no shortage of clever ideas, some of which are relatively cheap, and if it gets people talking about you, isn’t that what you want?

So yeah, MakerBot Industries does marketing, and it may be marketing on their own terms, and in their own way, but in the end, if people find out about you, and keep hearing about you, that’s building your brand, and that’s worth a hell of a lot.

Here’s the thing: You can have the greatest product in the world, but if no one knows about it, you won’t have any customers, and no customers equals no business, so marketing is important… even for nerdy 3D printer companies.

(Oh, there’s one more thing that’s key to MakerBot’s marketing effort, which I’ll probably talk about in another post.)

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Laser. Cut. Files.

Inkscape

NOTE: See the latest post on this subject: Laser. Cut. Files. (Part III)

Update: I made an error in specifying which DXF export I used. I’ve corrected that below.

In my previous post Laser. Cut. Wood. I talked about cutting wood on the laser cutter at Milwaukee Makerspace, and I mentioned I wanted to talk about files… so read on.

The laser cutter can work with raster files or vector files, and since I last year when I got the Egg-Bot and had to dig into using Inkscape, I’ve become fond of that little open source vector drawing application. I’ve used it for 3D printing and for my cucoloris design.

When I started exporting DXF files from Inkscape for use on the CNC Router, Royce mentioned an Inkscape extension called Better DXF, and then Shane found Better Better DXF and then I found Big Blue Saw DXF. These all have their purposes, but for exporting a DXF file for the laser cutter, they were terrible. :(

Oh, before I tried the DXF files, I exported a PDF from Inkscape. I figured that since the PDF from BoxMaker went into CorelDraw without issues, it might be worth a try. No dice. CorelDraw said the PDF was “invalid” and couldn’t open it. Preview.app on Mac OS X had no issues, but since it didn’t work, I’d suggest not trying to generate a PDF from Inkscape to import into CorelDraw. I also tried an EPS file, and a PostScript file from Inkscape, since CorelDraw should have been able to open those. Again, no luck. On to the DXF files!

Here’s the results of my file tests. For each file, I started with the original SVG file of the Milwaukee Makerspace logo in Inkscape, and exported using the corresponding extension:

Format Results
Better DXF The file imported into CorelDraw scaled about 10 times too large.
Better Better DXF The file imported into CorelDraw scaled about 10 times too large.
Big Blue Saw DXF The file imported into CorelDraw scaled about 1/4 the actual size.
Desktop Cutting Plotter DXF The file imported into CorelDraw scaled about 10 times too large.
Autocad DXF The file imported into CorelDraw properly.

For for the first three DXF files, they didn’t work as desired. It appeared as though the curved segments were made into line segments. This would make sense for the CNC Router, as it would save a step in CamBam, but for the laser cutter it just made the curves not be curves. For the fourth one, this this is the one I originally thought worked, but alas, it imported way too big. (I think the lines remained curves though.)

Export DXF

So what worked? The AutoCAD DXF exporter. (Which still made the curves into line segments, so I’m not 100% locked into this, but it worked better than anything else so far.) It actually came in at the right size, which is what I wanted.

My warning for these DXF files are this: Always save your original SVG file! I’ve had hit & miss experiences opening the DXF files, even in Inkscape. YMMV, as I think my loading 3 different DXF extensions has somehow confused Inkscape as to how it wants to open DXF files. (Any advice here would be appreciated!)

Oh, it’s also worth noting that your vector file in Inkscape should have just a very thin stroke on the lines. How thin? 1 pixel, or less. Less than a pixel? Yeah, somehow you can use 0.05 px as a width. I don’t know how… You can also use 0.001 inches. Whatever, just make it thin to be safe. (And in CorelDraw, set your line to hairline to be safe.) This is fairly similar to what I do for the Egg-Bot, since the width of the plotting pen will determine the width of the line drawn, not the stroke of the line on your screen.

CorelDraw

So here’s our logo, which we imported into CorelDraw (successfully) and then added a circle around it, in red. To the upper-left of the circle you can see the darker rectangle outline that indicates the upper-left corner of the laser cutter platen.

I then ran the job with the following settings… Black and red have specific settings that match up to the colors used in your file. I also set them to vector output. (I think that if you set it to vector and your file has only raster data, the laser cutter will just beep at you, and not start the job.)

CorelDraw

Here’s where we go off-script and start experimenting. You may end up tweaking the settings and running the job again, or you might just re-run the job right from the control panel of the laser cutter. When I etched my sign, I ended up just re-running the job from the control panel until I was happy with how it looked. (Obviously you don’t want to removed the piece you are cutting from the machine, as you may not get it back exactly where it was.)

CorelDraw

Now here’s where it gets tricky. I was happy with the etching (which was the black lines in the file) but not the cutting around the edge (which is the red circle in the file.) So what I did was, deleted the black lines, left just the red circle, and then sent the job to the laser cutter again. Then I could keep running it until it cut through the wood, without running anymore etching of the logo.

Now, I don’t claim that this is the best way to do things, or the only way to do things, but these are my notes, as I’m learning, and I’ll keep adding to them, and will refer back to them, and if things get better, I’ll write that up as well. Oh, I’ve also whipped up a little Laser Cutter HOW TO you might find helpful.

I’ve got a few more laser cutter tips & tricks, but I’ll save them for next time…

(See Also: Laser. Cut. Files. (Part II))

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Laser. Cut. Wood.

Milwaukee Makerspace Medallion

Since the dawn of time, man has battled against wood… no, that’s not right. What I mean is, since we got the Laser Cutter at the Milwaukee Makerspace, I’ve wanted to cut things out of wood with that powerful beam of light.

And now I have… mostly. Sort of. Yeah.

Boxy

My first (failed) attempt was when I cut a box, and tried to use whatever scrap piece of 1/4″ plywood I had lying around the house. (For you metric folks, that’s just over 6mm thick.) Since it was typical crappy plywood with layers and glue and stuff, it made some nice burns, but couldn’t cut through it.

Milwaukee Makerspace Medallion

Well, here we are, with a nice piece of wood cut by the laser. This piece of wood is 3mm thick. (For you non-metric folks, that’s about 0.118110236 inches thick.) The Milwaukee Makerspace logo is etched into the wood, which makes this piece of laser cut wood at least 125% more awesome.

Craft Plywood

And what kind of wood is this? It’s not crappy plywood I found in the basement. I ended up going to the hobby store and buying a nice piece of wood, which you can see on the label, says it’s 1/8″x4″x12″ craft plywood. It wasn’t too expensive at $1.25, but I can’t really get larger pieces than that at the hobby store, so I’ll need to look elsewhere. (Oh, the receipt listed it as “Baltic Birch Plywood” which is what I want. (Baltic Birch is what they use for MakerBot frames. If you’ve got a recommendation on where to get it, especially local to Milwaukee, let me know!)

As my previous post mentioned, the laser cutter is just 25 watts, not super-powerful, and it may need a good cleaning, but if you’re willing to make a few passes, or a few passes plus a dozen, you should be able to cut the right type of wood, if it’s not too thick.

In my next post I’ll talk about preparing the file, as well as some tricks for multiple passes with the laser cutter.

Stay Tuned!

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Fixin’ It

Fixed Outlet

When the wife left the house yesterday she asked me to fix the outlet cover in the bedroom as it was loose and plugging things in was proving difficult. She said that she would have done it but was afraid of getting electrocuted.

I was about to tighten up the plate, but I noticed that the entire outlet was loose. No problem! I just removed the cover and tightened up the screws… Problem! The outlet box was too far into the wall, and my first attempt at pulling it out resulted in a nice jolt and the box not moving. (She didn’t warn me not to electrocute myself, but maybe she should have.) My guess is that whoever put the outlet in didn’t do it right, and just figured that putting things in loose and calling it a day was easier that fixing it and doing it right the first time.

Plastic Spacers

I thought about using some washers, but I would have actually had to find some washers, and they would have needed to be the right size, and I would have needed to have enough of them… and if you’ve seen my workshop, you’d know this is not an easy task.

I could have 3D printed some spacers! But like my last repair involving plastic, it would have been overkill for this task and would have taken way to much time.

So my solution involved taking some plastic anchors and snipping them to the right length. I have enough anchors that I could repair a dozen outlets in the house and still have a bunch left over. (Let’s hope I don’t have to do that, by the way.)