Beta Steps

03/20/2024

Tech and the City event tonight. Learning from some great AI leaders.

10/25/2023

A little behind on my reading, great article by Dr. Welbourne. I encourage employers to embrace this trend. Not only to drive innovation for their business, but for our entrepreneurial ecosystem. There are numbers companies in our community that are where they are today because their employers embrace this mindset.

Full disclosure, I am fortunate enough to volunteer for Alabama Entrepreneurship Institute at The University of Alabama, which Dr. Welbourne runs.

Hybrid entrepreneurship offers inventors and early-stage entrepreneurs an opportunity to kick off their businesses while working full time and keeping their insurance, salary and relationships.

07/20/2021

The 3d printing lab and IoT area are in full use.

05/19/2021

So on Tuesday we were training a new team members on the 3d printers. She picked a pendant for her 3d printing training. After see the outcome, I decided that I wanted a set of the Witcher pendants as well and it was a great print for the Wednesday Thingiverse print for our page.

So I remotely scheduled these prints this morning. The file is from Thingiverse (Link below).

Did two different prints on two different machines.

On the filament side, I decide to use out Ender-5 Pro with TTYT3d true shine multi-color filament. While the operation temps say 215, with this Ender we run the temps lower, so it was at 200C with a bed at 55C. Layer quality at .02mm with minor supports and on a raft. Speed was 90mm and the fan was set at 75%. Total time 1 hour 25 minutes with great bed adhesion, no curling nor sinkage.

On the resin side, I decide to use the sparkmaker, old but tried and true. I used ysfilament.com form 181 (grey). 120 mm speed, 7 second exposure, with a 5 layer based at 90 second exposure to ensure adhesion to the platform. Did not realize the setting were still set for a training (which me 15mm lift between layers). Normally would have been 1mm lift. So this print took 3 hour 10 minutes. If normal setting were in place it should have taken 1 hour 50 minutes.

I will post pick later today once they are cleaned up.

The thingiverse file.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1347129

05/18/2021

Ended up doing a filament and resin 3d print for a friend who like the Witcher series.

Filament print took 1 hour 39 minutes. The smaller Witcher pendants took 3 hour 20 minutes.

04/22/2021

So feedback from yesterday, Thingiverse print.

I printed a tray that mounts below the control panel on my Ender 5 Pro. So I ended up having to modify things a little. Tray that printed print was shorter than I thought. Assumed it could be a scaling issue at first, but the screw holes aligned. Maybe the screens wide are different sizes.

So part of 3d printing is having to pivot from time to time. So I ended up printing an part of an additional tray, for just the amount I needed. I used my hand held extruded (3d pen) to creat a weld for both pieces. It is holding pretty well and everything fit. Going to sand the weld smooth and paint is black and remount it. I will print the drawers over the weekend and show it off at a later point.

All in all, I would give this Thingiverse file a 4/5. Even with me having to print a second file. I hope this a lesson for everyone, check the measurements within you slicer before printing.

04/21/2021

The 3d printing workstation.

So I have started to put our 3d printing workstation together not only for the stream, but to become a 3d printing production area. Currently, I have access to an Ender 5 pro, two Ender 3 v2, three LuxBots, one Glowforge, two formlabs form 2, two small generate CNC systems, one x-carve, and two Sparkmakers. Over the next few weeks, you will see our 3d workstation change as we move more of those printers into our space.

We plan to have reviews of each of the items. Maybe one day the following will be enough that manufacturers send me products to review. But for right now this is on my own dime, so please feel free to donate, like, and follow to help the process.

04/21/2021

Welcome to Beta Steps.

We are focus on stepping through technology and innovation. For years have been a geek when it comes to 3d printing and laser cutting. Now I am stepping out to help others in the IoT, 3d printing, and laser cutting communities.

I recently finished setting up my IoT and 3d printing workstations and plan to stream multiple times per week talking about different things. Once I have everything up and running properly I plan to have multiple streams per week. The goal is the first full week of May 2021. The break down:
- 1 stream will focus on one core area like IoT, laser cutting, and 3d printing. (Some weeks I may do multiple.
- 1 stream will be a general chat while printing something from Thingiverse (or other sites).
- 1 stream will be a project build, we will build something cool, these will most likely cross multiple core areas.

A complete schedule with be coming soon. One of the ways to know what we will be covering is to watch this page. I will usually have an item that is being built streaming on this page.

01/02/2020

Welcome 2020. I hope everyone as a productive year.

07/23/2019

In todays every changing business environment, communication between all stakeholders (entrepreneurs, project owners, mentors, analyst, investors or leadership) has become a complex manual process. If you are following Lean or Agile practices on a major product, how are you ensuring that you are using proven theory, full explored hypothesis, tracking your iterations, reducing miscommunications, and providing critical data to decision makers.

That is where Beta Steps comes in, we are cloud-based platform that serves as a central hub for the entire process bringing all involved with your product together into an organized, secure, and easy to manage environments. We manage the data such as workflow/timelines, business canvases, business plans, milestones/achievements, and competitor analysis. Our process helps to ensure that at all critical decisions are made with up to date data and proven hypothesis. Our goal is to help reduce miscommunication, wasted time and lost opportunity from the manual process that goes into the Lean and Agile process