[00:00:09.040] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:09.400] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:09.700] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:11.620] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:13.760] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week With Taylor and Gordon," a weekly podcast and vidcast, where we talk about things that have affected our businesses over the last seven days. And thank you for joining us.
[00:00:24.000] - Taylor
Welcome back.
[00:00:24.880] - Gordon
I should say, actually, one of our favourite podcasts start in a similar way to us. We stole bits of it from them, didn't we? If you are looking for a new podcast and you haven't heard of it, "No Such Thing as a Fish" is brilliant. It's the QI Elves, and they basically talk about facts that they've discovered over the last seven days. And there's normally four facts. It's about an hour long each week. It comes out on a Friday. Highly recommend it. We'll put a link in the show notes for you. Anyway, enough of that. Let's get on to today's topics. Shall I go first?
[00:01:00.120] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:01:00.980] - Gordon
So today I want to talk about 3D printing. Now, we have spoken about this in the past, but you may or may not know that we have a 3D printer. And for those who don't know what a 3D printer is, it creates objects by printing layer by layer and going on top of each other to create an object. Now, the objects are quite often created and designed by other people, and you can download models and then print them on your own printer. And they're really good, aren't they?
[00:01:36.630] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:01:37.460] - Gordon
PLA is the material that is most commonly used in 3D printing. We actually use PLA+, which is ever so slightly stronger. It's a slightly different material, and I've always used PLA+, I've never used PLA. It is also slightly more expensive, but the expense is so negligible that I figured the PLA+ is the better one to go for. And so we've printed all sorts of things, haven't we?
[00:02:05.850] - Taylor
We have.
[00:02:06.760] - Gordon
However, we had a bit of an issue with it, and it's been sitting there not being used for a little while. But you found a solution to it.
[00:02:17.380] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:02:18.420] - Gordon
One of the problems we had was the adhesion to the bed. The way that 3D printing works is you have, in our case, a glass bed which is heated up, and then you have a nozzle which is heated up, and a PLA, what would you call it? Sort of tubing, very, very thin tubing, goes through the head, it gets heated up and melted, and then the nozzle then prints basically goes where it needs the material to go as it pushes it through. And then when it goes onto the bed, because of the change in temperature, it starts to solidify and cool, and you end up with an object at the end of it which is pretty much solid. Again, it all depends on the design of the print. And sometimes there are major issues with it, with problems with printing it and doing overhangs and getting stringing and all that lot. To be fair, our printer has never really had that problem, has it?
[00:03:21.400] - Taylor
No.
[00:03:21.780] - Gordon
The only problem we've really had is the adhesion. We discovered, or Taylor discovered, that by slowing down the first layer and heating it up higher than you would normally, you get a much better adhesion to the bed, and from then on, you don't have any problems. Because, the problems we were having before is it was getting halfway through the print, a few hours into it, and it would then just peel off and it would ruin the whole of the print. The other issue you had the other day was the PLA is on a spool and it got caught up. And so it was trying to feed in more PLA, and it couldn't because it had got knotted effectively at the top. And it was trying to pull, and that was then tightening the PLA that was on top of it and stopping it from going, and it just ran out of plastic to heat up and melt. Therefore, the print stopped working. So we fixed that problem. We respooled that part of it so that it would work. And since then, we've both had a very successful print each, haven't we? Do you want to tell everyone what you did?
[00:04:35.260] - Taylor
So, I created a holder for my remotes to go on my desk. I have different sized remotes. I have a TV remote, an Apple TV remote, a fan remote, and also a sound bar remote. They're all different sizes, all different widths and depths. And so I created a tiny little holder which stood them upright. I had that probably for about two years. Then I recently got the upright goes, which are like a... They stick to the back of your spine, and depending on the angle that you're sitting, it will buzz, to basically tell you to improve your posture. And I wanted to be able to add that little box that it goes in into the little component I had on the desk. So I reprinted it and measured the size of the box, both the width and the depth. And then, yeah, just made a little cut out for it and then reprinted it, and it worked great.
[00:05:45.580] - Gordon
So the problem that we have with this is because we can now do this, I mean, this is version three.
[00:05:52.460] - Taylor
Yes.
[00:05:53.410] - Gordon
And it's not because there were problems with the prints, it's because you keep adding new remotes or new objects to it. So we end up with these other boxes that hold nothing now because they're no use. We don't recycle any of the prints. So there are places that can recycle PLA. They basically cut everything, shred everything into pellets, and then re-melt it and recreate PLA. Well, we're not doing that. I mean, that's quite an expensive process. It's quite an involved process. So it just means that this box gets thrown away, which is a real shame. But the nice thing is that you actually created that yourself by modelling it in a 3D package.
[00:06:39.480] - Taylor
Yes.
[00:06:40.320] - Gordon
Which is very good. It's very cool. It's a very simple object to make. You basically have a box and you're cutting out a space inside it. So it's a very simple model. But 3D printing, if you haven't already looked into what it does, is very, very cool. And it's the thing that, I originally looked into it and got one because I thought it would be fun. I thought it would be a nice little hobby. I quite like the idea of printing objects, but it's become really useful for us. We keep making little bits and pieces, like we've got an AirTag holder. AirTags are an Apple device that's very round, very small, and you put them into things to track them, basically, things like luggage and bags and things like that, cars in our case. But they're not easily connectable to something else. So we downloaded some AirTag holders, which are, they're little round key rings, if you like, and you just snap the AirPods into them, the AirTags into them, and you've then got a little hook. You can put that on your keychain or you can hook something into it or whatever. And that's been really useful. I've got a toothpaste holder. It's not quite a holder. It's something that you use. So you put the toothpaste in and it's like a container. And you've got a little, what I would call an old fish tin opener, but made out of plastic. So you used to get like sardines in a tin, and you would have this little key, which was a long, thin thing with a slit on it, and you'd put it into the box and you'd turn it and it would open the tin. You don't get those anymore. But it's a bit like that, but for toothpaste. And so it makes sure that you get all of the toothpaste out. Plus, it's just nice because it puts the toothpaste on the side and it just keeps it up right, which is really nice. And we've made a marble run.
[00:08:55.430] - Taylor
We have.
[00:08:56.100] - Gordon
I've made a little pack of cards holder. You put a pack of cards in it and it stands up right on a table without being too wobbly, it won't fall over. You made a headphone stand at one point that allowed you to put your headphones onto it and you could keep your headphones from being on the floor or on the table or whatever. So I think we've only really scratched the surface of what's possible because we were having problems. Now we seem to have solved those problems I think we're going to be printing a lot more. And there's free models that you can download, lots of things like puzzles, things that are useful. Something that's really good for 3D printing is if you manage to damage or lose or you don't have a particular little gizmo that comes with something and you need to reprint one or you need to get a new one, you can just reprint them. Like, for example, those little discs that you put into shopping trolleys. You know the ones I mean where you're supposed to put a pound coin in and it releases it? Well, you can make a 3D printed version of it so that if you lose it, well, it's a couple of pence that you've lost, not a whole pound. You can just keep it in your car and it's not going to be visible from outside and people go, "Oh, there's money in that car," and try and break in. That sort of thing, just really small, useful objects. I think the whole point of this discussion is that if you don't know what a 3D printer can do for you, then do some research. They're not that expensive for what they do. I think I paid about £400 for our 3D printer, and ours is quite a big one. And in fact, we got two of them. But yeah, they're not that expensive when you consider what's possible. And you may find that you can save yourself money in the long run by printing stuff that's really useful, stuff you can sell, stuff that maybe is useful useful to your business or to your customers, and you can make them and give them away as gifts, that sort of thing. I think that's a really good idea. But have a look. If you're interested in the printer that we have, I'll put a link to the printer in the show notes. We've got an "Artillery Sidewinder X2." We've also got an X1, but that's having problems as well. So that's just sitting over there at the minute. It needs to be looked at. But the X2 is very good. There's an X3 out now. I haven't looked into what the differences are, but yeah, they're very good. Creality are the ones that I think are the most popular, but yeah. And interestingly, a lot of the 3D printers these days are printed using 3D printers. So they're creating parts for 3D printers using a 3D printer, which is great. Anyway, that was what I wanted to say. Have a look at 3D printing if you don't already. If you do use a 3D printer in your business for whatever reason, leave a comment. Let us know what you're doing, what you're using it for. We'd love to hear. That's me done. What would you like to talk about?
[00:12:11.590] - Taylor
So I wanted to talk about data visualisations. So on my personal site, I do a tiny bit of this where I visualise the data that I own and have in a way that is easy to read, easy to understand, and get across the point you're trying to explain. So for example, I have some of the flights that I've been on on my website, and there is an arc of the flight path from the two airports or the airports that you go from and to. Now, this is a maths equation that generates the arc, and it's basically drawing an arc based on, the path of a flight based on a 2D map. If you're looking at a 2D map, it's not ever going to be straight from one point to another because it's flat. It uses maths to calculate the correct path based on the two points. Now, that was a image that I generated it using. However, I wanted to show all of the flights that I had done on my 12 months of coffee. So I wanted to show the flights I'd done and locations that I've been to and visited for my 12 months of coffee project, which is where the idea for this came about. So what I did is I drew the flight paths on a map like I have done before, but I drew them and they stayed there. And then I animated a plane basically flying from each point. So it would be a flight from London to Milan and then Milan to London and then London to Copenhagen and Copenhagen to London again. And you could see this on a map. And obviously all the previous flights paths would show on the map. And then obviously you at the end get this massive graph or map with all of the paths drawn on. I also then extended that and just put all of the flights since 2017 that I've done. There was obviously quite a few that went into America. You could then see the trips that I'd taken from each airport. For example, I flew over to Las Vegas, and then I went from Las Vegas to Chicago, Chicago to Ohio, Ohio to Texas, Texas to Vegas, and then back to London for example. And that's one trip which is made up of, obviously, lots of different flights. But I built it in a way that you can very easily just pass in an array which has all the the details of the to and the from, and then just put that onto a map. It then just played the animation, essentially. And the idea of this is to use this on my personal site at some point, where I can pull the flights in and the data in dynamically. I can just say, basically, "display an animation of all of the flights I've ever done in the order that I actually flew them" as well. In the future, if I do more flights, it will just automatically add them to the end of the animation. But I can also make it so that I can do specific trips or specific projects. If I want to display just 12 months of coffee, there's only ever going to be 12, 13 flights that will be there versus the 25, 30 flights that I've done.
[00:15:51.960] - Gordon
Well, 24 because you're coming back again, right?
[00:15:56.110] - Taylor
Yeah, exactly. But it won't show all of the flights I've done forever. It would just show that one for the project. Or if I do a specific trip where I'm in multiple cities, I can show the flight path of that where I go from one city and then fly to another city, and another city before I come back to the UK, for example.
[00:16:16.580] - Gordon
You could do one for WordCamps.
[00:16:18.540] - Gordon
Yeah.
[00:16:18.880] - Gordon
Your visits to WordCamps. That would be cool.
[00:16:21.270] - Taylor
Exactly. And once the data is in there, it's just a matter of selecting the flight, selecting the order, and the flights themselves will have all the the data that I need. So the flight numbers, the to location, the name of the airport, the from, latitude and longitude. I can pass in other data, things like the length of the flight, so in the miles and also the time. I can put the names of the airports as well on the map. I can display it however I want, really. The version that I've got basically has a little box in the top corner that has the date and then the departure airport and the landing airport. And then during the flight, it's obviously there. And then when you get to the next airport, it will then update with the new route that you're taking. But there's lots of options of how I can display this, how I can make it nicer and easier to view and things like that. So, yeah, it's something that I was quite excited about making because I use an app to track all my flights, but I don't own that data. So although they have very pretty maps and data visualisations of how many delays I've had and the flights I've done in a specific year, for example, I don't have access to be able to display that how I want. I don't have that data, so that's why I save it to my website so that I then can do with whatever data.
[00:17:49.490] - Gordon
It's then your data.
[00:17:50.200] - Taylor
I can then cross-reference other data alongside it so I can see, does the number of activities I do, for example, does the number of times I go to the gym in a year during the 12 months of coffee, differ from a different year? I can make correlations between all the data because they're all in the same database. And so you are basically just making a query to different types of data with the same date range. Then obviously, you can then run your own comparisons, run your own calculations and gauge your own thesis and theories based on the data you've got. Does the number of activities correlate to the amount of calories you're eating, for example? Normally, it should do, but I can look at that data and see, is that actually what's happening? And there's obviously lots of other things as well. But yeah, something to go a step further and visualise that data. And coming up with a way that is easy to digest, because just having big tables isn't easy to understand or easy to read, and obviously pulling out key statistics and key metrics that make a comparison, for example.
[00:19:10.000] - Gordon
Which is why charts are so popular, aren't they? Because you can very easily see what's going on if something's going up or down, etc. So is this something that you've done and is available for people to see or is it still in progress?
[00:19:23.920] - Taylor
No, it's still on my local server. It was just a proof of concept that I was building. And I just wanted to see if it was possible because I had this idea ages ago, but never really looked into it because trying to map lines and especially the poly lines. So for example, all my Strava activities, I map onto a map as well. And you can see the route that I took for my runs or my cycles and things like that. And that took me ages and ages to figure out. So it was why I didn't want to dive into it and try and figure out. But yeah, I managed to get a working prototype that when I come to doing my site again, I will be able to put in there and have it all working.
[00:20:16.780] - Gordon
How exciting. Very good. Anything else you want to say?
[00:20:20.130] - Taylor
I don't think so. I think that's everything. I can share the video that I recorded. I recorded a short video with no sound, which just shows you an example of the animations that I built. So I'll share that.
[00:20:31.990] - Gordon
So we'll put a link to that in the show notes. You'll need to upload that, so we'll see when you get to do that. Unless you've already done it. But either way-
[00:20:41.550] - Taylor
Yeah, the video is already done. It's just-
[00:20:42.770] - Gordon
All right. We'll just put a link to it then. Thank you for joining us. As always, we can be found on Facebook and on YouTube. Please like, share, and subscribe.
[00:20:53.760] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes.
[00:20:58.670] - Gordon
And we're also on your favourite podcast platform as well. Until next week at 1pm on Friday, when we'll be back with you, we wish you a lovely week, lovely weekend. My name is Gordon. I'm from Drayson Design.
[00:21:13.850] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:21:16.620] - Gordon
Goodbye.
[00:21:16.960] - Taylor
Bye.
