3D printing

[Leshma]

If you thought about getting 3D printer, a piece of friendly advice coming your way. Don't!

Reason is simple, its cool gadget that lets you print all kinds of plastic stuff but regardless of what someone may say its so much hassle it is unbelievable. By the point I got it producing decent results, I came to the realization that I am now in possession of all the knowledge necessary to build it from scratch using spare parts. It's the rabbit hole of all rabbit holes.

Of course, talking about FDM printing, haven't yet tried resin printing. Could be way easier to set up and make stuff with it for all I know.

[Torben]

I just have some girl working the printer for me -> no hassle yo

[Jona]

Sounds like you don't know what you're doing, and/or bought a shitty printer. It's far from a plug & play configuration. So long as you don't suck dick at it, 3d printing can be incredibly useful.

[Leshma]

I bought used Ender 3 Pro. The previous owner did not assemble it properly and main reason why I bought used was to avoid assembly...

By far the worst thing about FDM printers is bed leveling. It's crucial to obtain good prints and is not an easy thing to do at all. Its almost impossible to get it perfectly flat in all corners and in the center because of warping. Glass bed helps but isn't the fix-all solution. Biggest nuisance after bed leveling is extruder and hot-end. Plastic leaks if the nozzle isn't perfectly fitting in the hot-end which creates two issues, under extrusion and over extrusion and both make your prints look bad in different ways tho. Under extrusion means you have gaps in your prints which does not just look bad, it makes print a lot weaker than it should be. Overextrusion can jam your printer and make print look all wobbly plasticky like it was melting in the sun instead of printing. In any case, your printer is either going to over extrude or under extrude a bit, if you get it minimal in either way you'll get decent results. Because you cannot get perfectly leveled bed on entry level printers.

[Jona]

git gud lul

[Paul]

Why go through all that trouble when you can go and buy a gun in Serbia?

[Ikarus]

Friend of mine got himself a 3D printer aswell a couple of months ago. Beside of printing some Warhammer figures he used the printer to print upgrades for it. That's right, he printed parts to improve the printer itself, which is weird and kinda cool.

I wonder how long it'll take him until the printer is transformed into some kind of doomsday device

[Casul]

Can you 3d print a big 30cm black anal dildo? asking for a friend

[Leshma]

I was never particularly unlucky but when it comes to 3d printing anything could go wrong went wrong. LCD died within a month, bought a new board to silence the damn thing, USB malfunction two days ago. Damn Chinese cheap electronics.

[Drunken_sailor]

3D printing is cool and all but its really all about laser cutters.

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[njames89]

Love that style of art. We laser printed some designs on wine glasses last year and it was pretty cool. Local library has a laser etcher that people can use for free.

[Ikarus]

yeh lasers are pretty cool too

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[Leshma]

Well, I could turn my printer into a laser engraving machine quite easily, but I don't have a dark chamber to place it into. Although I have nearly completed enclosure, guess some UV blocking filter on glass would do the trick.

[Drunken_sailor]

   going to attempt to build this bad boy

[Leshma]

Went through more issues with printer than I can remember but one thing remains... level your bed, kids! Hate bed leveling with a passion so I ordered sensor, I hope it will spare me of bed leveling. The single most important thing about your print quality is goddamn bed leveling.

Tried to be smartass and bough uber-cheap Chinese clone parts and installed them on my printer. Massive plastic flow issues which disappeared when I returned original parts. Will buy another clone, absolute overkill tho. Mosquito hotend based direct drive extruder. The original part is way too much money, hope shelling 50 for clone means machining of metal is very good.

Thanks to this hobby I learned basics of:
chemistry (thermoplastic, silicon, metals)
carpentry (enclosure building)
3d design (to make and modify STL files)
microcontroller programming (Arduino)
electronics (PCB design, soldering, advanced multimeter skills)
painting

Yet to touch:
3d scanning

If you are lucky 200 dollars you spend on printer will go well and you won't have to fix or modify the machine. I bought used and abused so I have to tinker with it and there are so many aspects of CNC machine, in this case, plastic squeezing printer.

Why I bought a 3d printer? Well, it's new and fresh hobby while gaming became stale and commercialized to the point every normie does it. Sure, PC gaming was hip some 20-25 years ago when there was one PC owner per square kilometer in my country but right now it is worse than eating MacDonald's burgers or spending time betting on football.

Seeing how Chinese absolutely dominate atm and their strongest suite is manufacturing, also taking into account the agenda of the modern world elite where it is desirable to be stupid, uneducated and incompetent I find it an absolute necessity to learn a bit about what every Chinese preschooler already knows.