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It is now that time when we learn what God has for us from the text of Scripture. Take your Bible and open it, please, to 2 Corinthians chapter 1. We have just begun a study of this tremendous epistle; and though we've only been in it for really a week, already it is dawning on us what tremendous treasure will be found as we work our way through these thirteen chapters.
To begin our study this morning, I want to read, if I might, starting at verse 3 down through verse 11. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ. But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is effective in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer; and our hope for you is firmly grounded, knowing that as you are sharers of our sufferings, so also you are sharers of our comfort.
"For we do not want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened excessively beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life; indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves in order that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead; who delivered us from so great a peril of death, and will deliver us, He on whom we have set our hope. And He will yet deliver us, you also joining and helping us through your prayers, that thanks may be given by many persons on our behalf for the favor bestowed upon us through the prayers of many."
This opening section of Paul's letter is crucial to his purpose. It also is crucial for us because of its instruction along the theme of comfort in trouble. But before we consider what it means to us, we have to understand what it meant to him and why he wrote it. If there is one ringing theme in this epistle, it is Paul's defense of his integrity, his defense of his apostolic authority, not for his own gain, not for his own popularity, not for his own prominence, but for the protection of the church and the protection of the truth. What is behind the scenes in this letter, what prompted this letter was a strong and growing assault on the apostle Paul in Corinth, an effort to destroy his credibility so that his message could be undermined.
There were some false teachers that had come into Corinth and they had infiltrated the church. They wanted to bring another gospel. They wanted to preach another Jesus than the true ones. They wanted to bring their damnable heresies, their demon doctrine, they wanted to bring their Satanic lies, and they wanted them to be believed. And in order to find an entrance and to gain an audience, the first thing they needed to do was topple Paul from the pedestal. They had to assault his authority because, after all, he was the one who articulated the truth, he was the one who set the standard, he was God's apostle, and so he had to come down. They had to tear him down. They had to destroy him, and with him the truth he taught; and in the vacuum would come the error.
These false teachers did everything they could to destroy Paul, they attacked him at every conceivable point. And then trying to replace him with themselves, they claimed to have credentials from Jerusalem, and to have represented the truth of God, when in fact they were messengers of Satan; and their leader is even called such in chapter 12, verse 7. There he is called a messenger of Satan.
They had come into Paul's beloved church at Corinth, and they were tearing into the apostle Paul, destroying his reputation, destroying any future or past ministry he had had, and doing everything they could to tear the church apart and confuse it with error, and then turn it over to Satan. This was of grave concern to the apostle, and it is that very assault that is behind the penning of this letter which we know as 2 Corinthians. And from the beginning to the end Paul is defending the integrity of his own spiritual life and the authenticity of his apostleship.
Now let me summarize briefly the circumstances that are behind this epistle; and I want you to follow very carefully, because apart from this foundation you'll lose the great impact of what is here, and you'll lose the understanding of the very opening paragraph which I read to you.
Paul had spent eighteen months in the city of Corinth. During that eighteen months, God had used him to plant the church there and to strengthen the church. Eighteen months of intense teaching and preaching had effected a strong and aggressively moving church. At the end of that eighteen months he left Corinth, headed east to Syria to return really back to his home church to bring his second missionary tour to an end. He promised the Corinthians that sometime he would come back.
Somewhere along the journey – we don't know where – as he was going back to Syria or when he arrived there or at some point, some news came to him about the Corinthian church; and the news indicated that there was immorality in the church and it wasn't being dealt with. And so he wrote them a letter. That letter dealt specifically with immorality and how to deal with it in the church. That letter was not inspired by the Holy Spirit, it came from the heart and mind of the apostle Paul. It surely was a helpful letter, and I'm sure a good letter, and I'm sure a letter that reflected the heart of God, but not an inspired letter. And so it is lost to us; we don't have that letter.
The basic content of it, however, you can find in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, verses 9 through 13. There you have the basic summary of what was in that letter. He says in 1 Corinthians 5:9, "I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people." And then he goes on further to discuss that down through verse 13 and tells them to remove such an immoral person from the congregation. So that was a summation of that initial letter that he wrote having to do with immorality.
Now we're not surprised to hear that. After all, Corinth was filled with immorality. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of temple priestesses that would come down, and they plied their priesthood through fornication and adultery. They were prostitutes. There was rampant immorality in that city. In fact, the verb in the Greek language "to Corinthianize" means to commit lewd or immoral acts, to go to bed with a prostitute. The city was known for that, that's what its reputation was. It was a vile and wicked place from the moral side. And so it doesn't shock us that the church was having a battle with this pervasive immorality. But what concerned Paul was not just the sin, but the failure to deal with it, and to allow that sinning person to have some ongoing relationship to the life of the church. And so he wrote the letter to deal with that.
After that letter, word came back to Paul. It came back, for example, from the family of Chloe, according to 1 Corinthians 1:11; and also from Apollos, according to 1 Corinthians 16:12. And so the word came back about how they responded to that original letter. He also received a letter from the Corinthians themselves. They actually wrote to him, according to chapter 7, verse 1 of 1 Corinthians. And so he got word from Chloe's house, word from Apollos, and an actual letter most likely brought to him by Stephanas, Fortunatus, and Achaicus, as mentioned in chapter 16, and verse 17 of 1 Corinthians. So there's an ongoing dialogue with this church which is so much a part of Paul's heart.
Now after he got word back from Chloe and Apollos and the others and the letter from Corinth, he was still concerned. Apparently things were not properly resolved, apparently they hadn't really dealt the way they should have dealt with the issues at hand, and so he sent Timothy. Timothy, as you well know, was his son in the faith, and reflected very much the character and the priorities of Paul. We find that indication of sending Timothy in 1 Corinthians 4:17, and also in Acts 19:22; and he sends Timothy back to find out more detail about the status of his beloved church, and to deal with the problems that were there. At some time soon, even immediately after he sent Timothy back, he was compelled by the Spirit of God to write another letter. This letter is 1 Corinthians. This was an inspired letter.
At the time he was in Ephesus in Asia Minor. He had come back to Ephesus really beginning his third missionary journey. And he would be there for three years, in Ephesus, founding the church in Ephesus and the satellite churches in the cities of Asia Minor which are named for us in Revelation 2 and 3. The time was about 53 or 54 A.D. He was now on his third missionary journey; he had been at this over twenty years. He is showing great concern for the Corinthian church because of what he has heard. He sends Timothy; and then under the inspiration of the Spirit of God he pens a letter, and that letter is what we know as 1 Corinthians.
And when he writes it, it reflects what he had heard from Chloe, what he had heard from Apollos, and perhaps what he had heard from other sources, and things are even worse than the first letter indicated: factions, law suits, worldly wisdom, incest, disorder at the Lord's Table, corruption of worship, corruption of spiritual gifts, deprioritization of preaching and prophesying, poor leadership, loveless attitudes, confusion about the resurrection. You can all that to the immorality. It's gotten worse, not better.
And I believe it is at that point during the three years in Ephesus, after sending Timothy, writing the letter to the Corinthians – and in the letter he reflects that he doesn't know whether Timothy will get there before or after the letter. Timothy had some other things to do on the way. I believe at some point during that three years, Paul actually left Ephesus and went to Corinth himself. The reason I come to that conclusion is because in chapter 13, verse 1, Paul tells about an upcoming visit and says, "This is the third time I'm coming to you," indicating that there was a second. The first time he planted the church. And I believe the second time was during the time he was three years in Ephesus he made a journey there.
Chapter 2, verse 1 also gives a similar allusion when he says, "I determined this for my own sake that I would not come to you in sorrow again." So you have the founding visit and then a sorrowful visit, and I think the sorrowful visit is the one that he made while he was in Ephesus. Some would call it the painful visit. And he went there to address all this sin that he wrote about so strongly, so sarcastically in 1 Corinthians and in that prior letter. He went there personally. He may have even heard from Timothy about the situation.
He then came back. After making the visit he came back to Ephesus and he wrote a third letter. The third letter has been called by some "the severe letter." He really writes them a diatribe. He really lets them have it. He is grieved and he is brokenhearted, and he writes a severe letter out of that attitude.
In fact, look at 2 Corinthians 2:4. "Out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote to you with many tears; not that you should be made sorrowful, but that you should know the love which I have especially for you." Verse 9: "To this end also I wrote, that I might put you to the test, whether you are obedient in all things. I wrote calling you to submission to my apostolic authority and of the Word of God which I proclaimed to you. I wrote out of anguish and sorrow and tears to you."
Why? I'll tell you. When he went to visit them from Ephesus, you know what he found? He found not only all of the sins and all of the iniquities and all of the problems that he had addressed in 1 Corinthians, but he found something else; he found a mutiny had begun. Some false teachers, some false apostles had come into the life of the church, and they were assaulting Paul and assaulting the church. They were trying to undermine the truth and supplant it with lies.
You say, "Well, couldn't Paul be just referring to 1 Corinthians when he says, 'Out of much affliction and anguish I wrote to you with many tears'?" No, because 1 Corinthians was not written out of affliction and anguish and tears. That's not the tone of it.
Secondly, look at chapter 7 of 2 Corinthians, and verse 8: "Though I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it, though I did regret it." That letter that he wrote, that severe letter was so strong that he felt bad after he wrote it, until he heard how they responded to it. He felt bad, he regretted it. That's another indication that it wasn't 1 Corinthians, because why would he regret writing an inspired letter? Why would he regret writing one that had been given to him by the Holy Spirit?
So, this third letter, before 2 Corinthians, was attempting to deal with what he ran into when he went there. And what he ran into was a mutiny to add to all the rest of the stuff, the new problem: the arrival of the false apostles claiming authority from Jerusalem, and demanding allegiance to both themselves and their teaching at the expense of Paul and the truth.
They attacked Paul every way they could. They attacked his apostleship, said he wasn't a true apostle because he didn't have the qualifications of the originals. They questioned his authority, they said he was self-authenticated. They questioned his honesty, said he doesn't tell the truth. They questioned his purity, I believe even accusing him of doing what he did for sexual favors from women. They questioned his love and affection for the church.
They used every conceivable angle to attack his character. They even accused him of embezzling the money that was given for the poor saints in Jerusalem and putting it in his own pocket. And they were doing all of this to rip him down, to destroy him, so they could take his place. And then according to chapter 11, verse 2 and following, preach another Jesus and another gospel from hell.
They said Paul was brave from a distance, but he was a coward face-to-face – chapter 10 and verse 11 indicate that. They suggested in chapter 11 and verse 12 he alludes to it, that he had no love for the church at all, but was utterly self-centered. All of this being led by some guy that he calls "a messenger of Satan" trying to destroy this church.
And, you know, this church was so strategic. There it was right on the little neck between the great Achaia, which is the northern part of Greece, and the Peloponnesus, the bottom part; and everybody coming north and south went through there, and all the people carrying their ships across the Isthmus going east and west. It was the heart of the spread of the gospel in that whole part of the world. And to corrupt that church was to corrupt the message all over the world. Satan picked his target very well.
And so when the apostle Paul went there and found out what was going on in this mutiny, his heart was broken. He was in deep affliction, and painful anguish, and covered with tears were his cheeks; and it was in that attitude that he penned this letter. His heart was broken because of the investment he had made, because of what was at stake. And it wasn't his reputation, it was the truth of God and the church of Jesus Christ. He was feeling that pain and that anguish that only a pastor feels when people in his own congregation shatter him, devastate him. Not an uncommon experience, by the way.
The letter was delivered by Titus, this severe letter, according to 2 Corinthians 12:18. And Paul regretted that he wrote it once he got it out of his system. Have you ever done that, written a letter and wish you could get it back? Well, that's exactly the way he was feeling. It wasn't inspired by the Holy Spirit, and he was saying to himself, "Whatever they thought of me, by the time they get this, then they're going to hate me more. I wish I could get it back."
But he couldn't. And, in fact, he had to wait for Titus to return. And he waited, and he waited; and he was just very, very upset in the waiting. Look at 2 Corinthians 2:12. He said, "I came to Troas for the gospel of Christ and when a door was opened for me in the Lord, I had no rest for my spirit," – why? – "because I couldn't find Titus. I needed to get with Titus and find out, 'What did they think of the letter?' I had no rest for my spirit."
He was restless, and he couldn't sit still. Even though there was an opportunity to preach, he couldn't take it, because he was too upset about the Corinthian situation. And so he left, and he went from Troas to Macedonia to the city of Philippi to meet Titus, and he met him there.
Chapter 7 tells us about the report. Verse 5, he says, "We came to Macedonia, our flesh had no rest. We were afflicted on every side: conflicts without, fears within." I mean the man is a mess. He's getting it from the outside; and he's torn up on the inside, because he so passionately loves this Corinthian church and he knows what's at stake. And then he says, "But God who comforts the depressed comforted us by the coming of Titus." Titus arrives.
And what did Titus say? Verse 7: "He came and he reported to us your longing, and your mourning, and your zeal for me;" – wow, all the good news – "so I rejoiced even more. And though I caused you sorrow by my letter, I don't regret it, though I did regret it." Why? "I rejoice" – verse 9 – "not that you were made sorrowful, but that you were made sorrowful to the point of" – what? – "repentance, sorrowful according to the will of God." Oh, he was so relieved, so relieved.
When Titus got him this news, "The majority have repented, Paul, and the majority have longings for you, and mourning over what's happened. They're zealous for you. They stand with you, Paul. They're loyal to the truth." And that is why having heard from Titus, he writes 2 Corinthians. That's how this letter fits. This is the last of the four, the second of the inspired. And it has a tone of joy in it. I mean it sure starts that way. After the salutation he says, "Blessed is God." It starts with joy, and praise, and thanksgiving.
But you know something? It's not just that, because all the way through these thirteen chapters he defends his apostleship. Why? Because though the majority had repented, Paul was too wise and too experienced to think for a moment that the minority had gone away; they're still there. The false apostles are still around salivating like wolves. They're still eager to tear up that church. There are still some dissenters who joined in the mutiny who, for the moment, have been quieted by the majority; but when they get their opportunity they will go after it again. All the issues are not settled; and for whoever isn't quite yet sure, he writes this letter which forever and always removes any question from any reasonable person's mind about the authenticity of the apostle Paul.
This letter reaffirms in very personal, very heartfelt, very intimate detail the legitimacy of this man's claim to apostleship and ministry. He doesn't do it in the third person, he does it in the first. He doesn't do it by listing some theological principles, he just opens up his heart. And when you're done with this thing, if ever you questioned his authenticity, you'll never question it again.
Now as I read to you, the tone of the first verses may help us with a little bit of an insight into another area of attack. He is suffering. He is suffering greatly. Timothy would have told him that if he arrived there. Titus would have told him that when he arrived there. Paul would have reiterated that to them when he went. The word all around the Greek and Roman world that circulated among the churches certainly incorporated all of Paul's sufferings. He recites them in chapter 11, as we shall see. He suffered immensely. He suffered constantly. I just read you where he confesses that he had conflicts without and fears within and continual suffering.
And certainly you know that when the false apostles attacked him, what they said among other things was, "Look at all the man's suffering. Can't you see the picture? He's in sin, he's unfaithful, and God is just pouring it on. All of this is reflective of his failures and his sins, and God is just giving it to him with both barrels. The man is a fake and a fraud. He's immoral, he's an embezzler, he's a phony, and God is just tearing into him. Can't you see it?" Just twisting the reality.
And so when Paul opens, he starts out by saying, "God is coming to me in my affliction. Yes, God is coming to me in my anguish. But He's coming to me as the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, because I'm suffering" – verse 5 says – "the sufferings of Christ. I'm not suffering for sin. I'm not suffering because God is angry. This isn't wrath. God is comforting me in all my affliction," he says in verse 4.
He starts out by blessing God. There's no confession of sin here. There's no acknowledgement of the need for chastening and discipline. Quite the contrary. Here is a faithful man proclaiming the gospel, paying a price as Satan and his hosts of demons and men assault him mercilessly. And in it all, the tender gracious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort is coming alongside and helping him.
So in this very opening section I think there's a note of defense against one very strong accusation. And this opening section also comes on a very positive tone: "Blessed is God," – why? – "because He comforts me." And he goes through all those 11 verses – or actually from 3 to 11, all that section, affirming the comfort, and the compassion, and the mercy of God.
People, I'm telling you, there's so much richness here that it is very frustrating not to be able to preach this whole thing. In the first service, I thought I'd get all the way through point three, and I didn't even get to point one. That is painful, because this is so rich. This has got to be the greatest single passage on comfort anywhere in the Bible.
And he is saying to them, "You may be attacking me, and they may be accusing me of sin and the judgment of God. I want you to know, while they're attacking me, God is comforting me. Now are you going to join their attack on me, or are you going to side with God who's comforting me?"
He will take his readers and us through this comfort, starting there in verse 4 down to verse 11. And it is a rich, rich study. He will show us the promise of comfort. He will show us the purpose of comfort, the parameters or boundaries of comfort, the partnership of comfort, the power of comfort, the perpetuity of comfort, and the participation of comfort. I mean it's comprehensive, and it is absolutely profound stuff.
But before he actually gets into his unfolding of the comfort of God in his life which is so personal, he starts out by addressing God in verse 3. Let's look at it. Literally, "Blessed is God, blessed is God." And then he wants to identify God. It starts with praise, affirmation that God is to be well-spoken of, that's what blessed means.
But how does he identify God? What God? What God is he blessing? What God is he praising? What God is he exalting in and extolling? It is this God: "The God who is God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God who is known as the Father of mercies and God of all comfort." Marvelous titles.
If he had been a Jew living in the Old Testament time, he would have identified God this way: he would have said, "Blessed be God the father of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," would he not? That's how God was identified, by those who represented Him, by those through whom He spoke.
But in the New Testament, He is not identified as the blessed God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; He is identified as the blessed God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. For now, the God who once spoke through the fathers, who once spoke through the prophets, has in these last days, Hebrews 1 says, spoken unto us by His Son.
And His Son is different than the fathers, and different than the prophets. In what sense? In the sense that His Son, as the writer of Hebrews says, is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature. This is the God who is revealed incarnate in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is to say the Son and the Father share the same essence: whatever God is, His Son is. "Whatever I am, my son is. Whatever My Father is in terms of essence, I am." God the Father, Christ the Son speaks that they are equal in nature. That is precisely what they have intended to say.
In John's gospel, chapter 1, we couldn't have it more clearly put: "No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has revealed" – or explained – "Him." You can't see God; but when you see Christ, you see God. Jesus said, "If you've seen Me" – John 14 – "you have seen the Father."
In John chapter 5, a most significant portion of Scripture. Chapter 5, verse 17, Jesus said, "My Father is working, and I am working." In other words, He said to those Jewish leaders, "What God does, I do." And they were talking about the Sabbath, of course. They were saying Jesus as a man is violating the Sabbath; and His answer was, "God can do anything He wants on the Sabbath, and so can I." And they got the message: He was claiming to be God. And all the more, it says, they were seeking to kill Him, not only because He was breaking the Sabbath, but He was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.
And again the New Testament emphasizes for us that which is at the heart and soul of Christianity, that is that Jesus Christ is God in human flesh. And so the apostle Paul blesses God. What God? Not just the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; not any other God, not some god of the pagans; but the God who is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the one who revealed Himself in Christ, who is one with Christ.
In John 17, Jesus coming to the end of His life said, "Father, glorify Me with the glory I had with You before the world began. After the incarnation, take Me back to being face-to-face with You in full, glorious equality."
Over and over again this phrase that "God is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" is reiterated. The apostle Paul uses it in Ephesians 1:3. John uses it in 2 John 3. And not only in those places, it is repeated other times as well, that God revealed Himself in Christ; and that God is the God who is the Father, one in essence, with His Son, Jesus Christ. That is the heart of the Christian faith. If you don't believe that, no matter what else you believe you cannot be a Christian.
But there's more. Look back at that phrase in verse 3. Not just the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, but would you notice, God is seen as the God of our Lord Jesus Christ. How can He be one with God and have God as His God?
Well, that's a fair question. Back in John 20, verse 17, Jesus said, "I ascend to My Father and your Father, My God and your God." On the cross He said, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" Mark 15:34.
Listen carefully: in His deity, He is equal to God; in His humanity, He is submissive to God, right? In the incarnation, He is God, and He is also 100 percent man. As man, He must submit Himself fully to God. And God is not just His Father in deity, that is one in essence, He is His God in humanity. Jesus in His condescension, Jesus in His submission comes down, takes on the form of a servant, and obeys God, and identifies God as His God. That's a marvelous reality.
In that incarnation He even restricted His divine knowledge, didn't He? He said, "No man knows the day nor the hour, not even the Son of Man." In His incarnation He submitted Himself to not knowing something voluntarily. He submitted Himself to not using His attributes voluntarily, taking upon Himself the form of a servant. God becomes His God, that is to say the one over Him, to whom He submits as well as His equal. And so you have in this marvelous blessing both the humanity and the deity of Christ brought magnificently together in one statement: "Blessed is the God," – what God? – "the God who is the God of and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ."
And if you were to take the time – and we won't – to look at "Lord Jesus Christ," you have in that great title all of the redemptive work that the Lord came to do. Lord speaks obviously of deity. Lord speaks of sovereignty. Jesus, His name, speaks of sacrifice, it speaks of humanity. He is the one who came to save His people from their sins; that's what Jesus means.
Christ is the term for Anointed One, or Messiah. His whole redemptive work, His sovereign work, His Messianic work is all bound up in this name. And so when Paul is blessing God, it isn't just any God, it isn't just the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, it is the God who revealed Himself in Jesus Christ, the very Lord Jesus Christ who is the Anointed One and the Redeemer and the Sovereign One, the one who submitted Himself in incarnation and could say, "God is My God." All of the gospel is tied up in that great, great benediction.
But then he adds these two titles for God, and they are both taken from the Old Testament. He says, "God who is also the Father of mercies and God of all comfort." He could have chosen a myriad of titles for God, but he chose those two, because he wants to make the point that God is coming to him in his suffering, God is coming to him in his pain and his affliction; but it isn't to chasten, and it isn't to discipline, it is to comfort; which means he's not in sin, God is on his side. God is not tearing him down, God is picking him up.
Look at that phrase, "the Father of mercies." What does it mean? Well, that's the language of Jewish liturgy again. That comes out of the synagogue prayer. The synagogue prayer says, "Our Father, merciful Father, ever compassionate, have mercy on us." This is the language of the Jew who cried out for tender mercy, who cried out for pity from God; for God to look at his miserable sinful condition, his deprivation, his desperation, and treat him with kindness, and treat him with love, and treat him with tenderness. God does that.
David said to Gad in 2 Samuel 24, "I'm in great distress. Let us now fall into the hand of the Lord, for His mercies are great. But do not let me fall into the hand of man." I'd rather fall into God's hands, His mercies are great.
Over and over again in the Psalms you have that. One particular will suffice: "Just as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him. For He Himself knows our frame, He is mindful that we are but dust."
Down in verse 17, "His loving kindness, everlasting. His righteousness to children's children." In other words, God is kind, God is merciful. Micah the prophet said in chapter 7, "Who is a pardoning God like You? And who gives mercy and pity and grace so full and so free?"
That's not just an Old Testament term, though. Paul loved to think of God as a God of mercy. In fact, in Romans 12:1, he says, "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the" – what? – "mercies of God." What are they? They're everything listed in Romans 1 to 11, everything in the whole story of salvation. All the component parts of salvation outlined in Romans 1 to 11 are the mercies of God. It is God's mercy demonstrated in His saving, sanctifying, glorifying acts.
And so, Paul says, "I just want to praise the Father of mercies, the one who is the source of mercy, the one who is the source of pity, the one who gives tender compassion. I can rejoice in my trials. I'm not distressed. I'm not in despair. I'm not in depression. Why? Because my God who is revealed to me in Jesus Christ is merciful, and compassionate, and full of tender pity for those He loves."
But there's even more. He then calls Him, "The God of all comfort." Isaiah loved to think about that, Isaiah 40: "O comfort, O comfort you, My people." Isaiah chapter 51, twice: once in verse 3, and once in verse 12. Isaiah chapter 66 and verse 13, Isaiah celebrates the comfort of God. You'll find it elsewhere in the Old Testament: God is a God of comfort. The Greek word is paraklēsis; we get the paraclete, a familiar word to us: "One who comes alongside to help." God is the God of all help, all comfort.
Now let me just talk about the word "comfort," because we're going to need to understand it as we go through the text next week. When I say the word "comfort" to you, what do you think of? Comfort. Oh, a big soft bed, or a big stuffed chair; or just having eaten your favorite meal, and your wife has nothing for you to do, and your kids are gone, and the lawn is mowed, and everything works. Or a hammock on your vacation, swinging in the breeze without a care. Comfort.
That's not what it means here, sorry. It's connected to a Latin root, and the Latin root is fortis, which means brave. It is not talking about ease, it is not a synonym for ease, softness, a settled feeling. It is a synonym for courage, bravery, strength. He's not saying, "God came to me and gave me a cushy life." He's saying, "God came to me in the middle of my trouble and gave me strength. He came to me and gave me courage. He gave me boldness. He made me brave. In fact, God is the source of all comfort." To put it another way: "God is the ultimate source of every act of true comfort; and apart from God, there's no true comfort."
There's plenty of heartbreak. His character was assaulted. His church was assaulted under Satanic power, to go along with all the physical pain, he had all of that pain on the inside. But in it all, God had come to him and made him brave, and made him bold, and made him courageous, and made him strong. God had encouraged, fortified him. And that's why he blesses God, for that.
So much to say about comfort. And starting in verse 4 next week, you'll see it richly unfold.
Father, we thank You for this encouraging word. We thank You that You're the God who was the God of the Lord Jesus Christ to whom He submitted in His incarnation to do His redemptive work. He was fully man, and so He can teach us how to submit. But beyond that, You were not just the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, You were the Father. That is to say, He was equal with You; and the one we worship is not just a man but God as well. Not only can He sympathize, but He can give us the power to overcome.
We thank You, O God, that You are the Father of mercies, that You look at Your children with pity and compassion and tenderness, and that You are the only source of comfort. All comfort comes alone from You. You're the one who encourages us, who makes us brave and bold and strong in the midst of our trials. We thank You that You came to Paul, and You made him strong when he had conflicts on the outside and fears on the inside, because we have the same: conflict all around us on every front, fear and anxiety on the inside. Perfect setting for You to come to us as the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort.
We thank You for the testimony of this wonderful man. We thank You for the way in which he struggled; not for his own sake, but for the sake of the church, and the truth, and the people he loved. And he found you adequate in all his struggles. And may we know that You have not changed, You come to us in Christ as You came to him, full of tender mercy, full of compassion; and You comfort us in all our affliction. May we know the fullness of that comfort. May we know the courage, the strength, and the bravery to move ahead triumphantly, in Your strength, for Christ's sake. Amen.
This article is also available and sold as a booklet.


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One can use different units to describe the same quantity, so conversion of units are done to get the answers that are universally accepted and meaningful. Unit converter converts the different units of measurement for the same quantity through multiplicative conversion factors which changes the units of a measured quantity without altering its value. unitsconverters.com assists you with the same technique assuring accurate conversions with formulae associated with it.
Measurement plays a fundamental part in every profession. Right from developing new products and processes to administering health treatments, measurement helps mankind in numerous ways. One might ponder that What are measurement and measurement units? A measurement is an evaluation of any physical quantity. Everything that we create, design or build uses measurement of physical property and these properties requires units. These measurement units are the earliest tools and is a standardised quantity of a physical property. The measurements most commonly use the International System of Units(SI) as a framework for comparison which defines seven fundamental units out of which other units can be derived.

subset: commoncrawl


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CJRS Guidance on Who can be Furloughed
HMRC's guidance on which employees can be placed on furlough using the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme has been updated. The scheme will continue until at least 30 April 2021.
The updated guidance includes new information about employees who are unable to work because they have caring responsibilities resulting from coronavirus (COVID-19). This guidance confirms that employers may furlough employees with caring responsibilities arising from COVID-19 who are unable to work or are working reduced hours.
The guidance for employers' states that your employee is eligible for the grant and can be furloughed, if they are unable to work, including from home or working reduced hours because they:
- are clinically extremely vulnerable, or at the highest risk of severe illness from coronavirus and following public health guidance
- have caring responsibilities resulting from coronavirus (COVID-19), such as caring for children who are at home as a result of school and childcare facilities closing, or caring for a vulnerable individual in their household
This guidance covers those who are unable to work due to childcare responsibilities following the closure of most schools across the UK. Whilst this guidance provides some useful clarification it should be noted that employers are still not compelled to furlough those that qualify.
Employees who are being furloughed for the above reasons can be fully or flexibly furloughed. If they are flexibly furloughed, they are not allowed to work any hours that are recorded as being on furlough. Please do not hesitate to call if you need any assistance with any of your furlough-related obligations.


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Swagat Indian Grocery Store in North Bergen, New Jersey : Your One-Stop Shop
Welcome to Swagat Indian Grocery Store – Your Ultimate Destination for Authentic Indian Flavors in North Bergen, New Jersey !
At Swagat, we take pride in bringing India's vibrant tastes and aromas to your doorstep. Whether you're a seasoned chef or an adventurous foodie, our wide selection of Indian canned foods, frozen delights, and dairy products promises to entice your taste buds and transport you to the heart of India.
Convenience Redefined: Order Indian Grocery Online with Swagat in North Bergen, New Jersey
Say goodbye to long grocery runs and endless aisles. With Swagat, you can order your favorite Indian grocery online from the comfort of your home in North Bergen, New Jersey . Our user-friendly platform ensures a seamless shopping experience, allowing you to browse, select, and order your essentials with just a few clicks.
From aromatic spices to wholesome grains, from savory snacks to decadent sweets – we have everything you need to create authentic Indian meals that impress you. Discover the convenience of Indian supermarket online shopping with us and elevate your culinary adventures today!
We have secure payment options and prompt delivery services with which shopping for Indian groceries has never been easier. Order Indian grocery online in North Bergen, New Jersey , and let us take care of the rest. Whether you're craving the fiery flavors of South India or the decadent indulgence of North Indian cuisine, Swagat has you covered.
Explore a World of Flavor: Indian Grocery Store Near Me in North Bergen, New Jersey
Craving the flavors of home? Searching for an Indian grocery store near me? Look no further than Swagat Indian Grocery Store, conveniently located near you in North Bergen, New Jersey . Step into our store and immerse yourself in a treasure trove of Indian spices, sauces, condiments, and more. Our shelves are stocked with the finest ingredients sourced directly from India, ensuring authenticity and quality with every purchase.
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At Swagat, we believe that good food is the cornerstone of a happy life. That's why we're committed to providing you with a diverse selection of groceries, Indian frozen foods, canned delights, and Indian dairy products that cater to every palate and preference. From traditional favorites to modern innovations, our products are curated to ensure an unforgettable culinary journey.
Indulge in the convenience of online shopping or visit our Indian grocery store in North Bergen, New Jersey , to discover the essence of Indian cuisine like never before. With Swagat Indian Grocery Store, every meal is an opportunity to savor the flavors of India and a chance to get unforgettable memories with your loved ones.
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Bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the south, the Pacific Ocean to the west and Caribbean Sea to the east, Costa Rica (translated it means, "rich coast") is indeed a rich land of amazing diversity. With its lush tropical rainforests, quiet beaches, vast coastal wetlands and volcanic cloud forests, it is easy to see why Costa Rica is a top travel destination. It is definitely a birder's paradise, a botanist's dream, a herpetologist's jackpot and for Aperture Academy, a photographer's ultimate playground. Join us at Aperture Academy for a week of photography as diverse as the country.
A person could spend months, even years in Costa Rica and still not see the completeness of its biodiversity, so to get the most out of our time there, we have decided to concentrate on three distinctly different, but incredibly productive, regions ranging from Mountain Cloud Forest all the way to the lush jungles along the Atlantic Coast.
The sky's the limit on photographic subject matter, but particular emphasis and time will be directed towards gathering professional quality images of various species of birds, especially hummingbirds, as well as other opportunistic wildlife offerings. We'll be working with highly experienced local naturalists, and their amazing skills at locating the hidden wildlife all around is truly astounding. With over 700 species of birds listed for Costa Rica, there certainly won't be a dearth of bird subjects to photograph. After the birds bed down at the end of the day, night flash photography skills will be introduced as we trek into the night forest and seek out the colorful frogs and insects the region is famous for. You'll experience how the jungle forest comes alive at night with a cacophony of sights and sounds, and we will be there with our cameras to capture the moments. A walk through a rainforest at night is truly an unforgettable experience.
© Ellie Stone - Aperture Academy Instructor
Even more diverse than the wildlife is the plant life of Costa Rica, as it is home to over 9,000 identified species of plants (with more described each year). At each of our carefully chosen locations, in addition to the natural flora of the area, extensive gardens will provide a wealth of incredible subject matter. For the plant life of Costa Rica, we will definitely be pulling out our macro lenses and working on the delicate abstracts and subtle techniques indicative of this style of photography.
Costa Rica is also known for its abundance of water, specifically its myriad of mountain streams and waterfalls and time, techniques and instruction will certainly be devoted towards capturing the grace of moving water.
In addition, to help get the most "pop" out of our images, there will be casual sit down sessions to highlight various Photoshop and post-processing techniques. So bring a laptop, a glass of wine, and your images from the day as we work to get the most out of your images!


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Keep your wall oven in top shape with preferred, OEM (original equipment manufacturer) accessories from KitchenAid. Whether you need oven racks, handles and knobs or a bottle of touch-up paint, our parts and accessories will help your wall oven look great while performing at its best year after year. Browse our wall oven accessories to discover exactly what you need to update your appliance and keep it working hard no matter what you're preparing as your recipe repertoire improves throughout the years.


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Looking for our location in Smiths Falls? Click Here!
Your local dealer will get back to you within 24 hours with recommendations and to book an appointment.
Maintaining your Lincoln vehicle will ensure it performs well, is reliable, durable, safe and has the best resale value. Therefore, you should have it serviced regularly.
Regular service and maintenance from our TIRECRAFT service centre can ensure your luxury vehicle performs at its best.
Whether your vehicle needs preventative maintenance or repairs, our team of expert technicians is prepared to handle them. We are dedicated to maintaining your Lincoln with quality parts and top-tier customer service, from oil changes to a transmission replacement we can manage it all and have you ready to pick up your service car and get on with your day.
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Some of our services include–
Having your tires properly inspected by an expert is of the utmost importance to TIRECRAFT. After your tire is dismounted, a thorough inspection of the tire is performed. Additionally, we perform industry-standard repairs, which include plugging and patching problems and balancing the tire and wheel assembly.
The position of the wheels indicates the alignment of the wheels to the vehicle. Proper alignment is necessary for a smooth and safe drive, without it, the wheels will resist your steering commands. The opposite direction of your tires can result in a struggle between them and wear on your tires. Therefore, we at TIRECRAFT provide accurate wheel alignment by our certified specialists.
Oil changes are one of the easiest and most essential preventative maintenance services. As an engine oil cleans the moving parts and allows all of them to function smoothly, it keeps everything running smoothly.
Filtering the oil continuously prevents the oil from becoming contaminated with debris that may harm the engine. When the oil filter loses its cleaning ability, the oil becomes dirty, and its lubricating properties degrade. TIRECRAFT recommends changing the oil, as well as the oil filter, every -5,000 kilometres.
A defective battery is the primary cause for your vehicle not to start and having you dig out those jumper cables or calling CAA for assistance. Fortunately, our technicians at TIRECRAFT can make sure that your car starts when you expect it to, whenever you need it to!
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At TIRECRAFT, we are committed to giving our customers satisfaction with our professionals and excellent services. As a TIRECRAFT tire customer you have the option for our "TIRECRAFT Advantage Plus" program.
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Get the best out of your luxury Lincoln! For a smoother ride; visit your nearby TIRECRAFT, where our team can meet all your vehicle repair services.


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Sunday 30 December 2007
Running repairs
I bodged the heater connection by putting some more solder on it. It's not a permanent solution because the solder is molten while the heater is on so it slowly oxidizes away. The last time bodged it that way it lasted six months though. It really needs a crimped connection.
The GM3 motor failed by running slowly, getting very hot and drawing lots of current. It eventually caused the protected MOSFET that is driving it to shut down. Opening it up soon revealed how it had failed :-
It has two pairs of copper brushes. Three of them have holes worn right through and the fourth has broken off. Its stub was touching the wrong side of the commutator, causing a short.
More expensive motors have carbon blocks on the end of arms which can wear down a lot further before they fail. Bigger motors have spring loaded carbon rods. The gearbox shows no sign of wear so it is let down by the cheap motor.
This motor is not really up to the job of driving the extruder. It is being severely abused by running it from 12V PWM when it is only rated at 6V. I anticipated it would not last long and ordered a spare when I bought it. I fitted that and HydraRaptor is up and running again. Curiously the second motor seems a lot quieter than the first.
At some point I think I will upgrade to a stepper motor. They are more expensive but, as long as you don't load the bearings, they last virtually forever. In the long run they probably work out cheaper and I can also dispense with the shaft encoder and the interference suppressor.
Friday 28 December 2007
Wear and tear
The heater has also run for a lot longer than the extruder has been extruding. I got fed up of waiting for it to warm up at the start of each run so my host software leaves it on. I keep meaning to put a timeout in the firmware to turn it off when there hasn't been any Ethernet messages for a while as I have left it on for long periods a few times.
The extruder is starting to show some signs of aging. The plastic shield which keeps the fan draft away from the nozzle looked like this when I made it :-
But now it looks like this :-
The nozzle itself now looks like this :-
The JBWeld that surrounds the heater wire has gone very dark and has several cracks in it. One of the heater connections broke off in a previous accident so I dug it out and joined a piece of copper wire by squeezing it tight and soldering it. There is now no sign of the solder which is why it has gone open circuit.
The black stuff which looks like bitumen must be slow cooked HDPE. I am surprised that long term heating to 240°C causes it to decompose. I don't know if the white surface on the shield is just due to its surface melting a bit or whether something boiled off the nozzle and condensed onto it or reacted with it.
Even the high temp insulation over the thermistor wires is starting to look a bit sad!
I also noticed that the steel wire that forms the flexible drive coupling is starting to break up. A couple of strands have snapped and there is a pile of black dust on top of the pump shell.
The heater connection should be easy to fix. I have a few planned improvements to make to the extruder but I will wait till parts wear out before replacing them with better ones to get the most use of it.
To raft or not to raft?
The temperature at which I lay down HDPE onto the cutting board is important. At 180°C it does not stick. At 200°C it sticks well but can be peeled off with the help of a penknife. Higher temperatures make it harder to remove and do more damage to the board.
Here are a couple of 15mm test cubes made directly onto the PP board without a raft :-
The one on the left had the first layer extruded at 200°C and subsequent layers at 240°C. As you can see it curled badly, particularly at one corner. The one on the right had its first layer extruded at 220°C. It looked promising but when I tried my standard warp test block the result was not good!
So it looks like the raft is here to stay. Here is an example :-
I lay down the raft at 4mm/s with a notional filament diameter of 1.1mm with the extruder head 1.3mm above the board. This is to get the filament as round as possible so that it doesn't form a solid weld. In actual fact, gravity causes it to slump to about 0.9mm high and spread to 1.3mm wide. The oval area calculation would give 1.34mm and a pitch of 1.3mm is sufficient to get adjacent filaments to stick together. My rationale for making the raft as thick as possible in one layer was to make it strong without taking too much time. It probably does not need to be as strong now that it binds to the PP.
I put the raft down at 200°C, then I do the first layer of the object at 240°C with the fan off to ensure it welds to the raft and then subsequent layers at 240°C with the fan on.
I calculate the amount the raft overlaps the object with this completely arbitrary function :-
def overlap(x):I halved the overlap when I went from foam board to polypropylene.
return x + 10 + 10.0 * (x - 20) / 80
Thursday 27 December 2007
Cutting corners
The problem is that, although the machine makes a perfect right angle, the filament appears to have a minimum bend radius and so cuts the corner. The amount it cuts the corner seems to vary from layer to layer giving rise to the rough edge.
I think the variation is due to the fact that my extruder spindle is a bit off centre. This causes the torque to go up and down as it rotates, which causes the flexible drive cable to wind up and run down again. This causes speed variations despite the fact that the motor speed is well regulated. At some point I will get rid of the flexible drive.
I expect the fact that I am stretching the filament doesn't help with the corner cutting. I improved it a lot by slowing down the drawing of the outline to 4mm/s and leaving the infill at 16mm/s. Here is the result :-
Still not perfect, another thing to try would be to recognise that there is a minimum corner radius and make the nozzle follow an arc of that radius around the corner. At least that way it might be more uniform.
Here is a close up of the top face taken with a scanner:-
As it goes round the corner the filament has an external radius of about 1.5mm and an internal radius of 0.9mm. As it is 0.6mm wide that is probably not bad. You can also see that the zigzag infill sometimes ends a bit short of the edge, probably also due to corner cutting.
To get sharper corners I expect I need to use a nozzle with a smaller hole, so that the filament can be fine without having to be stretched, but that has the disadvantage of slowing down the extrusion rate for a given pressure.
Wednesday 26 December 2007
Obviously there are many ways to fill the interior so I started with the simplest, just alternate layers of horizontal and vertical zigzags. HydraRaptor seems quite happy extruding 0.5mm diameter filament at 16 mm / second. If extruded into free air it would actually be 1mm at 4mm/s, but that is too course, so I move the head at 16mm/s which stretches it.
From trial and error I have found that a good layer height to use is 0.8 times the notional filament diameter. If it is more, then as the lower layers shrink, the nozzle rises faster than the object and a gap develops. Once that happens the filament squirms about and does not follow the path of the nozzle accurately.
So the extruded filament is constrained to 0.4mm high. Measurements show the width to be about 0.6mm. Incidentally, if it squashed to a perfect ellipse with a height of 0.4mm then it would be 0.625mm wide to have the same area as a 0.5mm circle. I extrude the zigzag with a pitch of 0.6mm so that adjacent filaments touch, but it means the object is not actually completely solid. The space occupied by each filament is a rectangular channel 0.4 x 0.6 = 0.24mm² but the cross sectional area of the plastic is π x 0.25² = 0.20mm², so about 18% is air. I confirmed this by weighing the block. It weighs 6.5g but if it was solid HDPE then 8ml would weight about 8g. It takes about 45 minutes to make the object including laying a raft.
Before I tried it, I always imagined the amount of plastic deposited would have to exactly match the volume of the extruded object otherwise it would sag or bulge. I could never understand how FDM worked reliably. Now I know that the volume can be a bit less and the difference is made up by air. That means the amount of plastic deposited is actually not that critical, which is why RepRap can get away with an open loop extruder.
I measured the warping with the three nail jig that I showed in the last post. The thin walled box is warped 0.44mm and the solid box has warped 0.87mm so that answers the question whether solid objects warp more or less. Note that the thin walled box is made with 1mm filament because 0.5mm filament is too thin to be self supporting.
I expect I can make a less warped block by extruding a thick base and then a less dense infill above that. Something else to try.
It is amazing how strong 10mm thick HDPE is. You don't often get to see plastics in that form. Most end products have optimised strength against cost by having thin walls and ribs etc.
Sunday 16 December 2007
Chopping up chopping boards
I have tried many other surfaces including various woods and metals (with and without primer), melamine and several other types of foam board but nothing worked. Obviously HDPE sticks to HDPE so I decided to investigate that further.
My first idea was to use a thin sheet of HDPE cut from a milk bottle. This makes a nice surface to extrude onto but the problem is holding it down. I first stuck it down with double sided tape but the heat melts the glue. Sticking it to a sheet of aluminium to take the heat away improved matters and I was able to get slightly less warping than with foam board.
To compare the warping on different base materials I made a test shape that is a 40mm x 10mm x 20mm open box with 1mm walls and measured how much the corners lift using a simple jig.
With foam board I was getting 0.83mm lift between corners and the middle. With HDPE stuck to aluminium I got 0.76mm. Not much better because the glue of the sticky tape stretches under the curling force.
I needed a thick HDPE base and I had heard that plastic kitchen chopping boards are made from HDPE. I bought a new one from ASDA which looks like this :-
It is 5mm thick, opaque and quite rigid. I realised it was very different from the other chopping boards we have which I think came from IKEA.
These are 10mm thick and made from a softer, more translucent plastic. To find out which was HDPE I used the flow chart on this website www.texloc.com/ztextonly/clplasticid.htm. I concluded the thin hard one from ASDA is HDPE and the thicker softer one from IKEA is PP. HDPE seems to stick equally well to both of them but the HDPE one warped a bit when it was only held down with masking tape, so I decided to go with the PP one. I cut it up and bolted it down to my XY-table. It was a bit curved due to years of dishwasher use but bolting it down pulled it flat.
Surprisingly, if I lay down a raft at 200°C it sticks well but can be easily prized off again with a penknife. The board is marked slightly but it can be reused over and over again.
I extrude the object at 240°C so that it welds to the raft and itself, and I turn the fan on after the first layer so that the object cools to room temp as fast as possible.
The board is strong enough to hold the object completely flat while it is attached but when it is removed it does still curl a bit. I measured 0.44mm on my jig so that is about half the curling I was getting with foam board. Other than extruding onto a convex surface, I think that is the best that can be achieved for that shape with HDPE at room temperature. Here are the three tests side by side :-
Next I will look at different solid shapes to see if they warp more or less.
Tuesday 13 November 2007
Disaster recovery
Things that were destroyed:
My ADSL router: a friend kindly gave me a replacement.
My PC's serial port: I replaced it with a USB to serial adapter.
The Freescale DEMO9S12NE64 evaluation board that I used for my axis controller: next day delivery from Farnell.
The EZ430-T2012 eval board that I used for the extruder controller, fortunately the spindle controller was not connected at the time so that survived.
The ULN2803 and 7407 chips on my interface board.
The optical shaft encoder chip on my extruder.
The NEAT MDM7 stepper driver on the X axis. The only thing wrong with it was the direction input was not working. They are opto coupled so it should have been just a simple matter of replacing the opto, but the whole thing is potted in epoxy resin so it is impossible to fix. I managed to find a replacement on the web and I have got some spares on the way as well.
Both power supplies and all the local voltage regulators.
- The Y axis stepper driver.
The X-Y table shaft encoders and Hall effect limit switches.
The protected MOSFETs on the extruder controller.
I also added acceleration and deceleration to my stepper driving software. I am aiming to lay down 0.25mm filament at 64mm/s. My XY table can easily move that fast but I didn't like the thump I was getting when it started and stopped. It's a bit much to ask it to accelerate a few kilograms to 64mm/s instantly! The datagram for the goto_xyz command now includes a table of delays to use for the first and last n steps. It remains to be seen how much distortion I will get from not moving at constant velocity. At the very least the acceleration will be useful in speeding up the moves when it is not extruding.
Saturday 27 October 2007
Extruder dimensions
This is the motor shaft coupler. I adjusted the slot to suit my GM3 motor. I think there are now two versions of this part. The official design is tapered but this is not necessary with the offset motor mount so I simplified it to a cylinder.
Here is the finished article milled with a 2.22 mm bit. The step on the outside and in the shaft slot are there because my milling tool's shaft is wider than the bit, so to go deeper than 9mm I need to have some clearance. The material is some sort of metal loaded resin.
Here is the clamp drawing I used. It has now been superseded by a larger design. Note that I adjusted the hole for the PTFE to suit my 12mm rod. I think the official design was 10mm but is now 16mm. I also widened the slot to allow the 2.2mm milling tool to get in and added some extra mounting holes to suit my machine.
I milled it from 9mm Delrin.
Here is the pump drawing :-
The poly channel on the official version slopes outwards at the entry but that is only needed for the version without the offset motor.
And here is the milled version :-
The material I used is not as slippery as CAPA so, to reduce friction in the channel, I smoothed it with emery paper, polished it with metal polish and sprayed it with PTFE dry film spray.
I split the motor mount into three pieces for milling from a sheet of 5mm perspex. I fixed the pieces together with M2.5 screws, tapped into the perspex.
If anybody wants the Visio source file it is here:- forums.reprap.org
Tuesday 23 October 2007
They don't like it up 'em!
I was trying to connect a scope probe to the far side of a two row connector on my machine. I made a small hook from a piece of wire with a bit of insulation to get it past the front row.
I inserted this with the power turned off. Unfortunatly, and almost unbelievably, the far end of the wire manage to find its way into a hole leading to the mains live terminal on my solid state relay. That was the only thing on the live side of the mains switch.
Massive bang! Blew the crap out of HydraRaptor and my ADSL router. My PC is crippled is well, it no longer runs at the correct front side bus speed and insists I haven't got an 80 pin IDE cable.
This is the CPU of my axis controller :-
And this the micro from my extruder controller :-
I expect all the rest of the electronics is fried as well, so pretty much the end of HydraRaptor. The only lucky thing was that I was holding the insulation, otherwise it might have been the end of me as well!
Stretching a point
Here are three 20 x 20 x 20 open cubes with different wall thicknesses :-
The first was 1mm diameter filament extruded at 4mm per second with a height of 0.8mm giving a wall thickness of about 1.2mm.
The second was the same feed rate but with the extruder traveling over the bed at 16mm per second to give 0.5mm filament, the same as the nozzle hole diameter. The height was set to 0.4mm giving a wall thickness of about 0.6mm. As you can see it warps more but I expect it would behave if it was building a solid object. The bottom layer which was stuck to the table has better corner definition.
The third attempt was 0.35mm filament extruded at 16mm per second with a hight of 0.28mm and a width of about 0.5mm. As you can see holes started appearing but I think that was just because the sides buckled so badly. Interestingly the holes can be bridged by filament above that needs no support. Again, I think this would be OK making solid objects, or at least objects with thicker walls.
This is really good news as it means I can get down to the sort of resolution commercial machines get (0.25mm) without having to have a very small nozzle aperture, which would limit the flow rate. It remains to be seen what effect stretching has on the polymer but as it is still liquid at that point I think it wont increase the contraction much, if at all. It does mean I need very fast head movement to keep up the deposition rate, about 64mm per second. I think my machine will do that if I reconfigure the steppers for speed rather than torque, a simple one wire change.
Tuesday 16 October 2007
Scaling new heights
I decided to try different sized shapes to see how the process scales. It turns out that it doesn't and 20mm cubed is the magic size that is easiest to make!
The first thing I tried was taller :-
As you can see at 50mm tall it is starting to sag and 100mm is hopeless. The problem is that as the height increases, the plastic already laid down contracts as it cools and leaves the nozzle high and dry. I fixed that be reducing the Z increment from 1mm per layer to 0.95mm. That allowed me to make a good 20 x 20 x 95mm square tube :-
I presume with this increment I can keep going up, but who knows, I thought that at 20mm!
Next I tried low and wide. This was an attempt to make 120 x 120 x 20mm :-
I stopped it when the first two layers failed to weld. This was because with an object this large, by the time it has traced the perimeter to start the next layer, the first layer has cooled down to room temperature. In my post sticking point I predicted that to make an instantaneous weld between molten plastic and plastic at room temperature requires the molten plastic to be at temperature
T = 2 x Tm - Tr, for HDPE and 20°C this means about 240 - 250°C.
I set my extruder to 240°C and made this mess :-
I don't like running the extruder that hot because, although HDPE is not supposed to burn until 350°C, it smells like burning plastic and the end of the nozzle is glazed black. Also, the toothbrush that wipes the nozzle is showing signs of melting.
The object came unstuck from the foam board because of the extreme corner curling due to shrinkage. This is a fundamental problem with HDPE and room temperature FDM. HDPE shrinks about 2% when it cools from its melting point to room temperature. Commercial FDM machines use ABS, which has a lower shrinkage, and they keep the work piece in an oven close to the melting point. That means the hot plastic does not need to be so much hotter than the melting point, and most of the shrinkage occurs after the object is complete. The problem here is that the first layer cools and shrinks before the next layer lands of top. The next layer is bigger when it welds on top but then it shrinks, contracting the bottom layer more. Each subsequent layer increases the tension on the layers below. The bigger the object is, the worse the effect is because the mismatch between the size of the hot layer and the cold layer below it is bigger in absolute terms.
Following in Forrest's footsteps I tried laying down a raft of HDPE first to anchor the object to the foam base. The raft is 120 x 120mm but the object is now only 100 x 100 x 20mm.
As you can see that gives a big improvement but it wasn't strong enough to hold the corners down fully. A bigger raft, and perhaps a second layer might help but as it was an hour to build the raft and half an hour to build the object I didn't bother trying again. The blob, by the way, is where the firmware crashed on the last layer!
Here are some 40 x 40 x 20mm tests made with rafts, the second one had a bigger raft:-
Here the corner curl with a raft is comparable to the 20 x 20 x 20mm test without a raft showing how this effect gets dramatically worse as width increases.
Next I tried tall thin objects :-
Both were made on rafts and, the first is 15 x 15x x 75 mm, the second is 10 x 10 x 100mm. The photo is not very good but they both flare towards the bottom. The one on the left has an untidy surface as each layer is not well aligned with the layer below it and the one of the right has a completely wavy surface like basket work.
The reason for this is that because the perimeter is shorter, the layer below is still molten when the next layer is extruded on top of it. It moves around giving an untidy surface and also does not resist the contraction of the layer above. The bottom few layers are the correct size because they are welded to the solid raft but the layers above are too small as they have contracted inwards. A 5 x 5mm test shows this effect even more :-
The only way around this is either to wait for the layer below to cool, speed up its cooling with a fan, or extrude very slowly. I decided to experiment with a fan. It was immediately obvious that if you have a fan blowing near the nozzle you have to insulate it otherwise it doesn't reach its target temperature.
The RepRap design uses fiberglass wool but I wanted to be able to see the state of my heater so I decided to make a transparent cover. I started with a plastic test tube, donated by my wife, which used to contain bath salts.
I cut the end off this and drilled a hole to clear the nozzle. I converted a large plastic nut into a mounting flange by stripping out the thread on my lathe so that it was a push fit.
Here it is mounted on the extruder :-
The first fan I tried was a small North bridge cooling fan. It was so light that I could mount it on a stiff wire attached by ring tail crimps and bolts. :-
Unfortunately it wasn't very powerful so the next fan I tried was a PC case fan complete with speed control and blue flashing LEDs.
This worked a lot better but it is difficult to get it as close as I would like it. Here is the tallest thing I have made so far, it is 10 x 10 x 150mm. At this point I changed to 4mm per second travel and a feed rate to give a 1mm filament. I found that you can get finer filament just by stretching it as it leaves the nozzle so the work I did with flow rate and filament size is not really relevant. I had to reduce the layer height to 0.8mm.
This worked well on the windward side, with a nice tight corner, but not so well on the leeward side. The corner away from the fan is more rounded and the layers are less tidy. A cross section shows that the two sides cooled by the fan are straighter and longer.
The 5 x 5 x 20mm test is much improved but its surface area is so small that the fan fails to keep it cool enough. I think the only option with something as small as this is to slow down, and possibly drop the temperature.
Again the leeward side is not as good. The filament short cuts the corner because the layer below is not strong enough to hold it in place. I think to make the fan effective a cowling and duct is needed to get a strong flow of air directed downwards around all sides of the nozzle.
I have noticed that there is always an excess of material at the corners. This is because the head makes a perfect right angle but the filament has a minimum bend radius and takes a short cut. I am not sure how to compensate for this. I can't really pause the extruder because its response is too slow, so I either have to speed the head up as it takes a corner, or perhaps make it move in an arc that matches the bend radius rather than a right angle.
And finally here is an improved version of the magic 20mm cube :-
This is with the benefit of a raft, finer filament and fan cooling. The corners are a bit sharper and the corner curling a bit less. The reasons why this turned out to be the optimum shape are :-
- It is small enough that the filament does not cool too much when you go round it.
- It is large enough to make it long enough to traverse so that it does not stay too hot.
- It is short enough for the fan to be able to cool the back wall from the inside as well as the front.
- It is small enough for corner curling to not be too extreme.
The only reason I am using HDPE is that it seems to be the only thermoplastic filament I can buy off the shelf in the UK without getting it specially made.
With a bit of trial and error I expect I could make the machine produce a wide range of shapes and some useful objects but therein lies the problem. It is not supposed to be trial and error. The dream is to be able to input an arbitrary 3D model, of any size within the build volume, and have the item appear a few hours later. At the moment I can't see how that can happen with room temperature extrusion of HDPE. Its melting point is too high and its contraction too great. Managing the temperature of the object being built is very tricky as the features of the object vary from large to small.
Saturday 13 October 2007
GM3 motor suppressor
The Solarbotics GM3 generates large amounts of RF noise from 20MHz up to at least the TV band, which is 470- 850MHz in the UK. I know this because I can see the 20 MHz on my scope and it was also affecting our TV reception.
This is the circuit I used :-
The 1nF capacitors were axial ceramics and the 10nF was a radial ceramic, mainly because that is what I had to hand. I don't know the spec of the ferrite beads because I salvaged them from an old disc drive. Here is what they look like though :-
They should be a low Q type rated for at least 1A. The current rating is not so much about how much current they can carry but about the point where the magnetic field saturates the ferrite and the inductance disappears.
We want them to have a high impedance from 20 MHz to 800 MHz. I don't have much knowledge in this area but think this is quite a big ask for a ferrite and that I fell lucky with these. To get more impedance at the low frequency end it is normal to increase the number of turns to increase the inductance which is proportional to their square. The problem with that is that it increases the capacitance, reducing the attenuation at the high frequency end.
These beads are a good compromise: they have nearly a whole turn compared to a straight through bead which is half a turn, hence four times the inductance, but the wires maintain 0.1" separation so minimizing the capacitance.
The first two 1nF capacitors are soldered to the motor case. This is easier than you might imagine because steel is such a poor conductor of heat compared to copper, although it has to be said I am using a 50W temperature controller soldering iron. I cleaned the area first with a PCB cleaning block.
This is the rest of the circuit before it was soldered on top of the two capacitor leads. Spot my mistake!
Ignore the back emf diode, it is specific to my controller and should really be part of it. I used twin screened cable with the braid grounded at the controller end and left unconnected at the filter end.


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Hawaiʻi Police Department
Criminal Investigations Section, Area I
Lieutenant Gregory Esteban
Phone: 961-2252
Report No. C13002815
Media Release
Hawaiʻi Island police have arrested a Hilo woman in connection with a robbery Thursday morning (January 31) in Downtown Hilo.
Shortly after noon, officers responded to a report of an armed robbery that occurred at 11:50 a.m. at a business at the corner of Keawe Street and Furneaux Lane. They learned that a 33-year-old female employee had been accosted by a woman who displayed a handgun and demanded cash. The suspect fled with an undisclosed amount of money and was seen driving away in a white pickup truck.
Through the license plate number, police determined the identity and location of the person who was driving the truck. At 12:30 p.m., they arrested 23-year-old Tia Nohealani Menino of Hilo on Makaʻala Street in the Hilo industrial area.
She is being held at the Hilo police cellblock while detectives from the Area I Criminal Investigations Section continue the investigation.
Police ask that anyone who may have witnessed this robbery call the Police Department's non-emergency line at 935-3311 or Detective Derek Morimoto at 961-2380. Detective Morimoto may also be reached by email at firstname.lastname@example.com.
Tipsters who prefer to remain anonymous may call Crime Stoppers at 961-8300 in Hilo or 329-8181 in Kona and may be eligible for a reward of up to $1,000. Crime Stoppers is a volunteer program run by ordinary citizens who want to keep their community safe. Crime Stoppers doesn't record calls or subscribe to caller ID. All Crime Stoppers information is kept confidential.


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March 28, 2012Six scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have contributed to a new report finding "compelling evidence" that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill has impacted deep-sea coral communities in the Gulf of Mexico. The study, published the week of March 26 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, utilized all of the deep-sea robotic vehicles of the WHOI-operated National Deep Submergence Facility—the three-person submersible Alvin, the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Jason, and the autonomous vehicle Sentry – to investigate the corals, and employed comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography to track the source of petroleum hydrocarbons found. Lead author Helen White, an assistant professor of chemistry at Haverford College and a graduate of the MIT-WHOI Joint Program in oceanography, was part of a diverse team of researchers, led by Charles Fisher from Penn State University, that included Erik Cordes from Temple University and Tim Shank and Chris German from WHOI. Fisher, Cordes, Shank, and German are co-authors of the study, along with WHOI's Chris Reddy, Bob Nelson, Rich Camilli, and Walter Cho (now with Gordon College) and six other scientists from Penn State, Temple, and the U.S. Geological Survey. "These corals exhibited varying levels of stress, from bare skeleton, tissue loss, to excess mucous production, all associated with a covering of brown flocculent material," said Tim Shank, a WHOI biologist and an expert in life in the deep ocean. "This was 11 kilometers southwest of the well and underscores the magnitude of the release and potential impact to other deep-water ecosystems. Corals like these in particular serve as hosts to other animals—crabs, shrimp and brittle stars that may be impacted by the loss of their habitat." The study grew out of a previously scheduled research cruise to the Gulf led by Fisher in late October 2010—approximately six months after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. This expedition was part of an ongoing study funded by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Ocean Exploration and Research program. Using the ROV Jason, the team examined nine sites 20 km from the Macondo well and found deep-water coral communities unharmed. However, when the ROV explored an area 11 km to the SW of the spill site at a depth of 4,300 feet, the team was surprised to discover numerous coral communities covered in a brown flocculent material and showing signs of tissue damage. "We discovered the site during the last dive of the three-week cruise," said Fisher, a biologist and the chief scientist of this mission. "As soon as the ROV got close enough to the community for the corals to come into clear view it was clear to me that something was wrong at this site. I think it was too much white and brown, and not enough color on the corals and brittle stars. Once we were close enough to zoom in on a few colonies, there was no doubt that this was something I had not seen anywhere else in the Gulf: an abundance of stressed corals, showing clear signs of a recent impact. This is exactly what we had been on the lookout for during all dives, but hoping not to see anywhere." "When we sampled small parts of these corals, some of the tissue sloughed off. We'd never seen anything like this," said Shank. "Some of the brittle stars were lacking color, and tightly wrapped around the coral." Despite the coral communities' proximity to the Macondo well, at the time, the visual damage could not be directly linked to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Determined to find answers, the team set out barely a month later on a second cruise to the Gulf – a rare opportunity to return so quickly made possible by the National Science Foundation's RAPID Collaborative Research grant program. Joining this second research cruise, again headed by Fisher, was Helen White, whose expertise as a geochemist was key to the interdisciplinary effort. "It is easy to see the impact of oil on surface waters, coastlines and marine life, but this was the first time we were diving to the seafloor to examine the effects on deep sea ecosystems," said White. To examine the deep water, the team employed the AUV Sentry to map and photograph the ocean floor and the deep submergence vehicle Alvin to get a better look at the distressed corals. "This research drew upon all the resources of the National Deep Submergence Facility to complete the work," said Chris German, the chief scientist for deep submergence at WHOI. "This is a great exemplar of why we need such a diverse array of assets, not just for fundamental research but also to enable scientists to respond, rapidly, independently and objectively, at a time of national need." During six dives in Alvin, the team collected sediments and samples of the corals and filtered the brown material off of the corals for analysis. "Collecting samples from the deep ocean is incredibly challenging, and Alvin is crucial to this kind of work," said White. "As a geochemist, my primary aim in this research was to determine the composition of the brown flocculent material covering the corals and the source of any petroleum hydrocarbons present." Because oil can naturally seep from cracks in the sea floor of the Gulf, pinpointing the source of petroleum hydrocarbons in Gulf samples can be challenging to scientists, especially since oil is comprised of a complex mixture of different chemical compounds. However, there are often slight differences in oils that can be used to trace their origin. To identify the oil found in the coral communities, White worked with WHOI marine chemist Christopher Reddy and research specialist Robert Nelson using an advanced technique called comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography, which was pioneered at WHOI by Reddy and Nelson for use in oil spill research. The method provided invaluable evidence on the source of the oil. This exacting petroleum analysis coupled to the analysis of 69 images from 43 individual corals at the site, performed by Pen-Yuan Hsing, a graduate student of Charles Fisher's at PSU, yielded strong evidence that the coral communities were impacted by oil from the Macondo well spill. "We don't know the long-term impacts on these corals. We don't know if the living corals will recover or not. We hope our continued monitoring of this site, including time-lapse imaging, will give us insight into the potential for long-term recovery," said Shank, who is currently exploring the diversity and distribution of deep-sea habitats and marine life in the northern Gulf of Mexico aboard NOAA's Okeanos Explorer. Reddy stated that he was interested in why and how far the oil travelled and spread along the seafloor. This result adds to other studies that have shown that the Deepwater Horizon disaster affected the seafloor, the seawater with plumes of hydrocarbon-rich water, surface slicks, and vapors in the atmosphere as well as oiled beaches and marshes. "Ongoing work in the Gulf will improve our understanding of the resilience of these isolated communities and the extent to which they are affected by human activity. Oil had a visible effect on these corals and it is important to determine if they can rebound," said White. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is a private, non-profit organization on Cape Cod, Mass., dedicated to marine research, engineering, and higher education. Established in 1930 on a recommendation from the National Academy of Sciences, its primary mission is to understand the oceans and their interaction with the Earth as a whole, and to communicate a basic understanding of the oceans' role in the changing global environment. For more information, please visit www.whoi.edu. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Copyright ©2007 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, All Rights Reserved, Privacy Policy. |


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Product Description
Repair your sink drain components with this Danco Basin Gasket. It is designed to be used as a seat between the PO plug and the underside of the lavatory basin. It is made of durable rubber that will endure the rigors of everyday use.
- Durable rubber construction
- 2-3/8 in. O.D. X 1-7/16 in. I.D. X 3/8 in. Thick
- Used as a seat between the PO Plug and sink Basin
- Easy to install
- Includes 1 lavatory basin gasket


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Posted by ESC on April 25, 2002
In Reply to: love posted by Bob on April 25, 2002
: : : I am doing a paper on love would you happen to have a definition for Relationship love?
: : ...and we thought that the discussion on why a primate happened to evolve language was going to be tricky :)
: Piece of cake. Love, in my opinion, is a many-slendored thing, 'tis not hereafter, makes the world go round, looks on tempests and is never shaken, and is all you need.
Maybe this says a lot about me. I didn't understand the question. Is the poster (postee?) asking for a definition of romantic love...or someone who is in love with love? There are lots of kinds of love. This allows me to trot out some definitions from my Flip Dictionary:
love for your
offspring - geneity, storge
love, Christian - agape
love as friends without
"Writer's Digest Flip Dictionary: for when you know what you want to say but can't think of the word," by Barbara Ann Kipfer, Ph.D., (Writer's Digest Books, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2000)


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Four years ago this week and 215 recipes later, I have been blogging. Wow! That's crazy for me to imagine and I am so grateful for all the support that I get from my readers and all the folks in the internet world! I couldn't do it without you, thank you! I can't wait to
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Our parish offertory has significantly decreased, but was still greatly assisted by online giving and envelopes delivered to the parish office, along with a successful Diocesan Lenten Appeal. Our parish and particularly our societies suffered from the loss of fundraising monies. Holy Week activities, a Christian Mothers 60th anniversary, faith formation and flea market had to be cancelled with plans to reschedule. Our homebound and hospital ministries are still temporarily suspended.
I do want to call your attention to our new Ministries. A Vocation Ministry was established to develop a greater awareness of all vocations among parishioners. Members meet monthly to discuss and plan various events. A new Video Ministry was established to assist in our streaming Masses. Both of these new ministries encompass all four Parishes in Uniontown. Some of our future Ministries for our parish and Catholic Community include: Bereavement Ministry, Art and Environment Ministry, Graduate Ministry, New Family Ministry, Prayer Chain Ministry, Senior Update Ministry, Social Ministry, and Library Ministry. You can continue to make a commitment online or by sending donations directly to the parish via U.S. Mail or by visiting our website for online offertory Here.


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- 1) Table : 30"D x 30"W x 30"H (SKU: T46-3030T, T46-30S)
- 2) Chairs : 17-1/4" W x 19" D x 37-1/2" H (SKU: C46-2)
Casual and classic this Square Table with the Spindleback Chairs, bring the cottage look to your kitchen or dining room. The chairs are available in a spindleback style with narrow spindles and measures 17-1/4 W x 19 D x 37-1/2 H. The chairs are made of parawood and feature a black finish.
- Special Order Item - See "Availability"
- Actual product color may vary from what is shown due to computer settings and room lighting. Please use as a reference only.
- $40 Set-up charge applies when selected. Installation is available for orders delivered within the 5 boroughs of NYC and Nassau County; parts of Suffolk County, New Jersey and Connecticut. Please contact us to confirm whether installation is available in your area BEFORE placing your order. Orders delivered via Freight are not eligible for installation. Please note that most of our furniture comes assembled fully or in large parts. If you feel an item in your order might not pass through doors, stairways, halls or turns to reach the location you intend to place it, please contact us.
Brand: Whitewood Furniture
Whitewood Furniture Limited Manufacturers warranty is one year from the date of delivery. The warranty will not apply to damage arising from neglect, accidental or intentional damage, freight damage, institutional or commercial use, damage or wear due to exposure to sun light, temperature, moisture or humidity. Colors may vary slightly from the photo because of photography, printing tolerances, and digital screen preferences and settings. Foam will soften slightly. There are no exchanges or refunds on any pillows or toppers sold. Track or drawer glide damage is excluded from this warranty, as these items are considered wear and tear by the user.