Making Stuff Blog

Can we not have our 3D printers be like 2D printers? 5 months ago
In all of the arguments of late about Open Source and 3D printers and whatever Bambu Labs or Prusa might be doing with 3D printers and whatnot, I guess what I'd really like is for our 3D printers to not end up like 2D printers. Now, when I say 2D printer, I mean some things, none of them very…

The iWiss SN-01BM crimper and Molex Micro-Fit 3.0 connector 7 months ago
tl;dr: With the iWiss SN-01BM, I am finding that I can get a decently sturdy connection on JST-XH, JST-SH, JST-SM, and Molex Micro-Fit 3.0, where the audience at the Bay Area Maker Faire spent three days futzing with some Micro-Fit 3.0 connectors I crimped and didn't break them. A lot of hobbyist…

Your Klipper Expander is going to die without a diode ... or ... heater ports are not fan ports ... or ... hot-plugging fans is hard 10 months ago
The other day, a discussion thread on the Voron discord about hooking up fans to the Klipper Expander board caused me to dig up some schematics and do some research. Spoiler alert: There's a good reason why you want to run your fans through the fan ports, not the heater parts. Also, you probably…

Replacing my Ender 3 v2's build surface with G10 1 year ago
tl;dr: G10 is pretty neat stuff, although Angus is wrong and you can't score-and-snap the thick stuff. I knew, starting out, that I wanted to print PETG on my Ender 3v2. But that led me down the notion of printing nylon and other interesting materials. It turns out that a lot of what I want to do…

Ender 3v2 with a Bondtech DDX and a Slice Mosquito. 2 years ago
After a bit of an incident with some black PETG and the hard discovery that some PETG formulations will work with a PTFE-tube hotend but not others, I resorted to a printer upgrade. I figured it would be a relatively fast upgrade but it turned out that my printer was either fully out of commission…

Ender 3v2 from July to October 3 years ago
tl;dr: Auto-leveling is great, Silky PLA is great and PETG is annoying, vase mode and fat nozzles are great, and prints are mostly turning out right without pain and suffering. So far, I got a printer, managed to actually print things other than calibration pieces and printer mods, and then the…

My particular implementation of the Rubbermaid 21 Cup and Sterilite 20 qt dryboxes 3 years ago
I started out without a drybox or dehydrator with my printer, but I knew that only PLA was OK (more on that later) with being out in the open. I got one roll of PLA and one roll of PETG and I figured that I'd use my time on the PLA roll to determine what I was going to do with the PETG roll. About…

My Ender 3v2's failed motherboard, the repair work, and the new BLTouch 3 years ago
Just outside of the Amazon return window but before the actual warranty went out, my printer's motherboard failed, which triggered some maintenance and upgrades. Walking away from the printer and a Spaghetti Detective After getting the printer, I've been printing like mad. A lot of other people's…

First few non-calibration prints, mostly not printer mods even 3 years ago
The joke is that what do you do with a 3D printer other than print your next printer mod. Or calibration prints. Either way, the entire purpose behind buying a 3D printer was because I'd be a lot more free with printing organizers and stuff, especially rando models on sites like Prusaprinters or…

Ended up buying an Ender 3 years ago
The part that most people hear when they hear the phrase "3D Printer" is the "3D" part. What you really need to hear is the "Printer" part. As in "I just purchased a printer and, instead of a solid-state unmoving device like my LCD screen, now it has to go through a mechanical process to produce…