Boozilla

I do resin printing (SLA) and warmer is always better (within reason). On cooler days I wrap the UV shield with a brewer’s belt (AKA a fermentation belt). Then I cover the whole thing with the cardboard box the printer came in. Works like a charm. The belt keeps it nice and warm without getting scary hot (75-80F or 24-27C). It pulls low wattage, less than most light bulbs.

For filament printing, something similar might work, but I have zero experience with FDM.

“Oh great, another fucking pizza party. You can bet your ass I’m turning soda into wine.”

I used to be in a shitty local band (well a couple of them) and we would sometimes go to WH at 2 or 3 in the morning. I saw some interesting people for sure. And I have been there many times at all hours of the day. I’ve never seen anything remotely like the internet horror stories. Obviously there have been fights and shootings and what not at Waffle Houses, but those happen at plenty of other places, too. I think the “shit show rep” that it has just comes from bullshit artists on reddit trying to sound edgy or funny. I saw a lot more weirdness on the handful of times I’ve ridden a NY subway.

IMO it’s worth the time and effort to learn the basics. You don’t need to be an elite level modeler because you’re not modeling for animation or games. I’ve had good luck with simple fixes and mods in Blender.

My experience is entirely with SLA, however, FDM might be a bit trickier.

This is damned impressive.

Best brother.

I won’t claim it’s the equivalent of the Bambu Labs FDM printer, because I’ve never done FDM printing.

On top of that, I’m only familiar with the one resin printer I’ve used.

Anyway, it’s an Anycubic Photon Mono X 4k. I’ve had really good luck with it, and I’ve printed over 200 miniatures and other things. I’ve had some failed prints but they were almost always my fault for doing something dumb, and there haven’t been that many overall. I’m guessing easily less than 5%.

I wouldn’t recommend the exact same model as mine, because they have newer ones (like an 8k version of mine and some others).

But I would definitely recommend the Anycubic Photon line as worth looking into. Read some reviews & watch some videos.

Good luck!

I would try local library first, then your local Discord community, and then maybe Nextdoor.

I know Nextdoor can be a real shitshow of paranoid street watchers and bad political takes. But I have found it very helpful when it comes to stuff like this (and getting recommendations on local services / shops in general). Be sure to say you have the STL and are willing to pay a reasonable amount for help with it.

It is messy. Requires careful handling and procedures. Stinky, too. Best to do it in a garage or shed. Some people build ventilation systems and tent it.

This is very cool.

I have printed a few functional things with my resin printer. Like some pieces I designed in Blender that I needed in order to make some minor repairs to stuff around the house. Was really fun using calipers to measure, come up with a design, and puzzle it all out.

It’s much easier than modeling for games or animation, because you can make objects out of multiple overlapping simple shapes, and don’t have to worry about mesh geometry. The slicer will just convert the layers into 2d slices.

And I’ve made some custom gifts, too. Put people’s names on things, stuff like that.

But 99% of my prints are miniatures for tabletop gaming.

I’m a gnu/linux noob. I recently installed Pop OS on two older laptops. Am loving it so far. Going to work on getting games functioning on one of them next.

Was blown away when the built-in Disks program was able to easily fix a couple of thumb drives I have that were suffering from logical corruption. They were completely unusable in Windows 11. I tried 4 different methods in Windows 11 to fix them, with zero luck. Disks fixed them in 2 clicks. They are nicer thumb drives and were somewhat expensive. I am very happy to have them back.

I love functional prints like this!

It’s so satisfying to design and print stuff like this. Thanks for sharing.

I use a brewer’s belt with my resin printer when it’s cold. It has made a big difference. Keeps the printer warm without getting too hot.

Yeah, he was a hypocrit and I despised the guy. Woz was the real hero of Apple. But Jobs did say that stuff, and he was correct in that moment. We see it over and over.

As much as I disliked Steve Jobs, the man was 100% correct when he talked about companies rotting from the inside. They get taken over by sales & marketing types and the product designers and user experience experts get kicked to the curb.

TY!

Is there a Pirate Bay for books?

I hope they figure out how to 3d print gum tissue. Harvesting donor tissue from the roof of your mouth certainly works, but is probably the worst part of the recovery.

Seems like it should be doable. But I doubt it’s high on the list compared to kidneys, livers, etc.

I worked on a creative writing thing with it and the more I added, the better its responses. And 4 is a noticeable improvement over 3.5.

Ha! That definitely happens sometimes, too.