Back in the shop, back on the road, Printing

This morning I dropped off my Tacoma at the dealer to get the official recall work done on my rear differential that is seeping fluid slightly.  The official fix is the same thing I read when they wanted to confiscate my truck a few weeks back, replace the gasket and re-torque the bolts.  I guess they just got the parts in to do the work.  I was given a loaner Rav4 so I hope the entire thing is a non-issue.

Now that the gun parts are 3D printed I have been printing some more cool/useful things.  The Iphone 6 phone stand took FOREVER to print, something like 18-19 hours.  The reason it took so long was it utilized a .1 millimeter resolution height (gun was printed at .3 mil) and 100% infill (gun was 30%).  These settings make the files huge and the prints slow but it results in a VERY strong end product.  The stand will work perfectly to keep my phone ideally placed and angled at the office.

The other object was a 3D lampshade that was my first ever Fusion 360 project that I made from scratch.  Now of course I made it from following a YouTube video step by step but I hope sometime soon I can get comfortable enough in the software to bang out my own custom objects to a degree.

So after a one year road trip hiatus Cindy and I officially are heading back on the road in early August.  We are doing something rare in my road trip history, an entirely east cost route that will take us as far north as Portland, Maine.  Hugging the east coast during summer is less than ideal because of the summer vacationers but we wanted to try it at least once. One of the stops we have planned along the way is Rehoboth Beach where we plan to finally spread my mom’s ashes at the place we all enjoyed many fond memories.

The trip is on the short side as my work schedule the next several months sort of sucks with many weeks requiring my attendance, this was literally the only week I could sneak in before December.  It looks like the mileage each way is roughly 1600 miles so the distance compared to our 6500 mile western trips is not bad. However the fact that we are covering 3200 miles in nine total days while trying to allow ample time to sight see and explore via one wheel is going to make for some very full days.