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 ![]()
Moderation policy: Light, mostly invisible
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Ender printers are good if you want your hobby to revolve around "constantly tweaking and managing and redesigning the printer". A bit of a hot take maybe, and I'm not just throwing shade, some people legitimately enjoy that aspect of the hobby. It's a fun printer to tinker with, low stakes, and sometimes the challenge of getting perfect prints out of the cheapest jankiest available 3d printer is a goal unto itself and developing that skill can be very rewarding and educational. But if your goal is to actually reliably and repeatedly print 3d objects in a variety of filaments, in my experience the Ender is an aggravating and limited waste of space.
Personally, I want the 3d printer to mostly "just work" and I enjoy the part design and 3d modelling and then actually seeing how those parts perform in real life, and for that, I want something that is reliable and easy and works across a broad range of parts and filaments with very little effort needed on my part.
I spent the moderate number of bucks required to buy a Prusa MK3S, which is just as open and expandable and tweakable as the Ender, the difference is you don't have to. The options are all there, but as designed, out of the box, it just works. It prints, without any significant errors or issues almost every time, it's not a constant fight to get a single thing printed. It's a well designed machine, the company stands behind it and provides everything you need to upgrade it and there's a huge community building addons if you want them. But you don't need them. And that's the nice part.
Not really a hot take, especially with a used cheap Ender 3.
They are great if you want your hobby to be 3d printers. If you instead want a tool to do 3d printing, you should get something else.