3DPrinting
3DPrinting is a place where makers of all skill levels and walks of life can learn about and discuss 3D printing and development of 3D printed parts and devices.
The r/functionalprint community is now located at: or !functionalprint@fedia.io
There are CAD communities available at: !cad@lemmy.world or !freecad@lemmy.ml
Rules
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No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia. Code of Conduct.
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Be respectful, especially when disagreeing. Everyone should feel welcome here.
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No porn (NSFW prints are acceptable but must be marked NSFW)
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No Ads / Spamming / Guerrilla Marketing
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Do not create links to reddit
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If you see an issue please flag it
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No guns
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No injury gore posts
If you need an easy way to host pictures, https://catbox.moe/ may be an option. Be ethical about what you post and donate if you are able or use this a lot. It is just an individual hosting content, not a company. The image embedding syntax for Lemmy is ![]()
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Many people don’t care about FOSS or don’t know the benefits, they just want a NOW working product. Many belief in the goodness that nothing bad will happen, and if something happens, they still can switch. I often have this discussion with other colleagues and friends, it’s an endless debate of price , features , comfort and support. As long as there is both on the market , why argue? People can buy what fits their needs.
My opinion on bad manufacturer behavior is: if we keep buying those products(with locked down firmware, Windows-Only Proprietary Cloud filled forked Slicers etc.) more and more manufacturers may go that route.
The problem is people's stinginess. They want to save money and buy from China. The manufacturers help themselves to the OSS community but do not contribute anything - on the contrary, the manufacturers undercut the OSS alternatives enormously. They have no development costs or anything else to compensate. So that the OSS solutions do not finance the development for other companies and push themselves out of the market, the only option is to lock it in. It's the people who want to get into an expensive hobby on the cheap.
Edit: example about developing stats.
Prusa is based in Prague, and according to some quick googling the average software developer in Prague makes 88k CZK (~3800 USD or ~3500 eur), so about 526 CZK/hr (~22/hr in both USD and EUR).
Which means they've potentially spent around 76.7 million CZK (~3.3 million USD, ~3 million EUR) into their slicer. Just for salaries.
I wonder if any of that includes what are essentially firmware tuning for their printers?
I recently ran a set of prebuilt Prusa M4S for a printing demo, and they were really nicely tuned, between the pressure sensing head and the way it only probes the area of the print bed it’s going to use, all 10 printers worked pretty much out of the box. One roll of filament wasn’t sealed properly and clogged a few times, but I basically did around 800-900 hours of printing over the course of a week and had a couple clogs from that one roll.
I wish I could have kept one, but my OG ended 3 is still hanging in there.
I can only advise every first-time buyer not to choose a prebuilt but to assemble it themselves in order to learn everything directly and gain experience.
I bought the mk4 prebuild as my first 3d printer with enclodure and it worked wonderfully. Except for problems at the beginning due to wet filament etc. but it's not due to the printer itself. Then I installed the MMU3 later when it was available.
After that I had slight problems,
especially first layer problems, which I was able to fix. then the release of the mk4s so I ordered and installed the upgrade. Initially had massive problems which I would not have had if I had assembled the printer myself and had experience.
The troubleshooting was unnecessarily time-consuming as I had practically disassembled and reassembled the printer but was still successful. At some point (after several successful start-ups and printers) I started up the printer and wanted to print something. Since it had always run smoothly before and never had any really bad problems,
I sat at the PC with headphones on until I looked at the printer and saw that it wanted to become a CNC. Printing plate damaged but still usable, nozzle damaged but could be repaired, heater and thermistor destroyed.
The support was very cooperative but of course I got the heater and thermistor replaced as they are not wearing parts.
I am still extremely happy and can only warmly recommend prusa
Luckily for us, the original RepRap folks were smart enough to go for copyleft rather than permissive licensing. As such, the common firmwares and slicers are both using GPLv3 code, severely limiting the companies' ability to do that.
It's a race to the bottom line. The endless plight of the working class: funnel-fed the products of each other's work for the price of obedience. Viva La Revolution, coming this fall everywhere you stream.
Maybe a little out of context but this reminds me of the Sony Helldiver 2 situation. If people get loud enough they can infect change things. No one got loud or boycotted games that had Kernel level AntiCheat , this could have been avoided. Same with Bamboo I guess, if people still buy them after the Firmware and Cloud thing , it probably will happen again.
The biggest thing stopping me from doing anything is that the steps to do something are multiplicative for me rather than additive how it seems for other people. If I'm dreading fixing and tuning my printer, then I just won't print anything. For months. Until a magic day comes when I'm able to get on with it (Yeah, I know I'm a shitty low functioning person, you don't have to mention it). Getting a Bambu let's me actually print stuff and helps me not get locked into paralysis about it for months. I hate it's a closed and easily fucked over ecosystem, but it's a choice between letting me function or not. I dunno, I'm really rambling without a point, I just thought someone might find some value in this
Just different persons / mindsets. I bought a Prusa and in the first month replaced and modded everything I know of. Stabilizing it , replacing extruder gears and the nozzle , fine tuned some print settings. Why? I have fun doing so. And the time. Other people don’t, and that is completely fine.