This is exactly the type of experience that attracted me to the glowforge initially. The promise of an easy workflow compared to traditional lasers (I only have experience with a K40).
Some people like fiddling with the tool, some care about using it. I am in the latter camp
OK, thats strong! WOW! Iām guessing user error or wrong material choise in the failed parts I have seen.
Impressive video! Couldnāt believe you could tow the car (or was the camera angle tricking us and really it was just rolling downhill?!)ā¦
I kid of course. Thatās awesome. Whatās the best machine out there that is cheap and doesnāt require a lot of fiddlinā? In your opinion that isā¦
Possibly it does when printing things designed by somebody else, like the human body 
I mainly print my own designs that are functional rather than aesthetic. The filament width and layer height are inputs to my parametric design, so it is always suitable for my printer and I always use the same settings from a small selection of profiles. Usually 0.5mm by 0.25mm to work well with metric dimensions. So for me all the tweaking and experimentation was done years ago. I just design and print now.
I guess that proves the strength of 3D prints!
As for my comment about waiting a generation or two, I absolutely agree that mindset can prevent someone from ever buying any technology product. I have been in IT for 25 years as a professional and 35 years as a hobbyist. I have bought a lot of technology items when that equation you mentioned (āit meets a need you have currently with a cost/benefit ratio that is acceptableā) has balanced out. I then make it a practice to NOT look at the state-of-the-art in whatever technology that was for a least a year so I donāt kick myself for not waiting longer.
In the case of 3D printing at this time for my needs/wants, your equation just doesnāt fall in favor of purchasing right now. It seems like itās getting closer every day. Thatās the only reason I havenāt purchased one yet.
Am I understanding correctly that when you design, you make sure the wall thicknesses are some factor of your filament width (0.5mmā¦when extruded?), and that the height of each feature is a factor of your build height (0.25mm?). Thanksā¦just trying to get a better idea on how people use these.
Had a bad experience with all the hobbyist kind of 3D printers so maybe it was user errorā¦but most of it involved making sure the print bed was leveled all over, the nozzle to bed height was correct, the z-axis zeroing being repeatable, and getting the first layer to stick to the Kapton tape. It all seemed a bit clunky for my liking.
I live in CAD, and design my own devices, and almost never print otherās designs (at least random stuff off thingiverse). You mean to tell me every time you switch vendors/colors of a material everything works perfectly? I mean we all have prints that print perfect in silver and then fail in white for instance (because you donāt have enough silver on hand). Or some grunge on the bed you didnāt see affects adhesion on some part. And when I design, I do think about printability of the design, but even so there are always tweaks (like did I print it here in winter with relative humidity of 10% or summer with 80% - and yes, I do have a drybox).
As an example, here is a model I did as a demo to show colleagues environmental factors, where I took both off the bed immediately and placed the left one on the table in my office and the other (on the right) placed it near the cold window of my office. The fibula curved towards the cool window. Both prints looked identical on the print bed. Iām not saying that I donāt have a very high success rate, but still things need tweaking.
Now I am curious to what you are looking for if it is something specific.
I ask as I held out for years and finally pulled the trigger in 15 when I found one that would self-level and handle all the new filaments straight out of the box.
I know that 0.5mm by 0.25mm layers print well with a 0.4mm nozzle, they span gaps well, etc. Any wall needs to be either two filaments wide or more than three and any Z feature needs to be a multiple of the layer height, so having them simple fractions of a mm is convenient when I specify dimensions in mm.
Yes the bed needs to be level and stay that way or you need a Z probe and auto levelling. I do both. My older machines are made of MDF and use auto levelling, which I pioneered in the RepRap world. My new machines have Dibond frames which are stable when not moved around.
I print ABS and PLA onto glass and use a very high temperature for the first layer and do it very slowly to make it stick. I also pioneered printing on Kapton but moved to PET tape and then glass.
Loved your post about the fake wire BTW. That is seriously scraping the bottom of the costs savings barrel! The magnets say it all. Luckily you werenāt carrying power over those, but rather sensing!
It all comes down to the fact that I donāt know what Iād use it for. There were a lot of good ideas listed above but none that I have been sitting around wishing for. Iām sure Iād find things like fabricating replacement parts for things that break around the house/shop. And having it for the sole purpose of giving my 15 year old nephew access to it to give him the opportunity to let his creativity fly is worth a bit.
My research (including several threads on this forum) led me to believe the lowest cost 3D printer that would have the features and reliability Iād expect is around $900. If I had to put a dollar value on my envisioned use cases, Iād be at around $500. The printers I have seen in that price range appear to be finicky, require tinkering, and/or have too many limitations on build volume/features.
And itās not like my CNC router, vinyl printer/cutter, craft cutter, dye sublimation printer, heat presses, graphic design projects, woodworking projects, and photography donāt keep me busy enough.
Ha no, I print most things in natural white ABS as they only need to be functional, not aesthetic. For many years I produced parts as fast as I could to sell, so couldnāt afford the down time to flush out colour changes. So I entered a white only phase from about 2010 - 2016.
For colours I do tweak the temperatures sometimes and now I am retired I and developing a machine with a large number of print heads, so I will get back into using colours.
Yes I also discovered fake coax and that is more lossy and possibly not the right impedance and I heard of fake CAT 5 wire that is made from aluminium instead of copper. You can tell by weighing it but they add ballast to boxes of cable.
The challenge I often have, is they need to be both, as the color may indicate function (like a white bone in a medical simulation). For straight functional parts itās either silver PLA/PHA or Amphora or real things in raw Nylon910. Then super challenging is that I often need ānegativeā objects, so they are printed in E3D Scaffold, which is very challengingā¦
Yeesh, if you go to all the trouble to put weight in the box, just make real wire! I long ago decided that anything I really care about is coming from name-brand manufacturers. I almost never buy that kind of stuff off eBay. I luckily have a large electronics components store about 5 minutes from home, so have that luxury.
Iām not enough of a chemist to fully get how just color can affect property so much but it sure does.
I am a huge PETG fan and have my profile for it tweaked to where I get nearly perfect prints nearly every timeā¦ Except in orange! Every other color works great with the same profile but orange gives me fits to the point of not wanting to use it.
true, when you have a 3d printer that works lol I probably didnāt convey that strongly enough
What they all said. Iām on my third printer, with #4 lying around in pieces in the basement waiting to get built. Havenāt used as much as I should because life keeps intervening. I make trinkets and little bits of this and that and replacement parts and parts for small widgets. Many of those things could be better made with a CNC or molding or welding, but then I would need those skills. And a much more soundproof basement.
Iām there now with the micro-PCs Iām playing with (Ockel Sirius B and Voyo). Theyāre both a couple generations into the dev but also one gen from some really cool stuff (Ockelās new Sirius A is now in my āpre-ordered waiting on queueā like my GF ). The cost was low (<$200) and the āneedā easy to justify as itās exploratory for me - Iām looking for the absolute lowest weight/smallest package reasonable to carry so I can dump my Surface for road trips. I think the Sirius A (not sure why itās an earlier letter for a later machine) will do that along with an ESynic foldable keyboard and Swiftpoint GT mouse. My travel machine will be smaller than the box my last cellphone came in All running Windows on real Intel chips. Makes for a lighter smaller bag when Iām on the road (a lot).
Ok still no 3D printer but I did order a new embroidery machine. Itās going to tide me over till my glowforge gets here. I set it up and downloaded some design software this evening and have been churning out designs till about half hour ago. I have just been using scrap material for practice but already received an order for 10 shirts from a mission group that is heading out of the country in march, a dozen hats and shirts for a local business and possible order from the local 4H rifle and shotgun teams. I hope the orders for the glowforge come this easy lol.
