Upgraded my Adept with the AnyBall mod, loving it so far!

submitted 9 months ago by

Upgraded my Adept with the AnyBall mod, loving it so far!

(Cross-posting this from !3dprinting@lemmy.ml. Hopefully I'm doing it the right way, sorry if not! I know there's like threadiverse cross-posting meta going on about cluttering up people's timelines and such.)

This is the 57-68mm ball size version, with an Aramith tournament series cue ball and Rexroth BTUs. I printed the new parts out of PHA, both for sustainability and because I just LOVE the way it feels, almost kinda leathery? It's got the new hi-res scrolling firmware that Ploopy released, although it took some fiddling (this, basically) in Linux to get it to work right.

So, as some people have said about this mod already, the stiction is really almost too low. To compensate, I have my sensitivity turned way down and mouse acceleration turned off. Even then, you really have to use it on a stable surface for any accuracy. I used to use my unmodded one on the bed occasionally. This one rolls so freely that any shifting of the surface beneath will get the ball drifting around. Still, it doesn't take too long to adapt, and I don't think I'd go back. Also the noise isn't nearly as loud as some people have said, and it's not an unlikable sound anyway.

There's a hi-res scrolling Ploopy Knob on it's way in the mail right now, and once it arrives, I think I might switch this Adept to Plodah's alternative firmware. It may not have hi-res scrolling, but it has SO MANY other features! In particular, I could replace the dragscroll button with Plodah's "sniper mode" button, which seems super useful.

Comparison with the unmodded Adept:

Hot Top New Old

nocturne@sopuli.xyz

edited 9 months ago

The red dots on the ball made me think it was one of those old school cleaning balls for pre optical mice, but for a track ball.

Remy Rose

OP 9 months ago

Aramith has some vague claims about like, you can use them to more accurately visualize the path it'll travel in? I dunno how true that actually is in billiards, but ngl it's fun to watch it spin in place lol

Comments in 3D Printing@lemmy.ml

IMALlama@lemmy.world

9 months ago

Where do you source your PHA? I looked around a year or so ago, but the options were fairly sparse.

Remy Rose

OP 9 months ago

It's still that way unfortunately... but I think selection will start getting better soon! Right now there's AllPHA, and the new EcoGenesis that I think recently spun off from the now defunct BeyondPlastic. But there's a new line with way better selection called PHA 3DESIGN with good color selection and cool composites.

To the best of my knowledge, all 3 of those are sourcing their raw materials from the same company, with PHA 3DESIGN being closest to the source? They're like a subsidiary or something. I've heard of a couple other companies gearing up to offer their own lines too, but it's unclear to me so far where it's sourced from. What we really need is for some awesome hobbyist to figure out how to spin up their own mini bioreactor setup and bring it in-house, but I wouldn't know where to begin unfortunately.

IMALlama@lemmy.world

9 months ago

Thanks for the links!

Colorfabb lists products for sale and claims compostability in any environment. I am tempted to buy a spool and give it a go, including composting in my compost pile.

PHA 3DESIGN's website says their products are not home compostable :(

100% bio-based, blended from PHA and other bio-based materials, industrially compostable.

EcoGenesis's website spends a lot of time saying "PLA isn't compostable outside of very specific conditions", but doesn't appear to say that their product is more widely compostable. I also didn't see an obvious place to buy their filament or even really a listing of filaments.

Remy Rose

OP 9 months ago

Oh yeah, PHA3DESIGN sells both pure PHA and PHA/PLA blends, their pure stuff is (to the best of my understanding) fully home compostable. Any pure line of it should be, it's just a matter of some companies being sneaky about whether it's actually 100% PHA or not.

EcoGenesis I'm prettttyyyyy sure is pure PHA, mostly because they're the ones who usually call other people out when it's not. They ran spectrometry on this other brand (Regen) and posted publicly about it clearly being blended. Also their spools have labels with pretty hardcore and believable verification on them.