Seems like people got your questions answered. Just wanna say that those machines (Prusas) are very nice, and not generally cheap, so even if it was a throwaway for someone make sure to get em a 12 pack or something! That’s an awesome gift!

Someone else mentioned gridfinity, that was my first thought too. You can probably find modules for all of the things you listed already made and ready to print.

Once you start with gridfinity, though, you will never stop.

Re: dry. I’m convinced PLA doesn’t care about moisture. Watched a video of a guy that soaked a roll in a tub of water overnight, then printed off the roll with it still in the tub. Looked exactly the same as it did before the soak.

Mileage may vary of course but ever since then I’ve been leaving my PLA out and it’s never once given me trouble (the infused ones a little bit).

Most questions that get posted are the same question but slightly different situation. “Why does my first layer look bad”, “what is causing this weird noise”, “how do I diagnose this error”.

Your use case is interesting. I’ll remember it each time I see an update.

Oh ok, I misunderstood some details. That makes more sense.

I’ll be here in a year or two for your updates!

I remember your first post. Glad that you are still working on putting this workshop together. Excited to read about what you come up with.

If I remember correctly, you use a 3d scanner to get close-enough measurements of your workspace, and design around that? Is there any chance of us getting some pictures of your completed space once things are buttoned up, or would it be too much of a privacy concern? I’m super into confined, efficient workspaces and I’d love to see what kind of solutions you’ve come up with for your specific needs.

Sounds like a plan!

If you have the time, check out a “intro to Klipper” video or something similar, just to get an idea of how useable it is, see if you’re interested. I’m here if you have any questions 👍🏽

Is there any advantage to going the klipper route?

The advantages are innumerable of you are a tinkerer (it looks like you are). If you just want your printer to print stuff and that’s that, marlin is fine, but if you want to get serious about tuning and modifying your printer, Klipper is an inevitability.

Think about the QOL improvement that octoprint provided over running your SD card back and forth from PC to printer. Klipper is that x1000. Write macros to automate things like filament swaps, chamber heating, build plate clearing. Change every aspect of any behavior of the printer by modifying a .cfg file (rather than recompiling marlin firmware.bin files). There’s plugins for Cura to send your g-code directly to the printer (with octoprint you save the file to your PC then upload to octo, with Klipper there’s just a button in Cura to send directly to the printer and start printing).

In short, the only reason to use marlin is “it came on the printer and I don’t have the knowledge to set up Klipper”. Klipper is just better in every way. It’ll take you a couple hours to set up (you have a popular with lots of premade configurations available online), and from the moment you get it going, you’ll wonder what took you so long.

PM me if you have any questions.

I know this is a couple days old, but I have a heavily modified Neptune 3 (non pro) and it needed the bed springs that replaced the plastic spacers. It was very uneven within a month or two of owning it and was constantly shifting.

Bought a pack of springs for maybe 10 bucks on Amazon and, while not as permanent as solid metal spacers and maybe loctite, it lasts much longer than the plastic spacers between needing a relevel, and being able to fine tune it with a screwdriver is a must.

I don’t think that Cura is smart enough to cut STL files apart like that. My guess is that a program like blender would be best to do this, make a shape the size of your printer’s build volume (or slightly smaller), put the part you want to print inside of the shape, then remove everything else.

I’m not familiar with blender but that’s the work flow I would approach with.

I see, I did not realize the range of different resin materials. I was led to believe most behave pretty similarly.

I’ve never had the privilege of paying a CMON game, but the sets I’ve seen in stores seem so enticing.

I hope you find a resin that is both affordable and meets your needs! Eventually I’ll probably want something more bendy too, once I get better at painting I probably won’t want my guys to break.

I’ve only been printing for a short time, so sorry if I seen ignorant. But I’m assuming you aren’t a fan of the ABS-like resins? Minis are the bulk of what I’ve printed so far, I’ve done them all in Anycubic grey abs like. A handful of them have taken a topple off the printer shelf (~6 feet / 2m) and so far the only things that have broken are things I don’t think a different material would have stood up to anyways (read: large objects attached with a tiny surface area, warhammer heads, a hand holding a glass orb, I think one cloaked arm). Everything has super-glued back together very easily (though they’re all still unpainted, if they’d been painted the seam would likely be much more visible).

I had a small model (not quite mini sized) printed in standard resin that fell from a much shorter distance and broke in like 3 places so it’s definitely more flexible/ durable than that.

It’s also like $15 USD/L…

Mono 6k’s

Yup, that’s my exact printer. Haha.

+8k resin is almost always marketing wank.

Yeah, that’s why I figured a company that is willing to make up mostly BS to sell their stuff would jump at the opportunity to advertise an actual perk (lower lift height).

Yes, having a system where the manufacturer recommended settings actually work and work well is wild coming from FDM printing. With filament they’re like “uh print somewhere around this temp I guess 👍🏽” what retraction settings? How fast can I print? Flow %? Granted this all varies dramatically from printer to printer so I know why they don’t try to give a profile, but it’s so nice that resin printing you’ve got a perfectly working baseline that you only really need to fine tune if you want.

It’s odd then that this seems to be the case for all the resins I’ve tried (granted, they’re all from anycubic, just different types).

You’d think that the companies advertising “8k resin” would try to shill their product as “low lift, faster prints” or something.

This is coming from a big 3d printing nerd, but no, the average person is not able to reuse filament once it’s been used. There are commerically available machines made for turning bits of filament into reusable filament, but the process is incredibly difficult to manage on a hobby scale (you need to make sure your scrap is completely free of any debris or your filament will cause nonstop jams and clogs), the machines are very expensive, and you need a ton of scrap to get a usable amount of filament. I think that there are companies that offer recycling as a service, but again I can’t imagine it being viable on a hobbyist level.

I recognize that plastic waste is obviously a huge issue when it comes to 3d printing, and I agree that some aspects of the hobby can be deemed wasteful. One thing I think that is often overlooked though when it comes to this discussion is the reduction in shipping and handling waste 3d printing provides. Sure, I don’t really need that stupid Baby Yoda print, but if I was already going to buy a little figurine or plushy or whatever, at least the one I printed doesn’t come sealed between two pieces of form fit plastic, held together by plastic coated twist ties, all presented in a plastic-cardboard box with a see-through plastic window that was shipped from mainland China - all of which is getting tossed out. The total waste produced for printing the thing is measured solely in the amount of filament I used and the electricity used to keep the printer running; when you consider that most people print in PLA (which is supposed to be biodegradable) and have electricity subsidized in some shape or form through renewables, the hobby seems much less wasteful than the more popular form of consumerism (buying removed).

Well, I should say that fdm certainly has its place. I do a lot of part prototyping, for something that I might need to print 5 or 6 different versions of, I’m 100% going to use my fdm printer.

Resin printers imo are really only good for things you want to look pretty or have shapes too complex to achieve with fdm. If it’s something that prints easily and doesn’t need immaculate quality, [and you have an fdm printer that doesn’t make you want to commit war crimes (like the ender 3)] fdm is less annoying.

Funny, in terms of “set and forget” I rank resin way above fdm.

The handling of the resin doesn’t detract from this at all. You have to do it every time so it’s not like you’re spending hours trying to figure something out like with fdm. Even after you get your filament and printer tuned just right, each print represents its own unique challenges if not designed perfectly for 3d printing. On top of that, there’s way more points of failure in an fdm printer, and unless you’re technologically inclined it can be really difficult to figure it out. (Obviously problems like this decrease when you get a machine like a Bambu.)

I’ve spent weeks at a time trying to tackle issues with my fdm printer, and even when it’s in full working order, you never know when something might go wrong.

My second hand resin printer from anycubic, however, just… Prints. It took me an hour or two to learn the new “mechanics” of resin slicing, prepping models in the slicer takes a little longer than it does with fdm, but it just cranks prints out and i don’t even worry anymore if I’m going to come home to a busted print or not. At worst a small detail will have failed to print properly. Fdm printer messes up halfway through and you might end up with a 100g solidified mass of plastic around your hotend…

If you’re making me side with Bambu in a court hearing you must be a pretty removed company.

Erm, it’s proper etiquette when posting TPU benchies to upload a picture in squished form 😉

Pretty decent looking print. This printer has a Bowden tube setup yeah? Impressive. If you decide to upgrade to a direct drive you’ll probably be able to print it with retraction and help tone down the stringiness.

Can you upload a picture of your stripped screw?