….:Pulse Begins:…. – Adventures in making things badly.

Team Zissou Uniform – Ned Shirt

kinney 16 August 2026 No Comments

After starting this shirt 5 years ago I have finally pretty much finished it. I cut the pattern out ready all the way back in 2021ish then……. didn’t proceed any further. I got this back out in March of this year and have slowly started to put it together, with a large amount done in August.

Considering I have never sewn any clothing before or used a sewing machine properly, I am pretty damn well pleased with how it has come out. It needs two more things doing (other than needing a decent iron haha) which is adding the buttons to the shirt button placket and shoulders and sorting out the top of the shirt button placket after I cut in to the top of the shirt with the seam ripper – oops! I will hopefully do a full write up on Wednesday on the whole process.

The next stage is doing the trousers which I have the pattern for already and looks like a reasonably quick project. I’m just hoping Hobbycraft still does the same colour fabric 5 years later :E

I’ve ordered a red beanie and the little traffic lights patch that goes on it. I already have a pair of Adidas Zissou trainers so hopefully by a week Monday I will have the full costume ready to go!

The next uniform project will be to do the “Steve” shirt and trousers and an aim to be more screen accurate in regards to the fabric used.

Team Zissou Uniform Underwater ROV

Wes Anderson Exhibition – Zissou Uniform

kinney 16 August 2026 No Comments

While I have been working on the Zissou uniform since the last post (and the shirt will actually be finished later today, shockingly an actual finished project!), I recently went to the Wes Anderson exhibition in London and saw the Zissou screen worn uniforms in person, both the Ned and Steve uniforms. Below are some of the photos I took

The exhibition also had a model of the submarine, Deep Search. I quite like the idea of the underwater ROV looking the same as this. Although it will require a good think on how to create it!

Film Team Zissou Uniform

Team Zissou Uniform

kinney 5 April 2026 No Comments

So I’m back to working on the Team Zissou uniform after starting it alllllllll the way back in Covid. I got as far as cutting out all the fabric parts for the shirt but then not moving onto actually sewing it all together. Three day monk, three day monk!

After some battles getting the ancient sewing machine working I am now ready to start putting it together.

Intended look of the final shirt:

General Sewing

Singer Merritt 157 Panoramic Sewing Machine Manual

kinney 5 April 2026 No Comments

Just posting this as I spent about 2 hours trying to identify the sewing machine I have access to and trying to find the manual

The below link is a PDF for the sewing machine Singer Merritt 157 Panoramic Sewing Machine. The one I’m using is pink and has the text Panoramic Made in Italy on it and nothing else. There are similar models with the Singer logo on.

The manual images were done by Reddit user ScareMeSometimes so full credit to them for this document. The images were originally saved as JPEG images on imgur – I wanted them in a single document so have created this PDF.

Singer Merritt 157 Panoramic Sewing Machine Manual Download

Machine looks like this -:

Blade Runner Film

Blade Runner 2049 Officer K’s blaster

kinney 14 December 2025 No Comments

Just come across a video by Adam Savage on his Tested YouTube channel where he gets to see the blasters up close, and the previous square design I was going for wasn’t that close. You can see it’s done by hand I’ve deleted my old posts about it and going for a fresh start on it. Back to the drawing board!

General

Other things I’d like to make

kinney 13 December 2025 No Comments

Recently I’ve been trying to brain storm things I might actually be able to make with the materials, tools and skills I have already -:

Robot WALL-E
Old school large format camera
Team Zissou / The Life Aquatic uniform (actually started this)

Now just to get over the hump and stop being a chronic never-finisher.

“The Japanese idiom, mikka bouzo, translates literally as: ‘three-day monk’. It is used in reference to a person who easily gives up after starting something new.” Uh oh.

Looking around online, it’s given me more fuel for the theory I’m probably ADHD-inattentive.

3D Printing

Frustrations of the work 3D Printer

kinney 29 November 2025 No Comments

Nothing like getting the work 3D printer working almost as perfect as it can get, then the next day the SKR mini E3 3.01 main board blows randomly when turning it back on, after just 2 months.

In the last 6 weeks the original Y-stop also broke and whatever was used to push against it originally had fallen off or was misaligned so had to improvise a quick solution (hello sticky cable holder pad) which has worked well so far.

I’ve also replaced the glass bed as it had a small chunk missing out of it (not all the way through) near the middle underneath, I’m assuming the hot end melted through it (!?) at some point and it had problems with prints staying stuck to it around that area.

I’m still to get the BL Touch working, I may leave this for a little while as it’s working well without it ……….. for now!

Some may say we would have been better off just buying a new, fancier 3D printer but it’s been a nice little project to get going again when I’ve had some spare time here and there.

3D Printing

Wanhao i3 Duplicator 3D printer upgrade to BIGTREETECH SKR Mini E3 V3.01 with TFT35 – Marlin Config Files / firmware

kinney 9 October 2025 No Comments

I’ve been rebuilding work’s 3D printer after the original 3D printer was stripped for working parts to get another printer working which has now been transferred elsewhere. Upon finding 3 broken Melzi boards in a box, I opted to purchase the Big Tree Tech SKR Mini E3 (version 3.01) to upgrade it along with a nice new touch screen.

Due to the state of the other parts, I also ordered two new fans, a new hotend, thermistor, ceramic cartridge heater and a Micro-Swiss All Metal Hotend with Slotted Cooling Block.

Upon connecting everything to the new board (and having to create some new JST connectors) I found the 3D printer didn’t work straight off and needed flashing with a new Marlin configuration. I opted to use the Creality 3D Ender3 SKR Mini E3 configuration example as the base config.

The first problem was that when I tried to home the printer, the X axis would move to the right a little and the Z axis would rise slightly and do nothing else. I had to invert the X Y and Z axis to get them to function correctly, changing the following from False to True in configuration.h

#define X_MIN_ENDSTOP_INVERTING true // Set to true to invert the logic of the endstop.
#define Y_MIN_ENDSTOP_INVERTING true // Set to true to invert the logic of the endstop.
#define Z_MIN_ENDSTOP_INVERTING true // Set to true to invert the logic of the endstop.

The next problem was getting the fans to work. I connected the Extruder fan to Fan 0, the board fan to Fan 1 and set the chamber fan to Fan 2. I had to change the pin variables to get these to work. These are set in configuration_adv.h.

#define E0_AUTO_FAN_PIN PC6
#define CHAMBER_AUTO_FAN_PIN PB15
#define CONTROLLER_FAN_PIN PC7

Finally I set the board size for the X and Y axis. These were set in configuration.h. I also amended the printer profile in my 3D printing software to match in Ultimaker Cura.

#define X_BED_SIZE 220
#define Y_BED_SIZE 220

Once compiled, I copied the updated firmware to the printer, leveled the bed and ran off three Benchy boat models to test. The first two didn’t come out great but I suspect it was due to the cheap nasty white PLA that I was using. Changing to a decent black PLA and it printed off almost perfectly and subsequent prints I’ve done have come out fine.

In future I’m hoping to get a BL-Touch clone working with it to help get even better prints with better leveling.

Kinnou Underwater ROV

Underwater ROV

kinney 26 May 2025 No Comments

For a long time, I’ve wanted to make my own underwater ROV. This actually goes back at least 12 years, and while I planned some of the basics out and even created some example code, I never followed through on purchasing what was needed.

This will be another project I document my progress, failures and fixes on while linking to any resources I may have used.

I will name it the Kinnou.

Quentin Crisp

“All the golden societies of the past to which historians point and turn their wistful smiles have had what patience-players would call a discard pile. They operated on two levels with a slave class who worked, ate, slept, and died and a leisured class who reclined on one elbow and spoke. Naturally it is from this latter group that we learn what life at that time was like. It often makes charming reading but we can hardly take it to be the whole truth.”

Quentin Crisp

The key is never, never work. Nothing is more aging than work. It's not only the strain of getting up in the morning for work, but it's the resentment that settles on your face”

Quentin Crisp

“Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level. It's cheaper.”

Quentin Crisp

“There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse.”

Hunter S Thompson

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”

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