tl;dr: 3D printing won't change your life but it will make your life 1% better in unexpected ways.

Last year, I spent a year-long work trip with someone who was very into 3D printing. To be frank, I initially had zero interest in it. From what I understood of 3D printing, it was expensive, required mechanical experience, coding knowledge, and ultimately not worth what you put into it.

Fortunately, my colleague didn't care what I thought about his hobby and bought a cheap printer to keep himself occupied during downtime at work. Originally, it was just something that occasionally made noise in the background. As the days went on, however, more and more doodads began to appear around the office. A cable organizer here, a desk decoration there; nothing earth-shattering.

The thing that really changed my mind, funny enough, was a simple powder scooper. During our trip, we shared a terribly designed creatine bottle with a narrow neck and no scooper. We spent months pouring out white powder by eyesight alone like amateur crackheads and I will never buy this bottle again. My colleague printed out a scooper with a long neck and the problem went away.

That was the key turnaround that changed my mindset - I had a problem; we printed a solution.

I got back from my trip and decided to try it out myself. After some serious deliberation on how committed I was to this, I purchased the Bambu P1S. It’s not the cheapest option for someone just starting and I chose a Bambu printer because a Youtuber argued that your best way to have fun as a beginner was to pick a printer that “just worked.” It was a compelling enough reason for me to shell $900. (no, I’m not sponsored, just telling my story.)

Some of my favorite prints:

• Long Scooper: the one that started it all for me. This scooper saved us a ridiculous amount of time and effort for what it is. It also gets to the heart of what 3D printing is to me - solving your individual problems with simple solutions.

• Pill Organizer: it’s got a lever that spins a wheel around, opening a different chamber for each day of the week. This one really opened my eyes to what is mechanically possible with just basic PLA plastic. People much smarter than me figured out ways to print devices with hinges, springs, and levers all without needing a single extra tool.

• Scour Pad Holder: This is the one that made most people around me go, “huh, that’s pretty neat.” You’re right, it is. No one likes touching a moist scour pad.

• Slide Wallet: I spent $74 on a SECRID cardslide wallet. While I don’t regret that purchase - I used it faithfully for four years ongoing - I did feel a bit foolish when I realized I could 3D print the same mechanism for $1.50.

That’s not to say anything about the decorative / gifting aspect of 3D printing either. I 3D printed a giant Charizard for my friend’s son the size of his head in eight hours.

That said, there is a mechanical learning curve to even the most user-friendly printers. With the Bambu series, I’d say that if you’ve ever built IKEA furniture or a 100+ piece Lego, assembly is pretty straightforward. It’s the troubleshooting that will get you. Even with basic filament and simple projects, I still encountered the nozzle clogging, filament stuck in the pipes, and bed adhesion problems.

This is a hobby that requires you to be willing to experiment and look up solutions. From what I understand, some printer brands are tougher than others so the learning curve will vary depending on your gear. I quickly learned that there’s numerous ways your print will mess up and your project will look like what the community calls the “spaghetti monster.” Unless you’re a born tinkerer, this is probably the most frustrating part of the process. However, accumulating knowledge to diagnose and solve the problem is very rewarding. I learned that the third slot on a Bambu machine is statistically more likely to jam and 0.5 kg spools are more likely to clog than 1.0 kg ones. Turns out that a lithophane needs to be printed vertically and only looks good with a white filament.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with my 3D printer and I don’t regret my purchase at all. It’s a hobby that provides near-instant gratification - you find the thing you want to print - or design it yourself - and boom, it’s sitting on your printer in a couple of hours. While I’m just taking files from the community and printing the .stl file, the skill ceiling is also very high once you add hardware to your projects (e.g. screws, ball bearings, Raspberry Pi). I’m going to continue to learn and I’m excited about where I can take this machine.

Some questions for the community:

1. If you have a 3D printer, how deep in the rabbit hole are you? Are you making your own CAD files?
2. What’s your favorite print? If you don’t own a printer, what’s a cool 3D print that stands out in your mind?
3. What’s a problem in your life where you think you could 3D print a solution?

This is more aimed at professional folks I think, or small business from hobby printers.

My wife is hitting the limits and frustrations of using Cricut Explore 3 to cut her heat vinyl projects. Suddenly, they've released a new machine type and adjusted the software they use which makes her machine cut faster (yay) but now it's more sloppy and not cutting as well as it did (it's not the blade, I repeat, IT IS NOT THE BLADE!)

Her frustrations are becoming mine due to the earache. Does anyone on Tildes do heat transfer and normal vinyl work? She's also looking at printing to vinyl roll and cutting; her aim is mostly tees and teddies. Due to this, loading a full roll and having a lot of waste isn't ideal.

We're after advice and what her upgrade steps are. We looked at printing to film (DTF) and garment (DTF) options, but we are definitely going to stay with vinyl for now.

Thoughts, advice, options, anything of value to say is all welcome. Not to self promote or anything, but to give you ideas of what she makes Https://thunderlizard.co.uk/shop and look at near any item. You can see it is like 2x4", 8x8" and max usually 12x12" sizes and a mix of vinyl types from plain through to glitter. Hopefully seeing that should allow for better and more accurate advice.

Thanks all!

I've had an interest in 3D printing since first hearing about it many years ago, but at the time printers were expensive and learning materials and resources were scarce. Nowadays, it seems like 3D printing is as common as regular old 2D printing but I feel left in the dust.

What's really making me want to get started now is I've collected a lot of junk over the years that I've told myself I could repair, but a lot of the repairs would be much easier with a 3D printer and custom modeled parts. Dearest to me would be an old watch that my grandfather gave to me before he died. The part of the watch that connects the strap to the case (lugs, I think it's called?) has broken off and gotten lost, and it's a proprietary part with no replacement parts available. I'd love to just 3D-print a solution but have no idea how to get started.

I consider myself a creative person, I have plenty of experience with Photoshop and illustrator, but I have never once dabbled in 3D modeling software like Blender or AutoCAD. The closest I ever got was peering over the shoulder of an artist who was working on a video game character model in Zbrush, or maybe working on custom Half-Life maps in Valve Hammer. So I'm looking for the most basic, easy-to-follow set of instructions to get me from zero knowledge to successfully printing bespoke DIY repair parts at my local makerspace.

Would also love to have this be a discussion on 3D printing in general. How did you get started? How have the tools and techniques evolved over the years? What do you think are the next big things coming in the hobby? What are things you wish you knew when you started but only learned after mistakes were made? Share your thoughts and anecdotes, I'd be happy to read them.

Hello fellow creatives (not me though, I'm asking on behalf of my wife), would you be able to pass on some knowledge and sage advice?

Right now my wife is running an Etsy shop and personal site selling mostly Heat Transfer Vinyl based tees, teddies, bags, etc. She's making all of this using a Cricut Explore 3 as it was very hobbyist, along with a half decent heat press with electromagnetic pressure.

It's time to grow up a bit. We're going to be building a 5m X 5m building for her to work out of rather than a small office space in the house (she has a lot of stock) and with this, maybe it's time to upgrade the equipment.

She's not been fond of sublimation, although we have an A3 Epson for that. She's not keen on polyester. So the question is: does she upgrade from using a small Epson EcoTank and Cricut to something like a Roland BN20 or BN20D or simply go for a larger format cutter since she buys it buy the roll anyway? DTG seems very expensive and DTF is so new that you need to printer daily to stop the heads dying. I think she likes Vinyl and she also likes a little print and cut, but not so much of the latter as the combo she has is pretty shite.

Thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions? I'm trying to look at a budget of sub £10k for hardware. Happy to second hand if it's recommended.

I don't intend this to be a sales pitch or anything, I just wanted to share my impression of the Bambu Labs P1P 3D printer in case anyone on here was curious and maybe considering buying one themselves.

I have owned a few Prusa FDM printers over the years but recently tried the Bambu Labs P1P after seeing tons of rave reviews, especially in terms of how fast it prints. Anyone that has done any 3d prints knows that print time is among the least enjoyable aspects of the hobby: lots of waiting.

Right out the gate, the P1P is a solid device with impressive construction given its relatively low price tag (I got it for $600 USD). And this thing easily rivals high performance machines in it's same "category", like the Prusa mk 3 and 4. And those are typically more expensive; the P1P comes 99.5% assembled at that price but a Prusa machine fully assembled is around 60% more expensive.

Most of the "assembly" is just removing packaging, like zip ties, that kept the unit safe and secure during transit. Then you connect the power cable, screen, spool holder, and filament tube. And that's it. The whole thing took maybe 10 minutes.

Getting the WiFi to connect is impossible for me at the moment, but I don't mind copying sliced gcode to the included microsd for printing. Sure, sending the gcode over WiFi would be super cool, but my Prusa doesn't do that so it's not like I've lost something. I'm hoping to eventually figure it out but that's not a deal breaker for me. I'm guessing I just need to temporarily move the printer next to the WiFi router but I haven't made time for it because I'm enjoying just printing off the card.

With the included 0.4mm nozzle (a standard size), it prints typically 2 to 3 times faster. Something that takes 23 hours might take 11. Something that takes 3 hours might take 1. For larger and more complex prints, you can get stuff done so much faster. For smaller and simpler prints, you no longer need to plan batches either first thing in the morning or overnight, you can just start them whenever. Whatever you printed before, you can print 2 to 3 times as many in one go in the same amount of time.

I don't have the AMS system but hope to get that at some point. If it has the same high quality build and performance as the P1P then I'm certain it will bring me simple multi-filament printing. And although I'm not nearly rich enough to afford more than 1 AMS, you can technically connect up to to 4 at once. Each unit holds up to 4 filament spools, so 4x4 means you could theoretically use 16 different filaments in a single print. The colors you could have! But each unit is like $350. Ouch.

I only have 2 real gripes with it so far. First, it purges way too much filament at the start of a print. I get why it does that, it absolutely ensures that your filament is always properly primed to assist in printing that critical first layer correctly, but it feels very wasteful to have a seemingly-excessive amount of filament thrown away with each print.

Second gripe is that the default spool holder is awful to access. You are likely to put the back of the machine facing a wall and that's where the spool holder will end up facing: the wall. You need to ensure the printer is a little more than two spool's width away from the wall - at the very least - so you can slide your spools on and off. Thankfully the bed doesn't move back and forth like with traditional fdm printers, thanks to the corexy technology, so you can more easily plan out where to put it and how much space it will need.

I haven't messed around with them yet but I just got additional hotends for it that I will be testing soon. The pack I got contains 0.2mm for prints that require very fine detail, 0.6mm for prints where detail is slightly less important than speed, and 0.8mm for when you want to go fast and don't care how much detail you get. Because they use a proprietary construction of hotend, you must use theirs, but the upside is that it's fairly fast and simple to switch them out. Most hotends, you just replace the tip, the actual nozzle. But because filament can gunk up the threads, you need to run it hot to unscrew the nozzle, which is very dangerous. With the P1P, you just pull off the magnetic faceplate, undo a few screws, swap the hotend, put the screws back, and pop the faceplate back on. In just a few minutes, you're done. And no need to turn on the hotend either; just unload your filament prior, let it cool down, and swap away. A much safer and more pleasant experience.

Overall, I'm in love with 3d printing all over again. It's the same feeling I got all those years ago when I did my very first 3d print. And sure, the Prusa is still great when you want high quality detailed prints. Going slow and steady wins that particular race still. But I get quality that is 90+% comparable to what the prusa gives me in exchange for literally 2x to 3x print speeds. That's an easy trade for me. And the slicer software estimates that some of my larger and less detailed prints could print in right 2/3 the time using the 0.6mm nozzle instead of the default 0.4mm. That translates to roughly 7 hours on my Prusa (0.4), 3.5 hours in my P1P (0.4), and 2 hours on my P1P (0.6). Given how much easier it is to swap out nozzles on the P1P, I can see myself actually doing that not frequently for certain prints that, like in my example, see substantial benefit.

I'm very excited to see how this machine holds up in the long run!

I have a box of scrap parts of PLA left over from 3D printing and I'm wondering what to do with them. PLA can apparently biodegrade but only in really specific conditions I don't think I can achieve like keeping it at 60c. I know there is a device that can turn the scraps in to new filament but its way too expensive for me. What should with this stuff?

Hello Tildes board gamers!

I got a 3D printer last year, and over the last few months, I've started printing organizers other people have designed from Printables and Thingiverse, especially for games with poor provided organization or lots of tokens and cards... however there are a number of games I have where people haven't designed a good organizer, or the ones which exist are lacking in some way (don't fit my boxes, missing boxes for expansions, only support all the expansions, etc)

Does anyone have tips on getting started with designing my own? I've got some very basic 3D modeling knowledge, but my primary strengths are as a programmer, so leveraging something like OpenSCAD would be ideal. I saw the boardgame insert toolkit, but it seems relatively basic - there are lots of convenience features I'd love to add as well (like curved walls for token holders to make it easier to get tokens out). Is that a good place to start, or should I look elsewhere?

Even just some ideas about tolerances and/or tips for how to size sections for cards would be super helpful.

I've got a K40 laser engraver that I've had a lot of fun getting up and running with K40 whisperer on a Raspberry pi, and lately I've been thinking about getting a cheap 3d printer. Does anyone have an entry level 3d printer they like and want to recommend? What kinds of projects do you like to make? Anybody have a desktop cnc or other fun toys? Let's hear about 'em.

I'm personally a little busy for 3d printing at the moment - but I love to see and be inspired by what others are doing. I know this is text based, but I'm also interested in what issues you are running into. I find it useful to see examples of what common problems and solutions others are running into.

I've got an "old" Prusa MK3S that is still going strong for me. When I get the time again I've got a few projects lined up: a brain, a mask, and a fluid desk sculpture that I'm excited to get printing.

What have you been printing lately?

I recently asked about commissioning custom artwork, which is shaping up wonderfully.

I now need to start looking at custom print services so that I can actually hang the artwork in my home. It will likely be a rather large piece (possibly 60"x40").

Anyone have any experiences with different services and have recommendations or avoids?

Also, anyone have any recommendations for what I actually get it printed on? I'm leaning towards canvas, but I'm open to suggestions. I'm wanting this to last a long time.

I'm in the US, so the service would need to ship to there.