This being self hostable makes me instantly like this. Something like G photos that I could self host and dump a lot of removed off my phone storage would be amazing.

Ok, so a vast majority of 3d printers do not connect directly to a PC these days. They have a self contained microcontroller.

The workflow is:

1. You design or download a 3D model you want to to print.
2. Open the 3D model in a slicer software. The slicer takes a 3D model and, using a profile designed for a specific printer’s nozzle size and controller, converts the solid volume of the model into G-Code, or machine readable code that is a series of coordinates and move rates. This tells the printer where and how to put plastic.
3. Export the G-code to a .gcode (or other) file. Save that file onto an SD card.
4. Put the SD card in your printer.
5. Select the file on the printer display and away you go.

Now, some printers use a network connection component, eg Bambu printers have a wifi adapter. This let’s them download firmware updates and receive print jobs from a computer remotely without needing to move SD cards. This does require the right software, e.g Bambu printers require proprietary Bambu Studio (or it’s open source fork OrcaSlicer) that has the networking module to talk to it. This doesn’t require special driver setup though.

There’s also a lot of porn

In order:

Dry your filament.

Wash the PEI sheet on the bed with soap and water. Let dry, reapply glue if you use it.

Verify your bed is actually hitting temp via an external thermocouple and that it’s thermistor isn’t taking a hike and overreporting temp.

I have a Creaform MetraScan 750 at work. It’s pretty neat, can get 0.005" accuracy or less out of it. We also have a HandyScan with single line mode for very small parts.

Granted, at $150k system cost, it is slightly out of the layman’s budget range…

An OpenScan kit is something that’s been high on my list for hobby purchases for a while. It looks pretty functional from the YouTube videos I’ve seen and my printer is fully capable of making the frame.

That’s a lot of words man

We missed out on 3 decades of progress in the name of greed.

The American Way!

I’ve personally been using a Teamgroup 1tb from Amazon and a few KingSpec (from Aliexpress) 500gb SATA and PCIe M.2 drives for about a year and a half now without much problem or reported health loss. They are not performance winners of course but they still beat the pants off spinning rust.

YMMV of course, always keeps backups or don’t keep anything you’d be super sad to lose on them.

This is an interesting conundrum.
On one hand it would help locate foreign agent bots/bad faith actors faster and recognize vote manipulation by bot farms.
On the other it will lead to even more account-stalking problems, user drama, and would further enable vote dogpiling if you see certain known users voted a certain way.

I’m inclined to say no. They are already “public” if one wants to put in the effort to admin a standalone instance or run alts on multiple services they can see if they care- I personally don’t really care

You don’t even have serial downvoters. You have a few comments without many downvotes. You just consistently post the worst possible political pisstakes repeatedly and constantly and nobody likes them when they run across it every time.

NGL, I feel that Prusa has lost their edge.

Yes, they are still the pioneers, and yes, their company still has strong morals and a open-source culture that is lovely for the community.

But- the market has left them behind. XL is a great idea but awfully expensive and maybe not perfectly implemented. MK4’s are great-ish, but get their pants beat off in speed and quality by a P1P that’s $300 cheaper. I know running manufacturing in countries with functional human rights incurs a significant cost, but unfortunately the fickle “free” market that cares more about getting plastic onto a build plate doesn’t take such things into account frequently enough. And that’s worrisome for Prusa’s future.

Patent law is not IP law. You don’t need to prove that you have defended your patent, the existence of the patent itself is “proof of ownership” and at any point during the patent’s life you can claim damages against an infringing company. The onus is then on the accused to prove that the claimed patent was invalid, not applicable, or filed incorrectly/in bad faith.

Yes, patent law is intentionally broken and very stupid.

100%. I’ve printed some cool stuff and some stupid stuff, as well as a bunch of functional parts that have improved my life around my house. More importantly it’s given me a huge creative outlet to get more and more outlandish with my CAD designs and push my experience limits, which is great because that helps me be a lot more efficient at work.

Financially it was a total waste of money but that doesn’t matter when it’s a hobby. A hobby with practical marketable skills, and also the ability to let me prototype some independent ideas I’ve been brewing for a while to maybe sell for some side cash…

Strstasys is absolutely feeling Bambu, as well as all the other consumer printer companies. Their revenue has been flat for years. Every time I get into a thread on engineering printers the almost universal consensus is “unless you need really big build volumes like the Fortus series, there is no point to Stratasys for the cost”. And they’re right. The x1c and x1e’s can do effectively everything that an f170 can for like 1/20th the price.

They’re basically trying to patent troll (by going after a brand new offshore company that will be easy to bully in US courts, and not an entrenched company like Prusa) because their company produces no more useful innovations.

Yeah, 60c was always my target temp. I won’t swap my panels because they’re formed, but I am going to try and make flexible neoprene panels ½" thick for at least 3, maybe 4 sides that go over the outside.

Mm, being able to use fan would sure make overhang prints look nicer…

Oh damn, you went farther than I did lol. Looks like my girlfriend when she bundles up for winter.
Yeah after seeing how much of an improvement I got with just a single towel, I want to make some neoprene insulated sheet panels to clip on the outside of this printer almost immediately.

Oh yeah. I’m religious about wiping down with IPA every print and washing every few prints on PEI. I just haven’t printed with petg on this printer yet, my experiences were at my college where you’d get 20 boneheads slamming nozzles into the bed, printing with way too high a temp, printing TPU on satin sheets and zero glue stick causing it to bond way to strong and literally rip chunks of pei off the Prusa plates… they were in pretty bad shape.

IME abs is just better at “sticking” with good glue and proper bed temp than petg is, not sure why but I’ve had tons of petg just unstick and start to warp from that. (That was with college public printers though so abused pei sheets and wet filament was very likely…)

I also think the x1 was the best choice I’ve made in a while. Man this thing is productive.

Mm, heat tape with a thermostat, that does sound useful for a resin printer. I’ve been rolling around active chamber heating in my head for a while to hit the magical 60C and that could be one option for it.