Due to the current situation with lack of N95 masks in the stores I resorted to 3D print a pair for me and my wife.

I also made the designs freely available on thingiverse: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4264883

Here is the description of the project:

High airflow Respirator mask in 3 sizes: Large, Medium and Small.

Large works for a large male face. 125mm height*
Medium for a smaller male face. 115 mm
Small works for a female or a 10 y/o kid face. 105mm height.

*I measure face height from chin to the centre of the nose bridge.)

Designed to take 1 or 2 55mm cotton pads into each of 3 filter housings.
Install filter medium into the bottom of the cap and screw on to the mask body.

Make sure to print 3 caps for each mask as well. Caps are the same for all mask sizes.

Used white window insulation sticky cord on the inside to add cushion and improve insulation.

Had to also use a file and fine sanding paper to make sure the mating surfaces on the mask body are smooth and do not have any air gaps.

Disclaimer: I designed and printed this for me and my family. It has not been tested, and although I designed with safety in mind, I do not claim it can prevent any infections or viruses. Use at your own risk. PLEASE be careful when testing: different cotton pad brands have different density and 2 pads per filter may cause difficulty breathing! Please make sure to remove the filters and sanitize the mask and caps after each use.

The models are designed in Fusion 360.

Parts printed on Creality Ender 3S Printer with the following settings:

• Layer Thicknss: 0.2mm
• Infill: 20%
• Filament Material: PLA
• First Layer Speed: 35mm/s
• Wall Speed: 75mm/s
• Support: everywhere
• Support Speed 75mm/s
• Support Density: 1 line at 5%

1 mask plus 3 caps takes about 14 hours to print at: 75mm/s.

Please wash your hands and stay safe.

We will get through this!

Cap Size:0.55 MB Large Mask Size:3.29 MB Medium Mask Size:3.79 MB Small Mask Size:3.78 MB

I personally would like to wish every one of my supporters Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

I like to consider every sold seat a start of new partnership with the goal of making Your work easier and more productive every day.

New year will bring lots of very cool developments and I am glad, that since all of the licenses we sell never expire, every single on of my customers will be able to enjoy the latest improvements.

Cheers and Have Great Holidays!

3D Prining is about to to take over traditional machining the same way CNC Machining took over manual machining.
Eventually 3D printing will replace casting too.

Since 3D Printing does not require complicated setup and programming, this in turn will lead to massive loss of machining-related jobs.

Read more to see if this is true!

Read More 

I try to not comment on things outside of my immediate area of knowledge or specialization.
But this one caught my eye and I thought it would be interesting to share with you guys.

So the news in a nutshell is Amazon applying discounts to products that third-party vendors are selling on its platform.

For example. Company "A" is selling its smartphone for $1000.
That is the price of the product on their online store and brick-and-mortar stores and other platforms like for example Amazon.

Read More 

Well not the bad mayday. It is the good one.

Today is the International Worker's day.

My best wishers go to all machinists and cnc programmers out there.

Keep it safe.

Btw. HSMAdvisor v1.509 has been released just yesterday. It is a big release which has lots of improvements. So we updated the Mastercam x9 and 2017 hooks as well.

Btw2. User's feedback has been plenty and steady recently. Please keep it up!  We really like making HSMAdvisor even better by adding stuff that you actually need!

Cheers!

Out of all kinds of feedback forms on HSMAdvisor (we have Forums, User Feedback and Unistall Feedback) web site the only one I dread opening is the "Uninstall Feedback".

When someone uninstalls HSMAdvisor, on the last step the program asks to provide the final feedback to maybe help us make HSMAdvisor better.

I do not like reading this form very much because it means that would-be users left in some way dissatisfied with the program.

And that really breaks my heart!

Among the most common answers is stuff like "does not support metric" even though IT VERY MUCH SUPPORTS METRIC.
We have, without a doubt, one of the most flexible units system of all machining-related software products.
I guess I have to improve in helping people learn how to use many unit switches within the program.

But the one that stood out is this one:

Thank you Jeremy! Really made my day!

Just a heads-up.

Another update is coming this weekend.
I am adding some materials and this threads specification drawing:

Requested by one of the users, I am sure it will be a big help.

This website has recently become a target of relentless spam attacks.
Some dumbasses (probably bots or worse Russian hackers) post unrelated messages and such. Possibly looking for exploits in the security system.

I pride my self in openness to any meaningful content and do not want to pre-moderate comments or make registration (with email verification) mandatory.
So I subscribed to https://www.abuseipdb.com free API service that checks user's IP address before allowing to post any comments.

If you by any chance are wrongfully denied access, just let me know and i will clear the block.

On my part i will ban and report spammers with extreme prejudice. Let's make internet spam free one IP at a time!

For webmasters here is plain PHP code i used to enable IP checking and reporting:

Read More 

As you may have noticed there have been changes in the look of his very web site.

Here is what has been changed and improved:

• I got tired of it's old appearance, improved layout and changed styles.
• Improved and updated social buttons throughout the website.
• Redesigned Reference page and added GD&T Interactive Reference

GD&T Reference has been available in our FSWizard Mobile app and HSMAdvisor Speed and Feed Calculator for some time now and adding it to this website was a next logical step.

There is more changes coming. But i will not tell you what those are because competition is watching :)

By the way...

When you find useful information on this website, please help others too and share it with your peers using the new social buttons!

This mainstream "social" thing has been overlooked by me in the past and not many people are aware of our great software and resources for machinists.

Spread the word and help this project do even better!

Just saw this very impressive machining video on Practical Machinist forums.

A very nice example of using machine and the tools to their full potential.

Hello Frends,

After the latest changes in HSMAdvisor and addition of free features lots of people ask me to clarify (repeat?) what those are.

So those include:

1. Thread Reference.
2. All Geometry Calculators (Bolt Hole, Triangle, etc)
3. Screw Reference.
4. All Tool Database functions including access to Speeds and Feeds page where you can edit parameters of the tool.
5. Full Acess to Speeds and Feeds for One material (1018 steel)

Basically ALL functions except Speeds and Feeds calculations are included for Free.

Check it out here, if you haven't already : http://hsmadvisor.com
Regards!