[00:00:10.460] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:10.900] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:11.720] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:13.610] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:15.440] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week With Taylor and Gordon," a weekly podcast and vidcast where we talk about things that have affected our business in the last seven days. And here we are, look, back together again.
[00:00:27.860] - Taylor
Yeah we are.
[00:00:28.310] - Gordon
Yeah, the arguments over. There wasn't really an argument. Last week Taylor was working away and that's why we did the sort of the Zoom thing, which sort of worked.
[00:00:37.600] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:00:38.020] - Gordon
Yeah. We had a few audio issues, but we managed to sort them out, so that was good. So we'll know for next time, should we do that. And here we are back for another episode. And we need to make you very aware that our giveaway that we announced two weeks ago finishes at four o'clock today. So if you haven't entered, now is the time to go and do it. The winners will be picked at 4pm and we will let you know in next week's episode who the winners are and how to get in contact with us. And we also said we would we would announce the prize for the person who guessed closest to the the number of hours of audio up until the fifty second episode. So not including anything after that. And Taylor, do you want to announce the prize for that?
[00:01:30.190] - Taylor
Yes. We are going to give away half an hour free consultation on a new or existing project. You can ask us any questions. We'll give you our advice, what we would suggest. This isn't for building it, this is just if you had an idea in mind, you thought, you know, I'm not sure what the best way around, about it is, or what direction I should go or anything, kind of that we have kind of some expertise on, we are going to give that away to you.
[00:01:54.460] - Gordon
So that's 30 minutes. And you can choose either Taylor or myself or both if you want, it's your choice. And that is for the winner of the person who gets the closest to the number of hours that the podcast or the audio, the podcast have run in total. So if you if you have an estimate, then put it in the comments below, now. 52 episodes and whoever gets the closest will win that prize. So I ought to explain today's a little bit warm where we are, so we've got the windows open today going outside. So you might be able to hear sort of a waterfall and birds and if you do, that's what it is. We haven't sort of taken over an aviary or something. That's what it is. So Taylor, let's start with you. What would you like to talk about today?
[00:02:46.240] - Taylor
So my topic for this week is 3D printing. So, we bought a 3D printer last week.
[00:02:53.230] - Gordon
We did.
[00:02:53.650] - Taylor
And it was exciting. I've wanted a 3D printer for a long time, but I just decided that I didn't want to tell my dad or let him know that I wanted one or he didn't even listen. I think I mentioned it in the past, but more of a kind of "Oh, I want a 3D printer" and nobody thought anything of it. But, yeah, we, um, we decided to get a 3D printer and the possibilities, I guess, are endless, is probably the correct term saying that there's so many...
[00:03:16.510] - Gordon
They're down to how we, how much we could actually build the models in 3D. Isn't it, really?
[00:03:21.790] - Taylor
Yeah, so there's lots that we've been learning and we've been trying kind of building stuff and using premade stuff and just kind of printing it. And we kind of have some to show you. If you're listening, you won't be able to see it.
[00:03:34.300] - Gordon
So, just before we get to that, tell them what we got and tell them where we're getting the models from, because I think that's really important. If anyone else is thinking about getting a 3D printer, we can tell them what we've learnt.
[00:03:45.970] - Taylor
Yeah. So we got it from Amazon, I believe.
[00:03:49.300] - Gordon
Yeah, we did.
[00:03:50.740] - Taylor
And we use a website called Thingiverse, which is kind of a big kind of asset library that people can upload their files to and then other people.
[00:04:01.330] - Gordon
These are their 3D models aren't they.
[00:04:02.950] - Taylor
Yeah. And then other people can download them and print them from what they've already made. So you don't have to make yourself in 3D software, 3D architecture software.
[00:04:10.900] - Gordon
And the printer that we decided to go for is an "Artillery Sidewinder X1". So it's quite a big printer. It has a print bed of 30 centimetres by 30 centimetres by 40 centimetres high. So it's it's quite a large area, which means we can build models that are quite big. And that, I thought was important for me in particular, because if I'm building props for my magic, I want to be able to build sort of tubes and larger props for my children's shows, for example. So that's why we went for that one. And then a few teething problems, wasn't there?
[00:04:49.210] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:04:50.350] - Gordon
Um, and getting the right filament. So again, the filament comes in lots of different types. Do you want to explain the types that we have?
[00:04:57.760] - Taylor
Yes. So we have PLA plus which is kind of PLA but a bit stronger, a bit and there's lots of different kind of what's it called? What's the...
[00:05:11.170] - Gordon
Colours?
[00:05:12.010] - Taylor
No, the type of material I guess that you can get and you can use and each of them have different properties. So some of them are stretchier, some are more resistant, some are more brittle, depending on what you're printing it's, normally best to use different kind of textures or
[00:05:29.920] - Gordon
Materials.
[00:05:31.630] - Taylor
Filaments, depending on what you're printing. So, you know, in the future, if we decide we wanted something that's got a bit more flex to it, then you might go for a more flexible filament.
[00:05:40.970] - Gordon
Yeah. So we've got three different filaments at the moment. We have a blue PLA plus, we have a black PLA plus, which we haven't opened yet, and we have a sort of a Gold-y silk PLA plus, we think it's plus.
[00:05:56.710] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:05:57.010] - Gordon
It's weird, because on the, when we bought it it said it was PLA and when we got it and opened it, the packaging, the reel says PLA plus. So we're not entirely sure what we've got there. But we've also got a couple of upgrades that we need to do on it. Do you want to explain the updates?
[00:06:15.850] - Taylor
So, we've got one for the tubing, which basically those are very brittle Plastic-y attachment that is very, very prone to breaking so we...
[00:06:27.320] - Gordon
Or melting, in fact, because it takes a lot of high temperature. So the idea is to put a new one in there that has a higher temperature tolerance so it won't melt into your model.
[00:06:37.720] - Taylor
What else do we have?
[00:06:39.010] - Gordon
The other thing we've got coming which isn't here yet, it should be here today in fact, is an all metal extruder arm. So the one that comes with it is plastic. And basically when you're putting the filament in, you have to push the arm back so that when you push it, push the filament in, it's pushing the filament against a sort of a roller. So it's got tension on there. So when it's pulling it down, it's got tension and it manages to come out at a steady stream. And we've been on Facebook and we've added lots of groups that have to do with 3D printing and in particular this printer, and one of the things that people say is always get, whenever you get a new machine, always get Capricorn tubing, which is the heat resistant tubing, which we already have, and also an all metal alloy extruder arm, which is something that is in the post and will be with us today. Then we have to actually go ahead and dismantle the printhead, which is a bit of a scary thing to do.
[00:07:43.420] - Taylor
Yeah, we also want to get a de-burrer, is it?
[00:07:48.310] - Gordon
Yes. So, on the bottom of the prints at the moment, the first layer needs to be a good squish, they call it. So that it adheres to the heat bed because you don't want a model to move while it's printing. Otherwise it will just go all out of kilter and it won't be a good model. And at the moment we're getting what's called 'elephant feet', which come down and sort of go out, sort of splay out a little bit at the end, at the bottom where the first layer is. And so that when we take the model, you then have to sort of de-burr the edges to get the elephant's foot off to make it straight. Now, ideally, you want to make the edges straight to begin with. You don't want to have to use the de-burrer, but a de-burrer is quite useful for cleaning up edges anyway, so we're going to get one for that.
[00:08:35.540] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:08:36.280] - Gordon
We do need to figure out the bottoms though, the feet, because that's not so good, especially when you've got parts that you want to put into another part. So you don't want anything that comes out because it's going to stop you putting them together.
[00:08:51.830] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:08:52.720] - Gordon
So, do you want to show them?
[00:08:54.310] - Taylor
So yeah, if you're listening to the audio, you're not going to be able to see. But we recommend that you kind of go over and have a look at the video and, yeah, have a look at what we're showing. So the first one we printed was this kind of cube, I don't know if you can see it's kind of like a cube type shape and it has the printer's logo on it. It's kind of engraved into it. So inside, it goes down. Yeah, and it was a nice, it came out quite nice. This was the demo that came with the memory stick, came on the memory stick when we opened up the printer.
[00:09:33.310] - Gordon
You know, should we, we should say actually, the way it works is really quite clever. You haven't got to plug it into a printer. They give you a little memory stick...
[00:09:41.180] - Taylor
Computer.
[00:09:42.160] - Gordon
Into a computer, sorry. You don't need to plug it into a computer. They give you a little memory stick and you basically put your print files on that memory stick from your computer and then transfer the memory stick into the printer, plug it in, and then you don't have to have a computer next to it, on the whole time, which is great, a really good system. And this is a file that came on the memory stick originally. And in fact, this one is not so bad with the with the feet. So, I don't know, we may need to look at the settings again and see what they had because that one is actually quite good. There's, it's quite straight.
[00:10:16.030] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:10:16.570] - Gordon
Maybe we need to look at that again. So yeah, that was the first thing we ever printed.
[00:10:21.650] - Taylor
Then we had a 'boatie' or a
[00:10:25.660] - Gordon
'Benchie'
[00:10:26.110] - Taylor
'Benchie' that's it.
[00:10:27.050] - Gordon
It's like a benchmark model.
[00:10:28.610] - Taylor
So it's a little boat, and you can kind of see it's got like a cabin. I don't know if you see that.
[00:10:34.670] - Gordon
It's got a wheel inside the cabin.
[00:10:36.180] - Taylor
It's got writing underneath the bottom, but I don't know if you can read that from there. But yeah, it's a really nice, sturdy little toy, but it kind of allows you to test to see how your printer is comparing to lots of other printers.
[00:10:49.040] - Gordon
So the reason this is a benchie is that lots of printers have trouble doing certain things. So, for example, on here you've got an overhang. So there's an archway door and then there's print on top of it. So printing an overhang is difficult if you haven't got supports and this will tell you if it's able to do that or not. And this is really good. And you also have the smooth sides and you can check to see if there's any layering issues, if it's under or over extruding. And it does have the little feet on the bottom, which I can feel. In fact, the first one we tried, failed miserably didn't it? It came unstuck from the bed, and we had to stop it because it got to sort of halfway up the bow here and then stopped. But this one I'm really, really pleased with. It's come out lovely. It's really, really nice. So really pleased with that.
[00:11:43.010] - Taylor
And we then, I then printed a headphone holder which is currently upstairs holding my headphones, and it was quite a big print. And basically it clamps onto the desk and I then had to 3D print a screw to kind of twist to clamp it to the desk and then it kind of just extends out a bit so I can hang my headphones on there. And that took, I think it took about 10 hours in total, including both parts, which yeah, worked really, really good.
[00:12:15.500] - Gordon
Yeah. We had a little bit of an issue with the overhang. There's a little bit of deformation, but it doesn't actually affect the functionality of the part.
[00:12:23.640] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:12:24.140] - Gordon
So that was the important bit.
[00:12:25.730] - Taylor
We then had some toothpaste holders. So, you always kind of never get the last bit of toothpaste in your, if you've got a squirty toothpaste. And so what we 3D printed is a kind of holder that you put it into and then you have like a key where you turn it. And what that will do is that then removes or pushes all of the toothpaste up. So you're left with just an empty kind of tube the more you turn it really and it kind of helps you to get all of the toothpaste out.
[00:12:55.340] - Gordon
And my partner is dreadful at that. She will always pick up the toothpaste and just press from the middle. So the toothpaste inside the tube just goes both ways. So having this is essential for us really, don't know why we haven't had one before. We used to have the squirty ones with the top.
[00:13:11.390] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:13:11.840] - Gordon
It used to bring the bottom up, but we haven't had those for a while. So hopefully this will save us some money or save us having to get toothpaste and leave some in the container.
[00:13:21.150] - Taylor
Yeah. And last of all we have printed some clips, so kind of your washing peg clips and these have different, you see there, these have different...
[00:13:32.900] - Gordon
Jaws.
[00:13:35.180] - Taylor
Yeah, jaws which you can mix and match and you can swap out and replace with the different ones that you can print and you can obviously print more and yes, swap them around for whatever you need them for.
[00:13:46.160] - Gordon
So they are all models that other people have designed. The only model that we've actually printed that we've designed is a little playing card box holder. So it's a little stand that allows me to put a pack of cards in and it will sit on the table and it won't fall over. And that required us to get some digital callipers so that we could measure very precisely how much space we needed on the inside and on the outside and how big, how thick the walls had to be. And it's a really simple model, but we learnt quite a lot doing it, didn't we? So we will show you in the future things that we have designed and printed ourselves and what they're used for. So watch this space.
[00:14:33.710] - Taylor
Definitely.
[00:14:35.230] - Gordon
Anything else you want to say on that?
[00:14:36.700] - Taylor
I think that's everything.
[00:14:37.720] - Gordon
OK, so we, I'll be honest. I haven't done a great deal of other things this week, I've done lots of admin, but a lot of our time was spent looking after the 3D printer and watching it because it's quite mesmerising. Watching it print is quite therapeutic in fact, it just builds layer by layer. But, you know, that took up a lot of time and we got that last Friday. So it's been we've had it for a week now and I think we've done quite well with it, quite well. Still a couple of issues, but they'll be fixed.
[00:15:15.280] - Taylor
We're learning.
[00:15:16.270] - Gordon
We're learning. So I haven't done a great deal, so I thought I would just talk about, very briefly, scanning documents. Now, I think I've spoken about this in the past. I have a scanner which is called a "Scan Snap IX500". I don't know that that model is available anymore. I think there are newer models available, and it works really well with Evernote, which is a sort of a cloud document service. And what happens is when we get post through, I put the documents into the scanner, we press scan, and it'll scan multiple documents double-sided. So it will scan both sides in one go. It looks a little bit like a fax machine, although younger people don't seem to know what fax machines are, but it looks a little bit like that. So it's a document holder scanner. So it's got like a, if you can imagine, a back to front printer. So you have a...
[00:16:18.070] - Taylor
If you're printing on like coloured card, sometimes they have inserts that you can put it in.
[00:16:20.780] - Gordon
So, yeah, so you're putting it at the back and then it comes through and ends up at the front. That's what this scanner is. And the reason it's so good is that not only does it scan the documents, if it's text, it will also convert that text into editable or searchable text, and it will create a PDF file for however many documents you put through. So if you've got a three page letter, it will scan all three pages, it will 'OCR' them, Optical Character Recognise them, and it will then put them all into one PDF file, and it will upload it to Evernote all automatically. All I have to do is put the documents in, press 'scan.' Now, the reason that this is so good is that we have most of the documents that we need on Evernote and whoever needs them has access. So if it's a document for Taylor, he has access in his Evernote; if it's a document for my partner, she has access in her Evernote; and if it's a business document, I have access in my Evernote. And I can also share that with other people who don't have an actual account, sorry don't have a paid account but have an Evernote account, so I can share these documents with other people. So, for example, if I have an instruction manual or a receipt or something like that, anything to do with the House bills, you know, they go in there and they're available to the people who need access to them. And I am doing my accounts. I know...
[00:17:53.020] - Taylor
I've done mine already.
[00:17:53.020] - Gordon
It's the beginning of June, yeah which is great. Beginning of June. But normally my accounts are sort of prepared in sort of November, December, and then it's a mad rush in January to get them filed before the 31st of January, which is then when I have to pay my tax bill, being self-employed. And so it's very rare for me to actually get it done early. And now you can do it after April, after the 4th of April, so 5th of April, you could submit your accounts, but I never have done. But the reason I'm doing it early this year is a) to get it done and out the way, but more importantly, so that we can get it done before July the 31st, which is my second payment on account time. So when you're self-employed, you pay at the end of January and the end of July and they sort of split your bill into what you owe them in January, plus half of what they think you're going to owe them for the next year, and then they do the other half in July. So by putting them in before July, instead of estimating how much I'm going to take for the year, that's just gone, because I've filed them, we can figure out exactly how much I owe them, which is really important at the moment because my year last year was so bad and we sort of estimated a lower figure based on the fact that I didn't have any shows. What I want to be able to do is to make sure I pay the right amount of tax rather than too much tax and then have to sort of pay less in January because paying less now would actually be more useful to me for cashflow reasons, being a business, than sort of letting the government hold onto my money until six months time in January and then finding I pay less then. So that is what's happening. It also means I'll know how much I'm going to be paying next year, so next January, so I can then basically put the right amount of money aside for that. So it's all budgeted for, and I won't have to, again, estimate or hope that I've got the right amount of money in my savings waiting to be given to the government. It's actually going to be the right amount. And so what I'm doing is I'm going through all of my statements, making sure that all the accounts are correct and up to date. And in fact, I'm doing them up to now rather than up to April, which is what I need to do. And then once I've got back up to date again, I can then just do it on a three monthly, I think, because that's when my statements come in, my three monthly accounts. It means that I'm not going back and going, "oh, hang on, January 2020. What's this payment? I don't know what this is."
[00:20:44.170] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:20:44.890] - Gordon
Because I forgot to write it down or whatever, because sometimes that happens. So hopefully that won't happen. And so the reason I'm mentioning the scanner is that I'm doing all the statements and putting them into the scanner. I'm scanning them all. They are then automatically going into Evernote and I'm tagging them with the month and the year of the statement date and which account they're for, so should I need to go back and find them, which by law we have to keep, I think it's six years worth of accounts, then they're all in Evernote. I don't need to worry about them. So this scanner, although I have mentioned it in the past, is worth mentioning again, because it's become a really useful tool in my business and it saves me an awful lot of time with filing.
[00:21:32.320] - Taylor
And there are other tools, like you can use your phone can't you, that, they do same job, actually.
[00:21:37.240] - Gordon
Yeah, you can scan documents using your phone. It takes a lot longer than the scanner does because you have to do one side, turn it over, do another side. And I think it then just puts it into individual documents, but yeah, that is a possibility. If you don't want to spend out on a on a scanner, that is a really good option as well. For me, the scanner is the best option. I also scan other things like if I'm looking for artwork or logos for companies that I'm working with, I can just put it through the scanner and it's a really quick way of doing it. I do have a proper flatbed scanner that I use if I want to get a much higher quality. But if it's just text that the client has sent me and they've sent me it over as a letter, a printed letter, which does happen every now and then, then I can just put it through the scanner, OCR it, copy and paste it and I'm done. I haven't got to sit there and retype everything.
[00:22:36.050] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:22:37.240] - Gordon
So yes, that is the "Scan Snap IX500" I believe.
[00:22:42.590] - Taylor
Sounds great.
[00:22:43.630] - Gordon
Yes. So thank you for joining us. I think that's everything I would like to say.
[00:22:48.080] - Taylor
Same from me.
[00:22:48.640] - Gordon
So as always, thank you for joining us. If you'd like to share and subscribe, now is the time to do it because you can join our giveaway. Go and join our giveaway, Taylor will give you the link for that in just a moment. We are on Facebook and on YouTube and the links for those are on the pages now.
[00:23:06.160] - Taylor
You can also go to our website: thisweekwith.co.uk. And if you add /giveaway on the end of that, you can enter the giveaway and we highly recommend you to enter, you know, the more people that enter, you know, the more people who can find out about us. And, you know, we can do bigger...
[00:23:24.490] - Gordon
The more we can grow. Yeah.
[00:23:24.820] - Taylor
Yeah, better prizes we can give.
[00:23:26.350] - Gordon
So you've got, I think it's about an hour and a, oh I haven't got my watch on. About an hour and a half, maybe left to enter that. So four o'clock is when we are going to draw the winners. In fact, I think we said we were going to stop it at three o'clock. So you've got until three o'clock to enter and then four o'clock is when we're going to draw the winners. So you've still got time to enter, but don't delay if you're listening to this now on your phone or as a podcast then use your phone, go to thisweekwith.co.uk/giveaway without delay. Make sure you do it now. So thank you for joining us. We'll see you next week on Friday at 1:00 p.m. where we will announce the winners. Until then, my name is Gordon, I'm with Drayson Design.
[00:24:14.470] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:24:17.140] - Gordon
Goodbye.
[00:24:17.650] - Taylor
Bye.
