a dog deciding between two bones

So I'm trying to decide between tools of a sort and I'm in a conundrum.

3D printing generates a lot of waste PLA in the form of bad prints, support structures, and so on. That's not actually so bad; it's a medium-term carbon store that doesn't break down to microplastics.

But.

Reuse is even better. So given that I semi-regularly have use for rigid sheets of material, and that PLA in most cases would be a fine material for this, well, you can see where I'm going.

A bunch of people say they've managed to melt waste PLA into sheets just fine in ovens. People have been talked about casting with it, melting it down into a pourable liquid.

All this should be possible. But.

I tried the oven thing. It was an absolutely laughable failure and I don't know why. So I have a Concern about that whole idea.

I've also seen people make sheets successfully in videos - but they weren't using ovens. They were using T-shirt transfer presses.

T-shirt transfer presses make all kinds of sense. You've got a nice even press, you've got plenty of heat. It should work.

But so should the oven thing, and I know how that went. And if a T-shirt press fails as badly...

...what the hell am I gonna do with a T-shirt press?

A toaster oven, I can do things with. I could use it as a materials accelerator, a hotbox. I could use it just as a warming chamber - though I have a lot less need for that now since I made an even bigger one, another wouldn't hurt anything. I could do powder coating of small objects.

I could even make toast.

But a T-shirt press?

I mean, if it works, great, I become a maker of small-quantity plastic sheeting that I use myself and hand out to other makers who can use it, go public service me.

But if it doesn't, then it's a single-use tool for which I have no use.

I hate that.

So, yeah. Conundrum. More likely to work, but if and when it doesn't, I've wasted gift cards. Whereas if I get a toaster oven and still can't make the oven method work, at least I still have a toaster oven.

I just dunno.

As problems go, it's not big, but I do want to solve it, partly because I've been doing a lot of prototyping (and making tools, say hello to my new little friend the drum sander) so have a lot of space-taking waste PLA, and partly because I could actually use some sheet plastic.

So, yeah.

If I knew for sure I could make the T-shirt press work, I probably would go with it. But I don't know that.

If I knew what went wrong with my oven attempt, I'd probably be okay going with that too. (And I have been told to grind the plastic down, so I might. Maybe.)

ugh.

I wish I knew someone personally (as opposed to reddit people) who'd done this. But I don't.

hmf.

(Side consideration: I have enough gift card for a pretty nice toaster oven, but a fairly low-end T-shirt press. Not the lowest end, rating is 4.5 stars, but it's not exactly the highest quality machine either. That's also a matter of consideration. I guess.)

about gun licensing and training

One thing I really have to ask people to keep in mind as they talk about gun licensing and mandatory training and all that is...

...who is going to administer all that? Who is going to be given that job, if somehow it actually were to happen?

I'll tell you who.

Cops.

That's who will get the job. Maybe not everywhere, but most places. They have the shooting ranges, after all. They have "training," as racist and terrible as that training often is, and how much they shrug off all the parts of it that attempt to make them better. They have the facilities, and Americans won't pay a goddamn dime they don't have to. Most places. Just like ambulances first went to cops, so will this.

And that's why all the white nationalists and authoritarians and fascists and straight white dudes will get to keep all the guns they want, and everyone else will be completely disarmed.

You know I'm right. You know I am.

Just as the police were the slave catchers, just as the police were the backbone of the KKK, right now the police are centres of violent white supremacist and authoritarian thinking - and, often, violence.

And yes, that means even places like Seattle, where - as one cop told protesters over his bullhorn after another cop got busy driving his cop car at protesters - "we wouldn't have all this trouble if more people would just like our Trump government."

(It's on video, look it up if you want.)

It's been true for two centuries of American policing and it's still true now.

I'm not going to get into about any kind of real argument about of gun control right now. Emotions are high for damned good reasons and I more than respect that.

I just want people to think about who is going to enforce whatever they want to implement, because the person doing the enforcement often matters much more than the actual law.

And in this country, the people who will be doing the enforcement - the gatekeeping, the determining of who can and cannot have firearms...

...will be the cops.

Think about that.