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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • In Europe, we changed to the Euro not that long ago. I was a student and I used to use a shared laundry machine. It was the day before returning to school. I was barely alone in the dorms. Let’s do a laundry !

    The machines were updated to get euros. There was another machine just to change the coins, especially since the washing machines only took one kind of coin (20 cents).

    I put one fresh euro in the exchange machine, expecting to get 5 coins of 20 cents.

    Tching. Tching. Tching. Tching. Tching. <pause>… Tching. Tching. Tching. Tching. Tching. <pause>… Tching. Tching. Tching. Tching. Tching. <pause>…

    What ?! The machine was buggy and would not stop. I grabbed a hoodie to put the coins in it. Soon, it was not enough. After what seems to be an eternity I was there with around 50€ and kilos of coins.








  • What matters :

    • Auto calibration of Z-offset (multi-points). Your bed will warp with time and you don’t want to fight with it.
    • PEI magnetic bed. You don’t want to fight with your things not sticking to the bed - or sticking too much. You may still have issues but less.

    You will be happy with this as a cheap starter printer around 200$.

    After some time, you may want to print bigger things, faster, and with ABS/ASA for technical parts. Then you could invest in a bigger printer, faster, hot and with an enclosure for ABS fumes and warping issues. The budget for this is 600-1000$.


  • Do you use glue or hairspray for ASA ? I could not manage warping without hairspray.

    It looks like your corners separate from the border. I have this issue du to the new “smart” borders from Cura. It turns in the other direction for this to be easily removed… I have disabled this feature.

    The last idea if everything fails : I had to change the geometry of the thing to prevent big long fat stripes like the bottom of your item. Making it an hexagonal grid may help to diffuse the forces. The shrinkage will be diffuse instead of along the stripe.


  • There is no issue to print this. But…

    If it’s handed, it’s quite big. It has to be printed into multiple parts. I would make the metal things and the glowing thing separately.

    The glowing thing will look like shit if 3D printed. You better should get an acrylic rod. You need a bunch of blue leds too.

    There are filaments that look metallic. Or you would get better results by sanding it and painting it with special paints.

    The whole project could be expensive. (~100 to $150)