A post in all caps isn't doing the work you think it's doing.
I had no illusion in 2016. In fact, I had no illusion back in 2002 when I left the US and gave up my citizenship after Dubya was elected and signed the USA Patriot Act into law after 9/11. America is hosed and has been officially on the path to idiocracy and fascism since then.
It's just that a 3rd round of millions of Trump votes should confirm it without the shadow of a doubt to even the most wide-eyed believers in American exceptionalism. America today is the 1933 Germany of our time.
Even if Trump had lost, one fact remains: tens of millions of Americans voted for this guy three times in a row.
The first time, it's conceivable that Americans made a mistake.
The second time, they knew Trump as actual President.
The third time, they knew Trump as a convicted felon, insurrectionist and overtly wannabe dictator, and they voted for him even harder.
At this point, MAGA isn't a freak event, it's the norm. Even if the dems had won, they'd have won the presidency of a MAGA country, and quite frankly, what's the point... You can't cure someone who wants to be sick.
If you're bothered by social media votes, you need to go outside more.
Social media isn't real. It's a poor simulacrum of human interaction. Find real human beings to interact with and whatever they think of you, tell you, or how they treat you in your face matters.
But whatever people become and how they behave once they hide behind a screen and cast simplistic one-bit click-clicks to express complex human feelings and opinions doesn't.
It will be when the Trump voters discover that they will pay for the tariffs and not China.
I hate Elon Musk as much as the next guy - and all the more now that he has this massive conflict of interest working in his favor and at the American public's expense.
But I will say this for the sake of exercizing critical thinking: everybody is happy to say AI hallucinates when what it says doesn't suit their narrative, and call AI intelligent when it does.
Rule #1: don't read an article entitled "How Do I Protect My Privacy If I’m Seeking an Abortion?" on the internet with your own computer or cellphone. Borrow someone else's - preferably a man's so you don't end up potentially compromising another woman later - or go to the public library.
It has a long piece of 1mm piano wire running through that acts as a spindle. It's a standard hinge design called a continuous hinge. I suppose I could have 3D-printed the spindle but it would have made the hinge huge and not very nice-looking.
That's kind of my problem: my correction is not simple. I can get near or far lenses with my correction for relatively cheap - like $100 a pair. But progressives are eye-wateringly expensive.
As for my frames, they're both free and priceless to me because I make them myself. And just because they're not off the shelf, they're more rewarding to wear.
So having some understanding and control of that part of the process could have helped.
The only things you can rely on with regard to how the lenses are edged is:
The bevel will be "bevelly" - meaning it'll be a bevel of some kind, between 90 and 120 degrees, but no flatter than that. In other words, you can rely on having something to grip the lens with and that's enough.
The bevel follows the curvature of the frame. If you frame is flat, the bevel will be placed all around the edge of the lens flat too.
As much as your correction will allow, the bevel will be placed as far forward as possible so the lens looks like it's tangent with the front of the frame all around, and all the thickness will be hidden at the back of the frame. So if your frame is, say, 2mm in width, the root of the bevel will be placed 1mm from the front of the edge.
The other thing you can rely on is that the bevel will be slightly oversized so they can be snapped into the frame, and the amount of oversize will be a bit higher for plastic frames which are more flexible. And that's where the danger lies: if your frames are designed to hold the frame without pressure like mine, you have to tell the optician so they pass the information to the lens cutter. Otherwise you will received lenses that are slightly too big.
But don't sweat it too much: the great thing with 3D printing is, even if the lenses you received aren't the right size, you can always print another frame with slightly revised dimensions.
And if you really don't want to print another frame, don't forget that you pay beaucoup bucks for those damn bits of plastic, so you can always copiously warn the optician that your frames are not made of the kinds of plastics plastic frames are usually made of, and then the onus will be on the lens maker to make the lenses right for your frames (remember that they will be sent your frames, so they'll know rightaway if the lenses fit).
If the lenses aren't right, it's their problem and you can reject the lenses and tell them to try again. If you warn the optician in no uncertain terms that your frames are PLA, they or the lens maker can't claim they didn't know.
Just design the frames you want with the shape you want, with a 120-degree bevel, and ask your optician if it's workable for the lens maker. They might tell you they'll ask them - and you can leave them a test print too if they want to sent it to the lens maker too. There isn't much more to this really.
I’ll definitely add cable temples to the list of things to try and see what works well.
Be aware that cable temples are a lot more finicky to adjust than regular curved temples. If they're too short, even a little, they'll dig into the skin behind your ears and you'll hate them. Likewise, if the hook is too narrow, the tip will hurt you under your ear.
That's a big reason why cable temples went out of favor in the 1920's: they're great when they're well adjusted, but they quickly become nasty and uncomfortable when they aren't - unlike maladjusted curved temples which can simply ride up the ear a little without too much drama.
With regular metal wire, you can bend the temples this and that way to make them fit. Not so much with PLA. You can shape it with heat but if you do it more than once, it becomes rough and unpleasant to wear - if the PLA doesn't delaminate completely. So take the time to design the right length and shape directly in your model. It's a bit long and tedious but once you know the right dimensions, you'll love how natural they feel.
Also, don't make the wire too thin or it will dig into your skin as well. And too thick will make the wire inflexible and difficult to put on. The wire profile that works best for me is this (for PLA):
They're prescription glasses. They're my regular glasses I wear every day. I made the frames but I can't print optical lenses, sadly. I wish I could because they cost a fortune and they're a real rip-off...
I made this custom case for my 3D printed spectacles:
It holds the glasses by the edge of the frames, so the lenses are suspended above the bottom of the case without touching anything and no padding material is necessary to prevent scratching.
And being specially sized for those glasses, the case is no larger than it needs to be.
Did I mention that I love 3D printing? 🙂
You might find this little tool useful:
This is a block with a series of vertical and horizontal holes from ⌀1 mm to ⌀3.6 mm (nominal) in 0.1-mm increments. I print this block with any new printer / new material at the layer thickness and speed I use most often and keep the blocks as references.
Then, when I want to print a part with a hole in it that will end up printed at the final diameter without any rework (or very close, but usually it ends up exactly right) I use the gauge block I printed with the printer and the material I intend to print the part out of to find out which nominal diameter hole I need to use in the model for the hole.
For instance, the block in the photo was printed on a Prusa Mk4 with PLA at 0.2 mm layer thickness. If I want a ⌀0.8-mm vertical hole with no interference in my final part in PLA out of that printer, I'll need to model a ⌀1.2-mm hole. I know that because the shank of a 0.8-mm drillbit will slide freely in the vertical hole marked ⌀1.2 in the block.
Or if I want a hole that I can screw an M3 screw into without having to run a tap through it, the block tells me I would have to use a ⌀3.2-mm hole to fit a ⌀3-mm pin in freely, and I back off 0.4 mm to get a hole in which the screw thread will engage well but reasonably lightly, or 0.5 mm for a tighter engagement (but with a bit more risk with horizontal holes near an edge, because the layers might separate) so I know I'll have to model a ⌀2.8 or ⌀2.7 hole in the model.
I use those gauge blocks all the time. They save me a lot of time on parts that I print often because I never have to ream or thread the holes: they come out the printer just right and ready to use.
I had new progressive lenses made, but the old ones are still fine and don’t have a scratch. They’re just a bit weak at near distance, but otherwise perfectly serviceable.
So I made new frames for them because I don’t like to throw away things that work.
All assembled, the frames weigh 3.5 grams, and 14 grams with the lenses mounted.
This was printed with a Prusa Mk4 and regular PLA at 0.15 mm layer height. The hinges use simple 10x1 pins - and I worked my magic to print the holes horizontally to the final dimension with interference fit, so no reaming or drilling is necessary. These glasses are straight out of the printer with zero rework.
I think they look pretty good as they are. If anybody notices they’re 3D-printed, I’ll say I’m gunning for that particular style 🙂
The front of the frames prints in 11 minutes and both temples in 12 minutes. I could break and make a new pair every day for the rest of my life and it would still be faster and cheaper than going to Specsavers only once.
Apparently I installed that thing in 2006 and I last updated it in 2016, then I quit updating it for some reason that I totally forgot. Probably laziness...
It's been running for quite some time and we kind of forgot about it in the closet, until the SSH tunnel we use to get our mail outside our home stopped working because modern openssh clients refuse to use the antiquated key cipher I setup client machines with way back when any longer.
I just generated new keys with a more modern cipher that it understands (ecdsa-sha2-nistp256) and left it running. Because why not 🙂
There should be no need to pile on. Any one of those things would have been disqualifying in times past. Clinton almost got impeached over a blowjob. But Trump and all the things he said and done over the past 9 years is somehow okay. The mind boggles.