In the current market, you want a printer that runs Klipper. The system will typically include a web application that controls the printer (Fluidd, Mainsail, or Octoprint) running on an embedded RPi. You just access this through your browser, it’s not necessary to install anything on your PC.

You will need to install a slicer software. The slicer is sort of the equivalent of a document editor - it’s how you prepare the 3D file for printing. Your printer manufacturer will probably recommend or distribute a particular slicer, but the file format used for 3D printing (G-code) is an open standard published by NIST. Any slicer software can be used to output gcode for printing - you can use whatever you feel comfortable with.

Personally I reccomend Orca Slicer or SuperSlicer but there are many options.

By the way, the entire market of home 3D printers grew out of the RepRap project that started 20 years ago. The original project was open hardware and software, and so almost all of the software in use today is open because open source principles were the foundation of all of it. There are some companies in the field who keep their stuff proprietary, but frankly I avoid their products and consider them to be anathema to the 3D printing community.

Hmm… how does one anonymously pay an internet service provider with cash? Mail it in an unmarked envelope, with just your account name? Roll up to the front door and hand it to the receptionist?

Someone else has mentioned M-Disc and I want to second that. The benefit of using a storage format like this is that the actual storage media is designed to last a long time, and it is separate from the drive mechanism. This is a very important feature - the data is safe from mechanical, electrical and electronic failure because the storage is independent of the drive. If your drive dies, you can replace it with no risk to the data. Every serious form of archival data storage is the same - the storage media is separate from the reading device.

An M-Disc drive is required to write data, but any DVD or BD drive can read the data. It should be possible to acquire a replacement DVD drive to recover the data from secondary markets (eBay) for a very long time if necessary, even after they’re no longer manufactured.

Yes, it’s the link in my comment above.

It’s a bad idea to compare Lemmy to Reddit or expect Lemmy to replace Reddit.

Slow growth is not a problem, it’s actually a benefit.

There is no hurry, and no need to push for high user counts.

Rather than trying to attract more people, focus on making your communities an attractive place to be.

PenDriveLinux or rufus or balena etcher (frequently just referred to as “etcher”) or just dd.

The times doesn’t pay you royalties for your book sales, and it doesn’t cost you anything.

Of course they don’t pay, but getting on the list is fantastic advertising for your book and that pays.

They also detect if someone is messing with the system and display a dagger symbol if you are found to inflate your numbers.

Jack Rhysider’s research on this indicates otherwise.

This is basically the same way you get on the NYT bestseller list - buy your own books.

Also organizations like hunting lodges put a lot of effort and money into wildlife conservation and wilderness preservation. There’s a lot of natural habitat that is protected today specifically because of the work of groups of hunters. Without them that land would have been used for something else. It’s obviously self-interested, but it benefits more than just them.

Thanks for pointing this out, I missed it. The book’s listing on CrowdSupply has an update from her from April of this year, so that makes me feel a bit better.

Did you change the nozzle setting in your slicer to 0.8? They usually default to 0.4

It definitely looks under extruded.

Is she OK? I’d like to believe that, but as far as I know nothing’s been heard from her for more than a year.

Do you take any steps to clean the wash before boiling it? Filtering or anything like that?

I’ve had some success using aluminum sulfate to precipitate resin out of the wash based on this guy’s work: Recycle Isopropyl Alcohol FAST! | Recovering IPA From 3D Printer Resin Wash

I haven’t tried distillation… as you say, it’s risky.

What does your waste look like after distillation? And… what would you think about using an alcohol still for this, instead of lab glassware?

Has your living space gotten cooler, or are you opening a window that you weren’t before, or have you started running AC or a fan near your printer? The ambient air temperature and especially drafts will affect the cooling rate of the plastic, which will contribute to shrinking. If you can, block the area around the printer and/or get an enclosure for it.

Are you cleaning your print bed regularly?

Have you run actual temperature tests with this particular filament?

Have you releveled your bed?

This assumes that

1. There’s a process to read.

2. The steps in the process are complete and thorough.

Those are bad assumptions.

Alternatively, Material Files (available in F-Droid) can easily create a local FTP server or connect to a NAS. It’s also a pretty good file manager app.

Yup, and it might be necessary to reproduce a lot of the answers that people used to find on reddit.

Huh… and that’s repeatable? How long could you go on Linux before the blackouts, and did you run on Windows for a similar amount of time with no issues? also, when the blackout happens does it recover after a little time, or do you have to reboot to get video back? (is it just a screen blackout, or has the system crashed?) When the screen is black, can you reboot with busier backwards?

One issue that I’ve had on Linux installs is that the system doesn’t recover properly from hibernate. I’ve seen this on laptops and desktops over more than a decade. When this happens the screen goes black and the system doesn’t respond to any keyboard or mouse input, the only way to recover is to force a reboot. Maybe check your power management profile and disable hibernation.

Otherwise there are a lot of reasons that the screen might black out:

• power issues - what is your PSU model? Linux installs are frequently not as power efficient as Windows on the same hardware, generally because Windows does a lot more throttling by default.
• overheating - Windows (and the Windows hardware drivers) might be configured to throttle the CPU and/or GPU to manage the temperature automatically without telling you, while Linux might be giving you the full unthrottled system power and overheating.
• video drivers & multimonitor - as others have said already, this could be an issue with the Linux video drivers. You should verify which driver you’re using as EccTM@lemmy.ml said. Are all your monitors the same resolution? I’ve definitely had trouble with mulitple monitors if they were mismatched.
• bad CPU core - this one’s a long shot, but Windows tends to be a lot more single-threaded while Linux is more likely to try to balance operations across all CPU cores. Maybe one of your cores has an issue, and when Linux tries to use it it triggers a system crash, while Windows just never gets around to using that particular core for anything critical (and so never triggers the crash).
• SSD/swap file issue - most Linux distros will configure a swap partition on the root hard drive by default, which is used as an extension of the RAM. Windows doesn’t use a swap file. You have plenty of RAM so there’s not really a need for it, so you should try just disabling swap.

But whether a few hours or a few days, eventually I start having issues with the displays. Monitors will black out. Not boot. Eventually the whole system just stops working in a way that I can figure out.

This sounds more like a hardware issue than software. Can you provide more detail? Have you done basic troubleshooting steps like trying different power cords and surge protector/power strip? What is the full list of hardware for your system? Have you reseated the RAM? Replaced the CMOS battery? (a dead CMOS battery will prevent system boot)

How fast are you trying to print? Does it behave differently if you slow down?

One of the reasons prints can shrink like this is that the speed is essentially stretching the plastic as it comes out the nozzle, like a rubber band. As the plastic settles that tension pulls it together.

I doubt moisture is the issue, PLA doesn’t actually absorb water very quickly.

Also, have you done a temperature tower and flow calibrarion for this filament?