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    3. 3D printers, do you use glue stick?

      ~hobbies Ask (advice)
      I have found myself confused about glue stick on the heat bed. I always have some applied, either reusing some from a previous print or applying it fresh. I manage a small print shop and have seen...

      I have found myself confused about glue stick on the heat bed. I always have some applied, either reusing some from a previous print or applying it fresh. I manage a small print shop and have seen many prints fail, even on nice textured PEI plates, because no glue was used. I’ve seen prints fail only where there was no glue under the part many times. Yet I frequently hear from people, face to face, that they never glue. I’ve seen these people’s prints fail because they don’t use glue.

      There are even special plates you can buy (SuperTack plates) that stick extra well to PLA to absolve you of the need for glue. But I find these coating on these plates to be too fragile.

      Overall it seems like there’s a large contingency of people risking their prints and purchasing accessories to save what is maybe 20 seconds per print (that’s including periodic cleaning as you can reuse the glue many times). How do Tildes people feel about this? I teach a 3D printing class and tell people to always glue as they have nothing to lose. But maybe I’m missing something.

      3 votes

    7. Megathread: April Fools' Day 2026 on the internet

      ~talk Ask
      Over the next day or so, the internet will be filled with jokes, pranks, fake "announcements" from companies, fun interactive activities, games, and so on. A lot of these can be quite clever and...

      Over the next day or so, the internet will be filled with jokes, pranks, fake "announcements" from companies, fun interactive activities, games, and so on. A lot of these can be quite clever and interesting so I think posting about them in general is fine, but in the interest of preventing them from completely taking over Tildes, let's try to keep as many of them restricted to this thread as possible. Ideally, a separate top-level comment for each individual item would be good.

      If something particularly discussion-worthy comes up (like an ARG or activity that a lot of people want to talk about), a separate thread is reasonable, but please make sure it has the "april fools day" tag. That way, if anyone wants to avoid seeing the April Fools' Day threads, they can use the topic tag filters and filter that tag out.

      I'm going to use the "official" styling for this topic (that's usually only for ~tildes.official topics) to make it stand out more to try to encourage people to notice it. If you notice people making individual topics for April Fools' Day things that don't really warrant their own topic, please (nicely) encourage them to delete and post in here instead.

      97 votes