What makes a guide publishable here?

Two things. It has to be built at the bench first, with the failure recorded alongside the finished object. Then a second person has to reproduce it from the written steps alone — if any step needed a verbal explanation, that step is rewritten before the guide goes live.

Do you update older guides?

The original text stays standing. Corrections are published as dated appendices under the article, so a five-year-old guide stays readable and you can see what changed. Not every archived article has been re-tested, and nothing on the site implies that it has.

How is the journal different from the guides?

The guides are evergreen how-to written to survive a reprint. The journal is dated field notes from the shop floor, under running headers such as what broke this week and bench conditions — it is deliberately not a how-to archive.

Where can I report something the written steps missed?

The contact page carries a reading-and-corrections layout for exactly that, and readers who reproduce a guide sometimes write the discrepancy up for the journal. This page does not transmit or store anything you type, and no mailbox, phone number or response time is published.

About · the bench, the cards, the rules

A working bench that happens to publish.

Eakles began as a shared bench log between two makers in a converted garage workshop. Readers kept asking for copies of the notes, so the notes became a site: 581 guides, tutorials and field notes on 3D printing, electronics and workshop fixtures.

Every procedure here was built at the bench, broken, and rebuilt before it was written up. What follows is the method rather than the founding story — the record kept for each build, the rules a draft has to survive, and who is accountable for which part of it.

Read the publication rules Browse the guide library

581 articles · six paths · en-US · tolerances written in millimetres and in thousandths of an inch

Bench card · specimen No. 0417

Tool / fixture: Four-printer rack, slot 3 — 0.4 mm nozzle, 0.2 mm layers, jig 12 holding the work flat.
Material batch: PLA, batch 24-11 — dried 4 h at 45 °C before the run, spool opened the same morning.
Bench conditions: 21.4 °C · 46 % RH, logged at the start and again at the finish.
Step that nearly ended the build: Hot-end jammed at layer 118. The original steps assumed a factory-fresh nozzle; the rewrite puts a cold pull before the first layer and says why.

Reproduced by a second pair of hands from the written steps alone — no questions to the original author, no verbal shortcuts.

The record

Before there is an article, there is a card.

The editorial test bench is nicknamed the Long Bench: a run of tables, a four-printer rack and a shelf of fixtures that get used harder than they get photographed. Every build that becomes a guide is logged on a hand-filled bench card while it is happening — not reconstructed afterwards from memory or from a finished object.

Tool and fixture

Which machine, which nozzle, which jig held the work. A guide that says “print a bracket” without naming the fixture that made it repeatable is not a guide yet.

Material batch

Spool age, batch number, drying schedule. Filament that sat open through a wet month behaves differently from filament dried four hours before the run, and the card records which one you are reading about.

Bench conditions

Ambient temperature and humidity, taken at the start and the finish. A first layer that holds at 21 °C and 46 % RH may not hold at 28 °C and 70 %, and the write-up says so instead of implying otherwise.

The step that nearly ended it

The jam, the lifted corner, the pad that pulled, the jig that slipped. It goes on the card in full, with the fix that held, and it goes into the article the same way.

Cards are stored as written. They are working documents, not marketing.

Publication rules

Four rules a draft has to survive.

This is the whole method. Hold any article on the site against it — if a piece cannot pass these four, it does not go live, however good the photographs are.

01

Built at the bench first

No procedure is written from a spec sheet, a supplier's sample project or somebody else's video. It is performed here, on the Long Bench, before a single line is drafted.

02

Second-hands rebuild

A build is only published once a second person reproduces it from the written steps alone, without asking the original author anything. Any step that needed verbal clarification is rewritten before the draft goes further.

03

The failing step stays in

The step that nearly ended the build is printed next to the fix that held, not quietly deleted from the finished version. A reader should be able to recognise the failure while it is still happening.

04

Corrections are appended and dated

When a reader finds something the authors missed, the correction goes under the original article as a dated appendix. The original text is left standing so anyone can see what changed, and when.

Guides describe one bench's experience under recorded conditions — not a certified procedure, and not a promise that the same settings will hold on your machine. Tool coverage is never bought or sponsored.

Continuity

The redesign changed how the site reads, not where anything lives.

581

Articles published

Guides, tutorials and field notes, all reachable through their existing /%postname%/ permalinks.

6

Paths

Home, About, Contact, Guides, Journal and Resources. None retired, renamed or merged.

0

URL changes

Every address a reader has bookmarked, linked or printed still resolves. Nothing was moved to tidy up a folder tree.

4

Recurring series

First Layer, Solder Joint Diary, Fixture of the Month, and Teardown, Then Rebuild.

Archived articles are left as written. The archive has not been re-tested or re-dated for this redesign, and the site language stays en-US.

Who runs the bench

Four roles, one standing guest column.

The crew is small and rotates. What matters is that each role is accountable for something a reader can check.

01

Lead editor

Came to the site from equipment maintenance, which shows in how drafts get cut: what did you measure, what did it do, and what did you change. Accountable for the rewrite that happens whenever a step needed a voice in the room to make sense.

02

Bench tester

Runs the four-printer rack — the print farm — and owns the fixtures bench. The rack exists for tolerance and repeatability prints, not for showpieces. Accountable for whether the second-hands rebuild actually succeeded.

03

Documentation lead

Shoots and annotates the build photography for every guide, and owns the written step order. Accountable for whether a step is legible with one hand holding a tool and a tablet propped on the bench in front of you.

04

Guest column

A standing column written by whichever reader reproduced a guide and found something the authors missed. It is part of the method rather than a courtesy: readers are the second pair of hands the publication rule depends on.

Two honest next steps.

The rules are written down. The guides are where they get tested.

Read a bench-tested guide

581 guides, tutorials and field notes on 3D printing, electronics and workshop fixtures — each one carrying the failure, the fix and the conditions it was built under.

Browse the guide library

Tell us what the written steps missed

If you reproduced a guide and something did not match, that is the most useful note this site can receive. Corrections are appended and dated under the original article, with the original text left standing.

Open the corrections channel

Still deciding whether to trust the method? Read the publication rules — they are short, and they are checkable.