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3D Printing Using Flexible Filament (TPU)
Through my short journey with 3D printing, I've spent a lot of time reading through the 3D Printing SubReddit and something that I found interesting was people talking about printing using flexible filament (TPU). While I didn't have a real use for printing squishy things, I was curious. A few weeks ago, I purchased a roll of SainSmart Flexible TPU filament to see if I could print.
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Addicted to 3D Printing
I wrote about 3D printing a few months ago and at the time was using a DaVinci 3D printer. Unfortunately the printer didn't last long and despite my best efforts, I couldn't get it to keep printing; it was making a grinding noise while feeding and the cost to replace the hot end with shipping was about 1/3 the cost of a new, low-end printer. I decided to cut my losses and purchased a Monoprice Select Mini Pro. This printer cost me about $180 and when it arrived, I was printing pretty quickly.
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A year of meditation
A number of years ago, a friend of mine suggested I start meditating to help with stress. He said he used an app called headspace. I gave it a try for awhile and was trying to do it pretty consistently. However, I stopped as soon as my stress went away and I really got bored of the meditations. Also, the narrator's voice wore on me. Since then, I tried an app called Calm and really enjoyed the Daily Calm meditation as it was different each day and wasn't repetitive. The next time stress entered my life, I picked up meditation again and like my first try at regular meditation, I stopped when my stress levels decreased.
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Broken Health Care System
While almost everyone knows that our health care system in the United States is broken, I just got the explanation of benefits for our flu shots. We paid $0 out of pocket for the shots. I went to CVS Pharmacy, my wife and son went to a flu clinic at their medical group. Insurance paid $20 for my shot, $90.05 for my wife's shot and $81.74 for my son's shot. The insurance plan basically overpaid $130 for flu shots for my family. The insurance plans need to find a way to bring costs down and maybe one of the ways is to tell us EXACTLY where to get certain services or give us some financial incentive to go a cheaper route. I'm not sure CVS does flu shots for kids, but for my wife it would have been cheaper for them.