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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: October 31st, 2021

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  • I almost exclusively print functional things so here’s my list of things I’ve designed or printed:

    • Tubular key to bypass paying for laundry
    • Furniture leg extensions on almost all my furniture to give minimum 4" clearance for the robovac
    • Custom mounting bracket / spacer for mounting road sign to the wall with command strips
    • Tapestry mounting shim to clamp tapestry in binder clips to hang on the wall without ripping the tapestry
    • Rubber band powered sandal holders that stick to the wall and clamp onto sandals which can be used without using your hands / while holding something (I needed to keep my basement sandals from being eaten by my old robovac and I needed to be able to put them on and put them back without needing to put down anything heavy I’m taking to/from the basement, and the space required it to be flat against the wall)
    • Replacement shelf pegs for bathroom shelves which are normally only sold in 20 packs for >5$ when I only needed 1, the print cost like 1c instead
    • Replacement D-slotted electrical box key since the one that came with the box broke
    • Backyard lamp holder that attaches to the fence pole and provides a loop to hang a lamp
    • Replacement side panel clip for my PC case which came with 1 broken - manufacturer doesn’t sell replacements
    • Custom piece for 2 sectional couch legs to slot into which keeps the 2 halves of my couch from sliding apart causing someone to fall in between onto the floor

    Some of this could have been bought online but having a 3D printer really reveals how overpriced plastic stuff is. I rarely print something that costs me more than a few dollars in filament - and that’s if it’s a very large object, it’s easily less than the shipping cost of an equivalent item alone, and small things can often only be found in large packs online while usually costing only a couple cents to print. And plenty of the stuff I print benefits from being able to be made custom and to the exact dimensions I need, for example the furniture leg extensions I made fit perfectly on the furniture legs and raise them up exactly as high as they need to be for my robovac to go under, not a centimeter more. A whiteboard marker caddy I made holds the exact number of markers I have / want to have and attaches under a light switch wall plate which I designed in order to avoid needing to attach it with command strips or screws (it gets clamped between the wall plate and the wall by the existing light switch screws). The first item I listed, the tubular key, was printed with the exact bitting needed for the lock (layer height of 0.05mm is enough vertical resolution for the key to work).



  • After watching a Jackson galaxy video on how to stop your cat from waking you up early, I followed the advice of never feeding immediately after getting up, and instead doing a certain activity first, like making coffee. After a month of taking a shower before feeding, my cat no longer makes any noise in the morning and only starts getting noisy when I step out of the shower. So thats a good tip for those who can’t free feed. I also started collecting every toy and putting them in a secure box before bed since she has a tendency to chase toys around in the middle of the night and yelp with one in her mouth.


  • My roborock has been revolutionary for my apartments cleanliness. I’ve had it about 1.5 years and I’ve only emptied the dock’s bag twice (I live in a small apartment). I have the water change kit so it auto refills the docks clean water tank from the laundry hookup and auto empties dirty mop water down the laundry room’s drain. I only have to clean the sensors and rinse the drain screen every 2-3 weeks but otherwise it’s on autopilot on a schedule and my floors are spotless and free of dust and cat fur.







  • Maybe, but only if literally everything else is the same. Otherwise it could just mean that one place is cleaner than another, or that one vacuum has a big bag and needs to be emptied less frequently despite picking up the same amount.

    • Roborock bag size is 3L (6"x6"x5"), so think 1 and a half 2L soda bottles, since it doesn’t need to fit inside a handheld vacuum or a moving robot it can be this large. Comparatively, the Matic bag which you can see in the video looks super tiny.
    • My apt is ~500 sq feet, so “1 time around the house” isn’t very much
    • How many dirtying factors apply to your house?
      • Pets going in and out track in extra dirt, our cat is indoor only and only sheds some fur (I didn’t have the cat when the dock bag lasted a year so we’ll see how that impacts it)
      • Allowing shoes to be worn inside tracks in a lot of dirt - so we don’t allow shoes past the entrance shoe rack
      • Going in and out more times allows more dirt to be tracked in - I work from home so I don’t need to go out every day which greatly reduces the amount of dirt tracked in
      • Living with more people multiplies those many times over, for me it’s just me and my partner
      • Ground floor apartment or elevated - another factor since going up flights of stairs lessens the amount of dirt tracked in. Our apartment is up 3 flights of stairs, so by the time we get to our front door, most mud and dirt has fallen off our shoes. If you live on the ground floor, it’s more likely that dirt and mud can hitch a ride in the treads of your shoes

    So it really makes sense that my dock’s bag doesn’t fill up quickly. I can be absolutely sure it works because it produces gray mopping water every time it’s run, and there’s not a speck of dust or cat hair on the floor after it runs. I can check the bin on the robovac after a run and see it 1/3 full of fur and dust, but the bin on the robovac itself is on the small side so once it empties into the dock it seems to barely add much volume - and I suspect that the dock’s vaccum is powerful enough to compact fur and dust into the bag somewhat so it takes up less volume. And that makes sense because the S7 has some of the best pickup performance as rated by vacuum wars on youtube, but I can really stretch the dust bag in the dock both because it’s a whopping 3L bag, because I do everything I can to prevent dirt from being tracked in in the first place, and also because some of the dust is mopped and flushed down the laundry room drain without ever seeing the bag.


  • Damn that bag must be super small to only last a week. My s7 ultra dock bag lasts around 6 months. Before I started living with a cat I was still using the original bag that had been going on a year and still wasn’t full, vacuuming daily.

    Edit: For context, my roborock dock’s bag is 3 liters, so think the volume of 1 and a half 2 liter soda bottles, and the apartment it lasted a year in was ~500 sq ft. The matic’s bag needs to fit inside the robot and looks to be close to the size of the palm of your hand. You can see it at 0:37 in the video on their site.