My first try at 3D printing. Currently selling it on Shapeways, good thing they were celebrating and didn't have to pay for transportation. What do you think of my joke? :D

Perhaps I should just stick to software development

(Not dev, not rant, although it might become one later on)

So as some of you may know, I am colorblind. I always avoid working with colors because of it. Yesterday I decided to do something I've always wanted, painting. And no I don't mean painting on a canvas but miniatures and other 3D models.

I love catan, I love 3D printing and I thought let's print a catan set and paint it myself, without depending on family to ask for colors.
I've got this German paint tubes and used the wikipedia color descriptions to decide what to paint which color.

The following is the result, its a wheat tile (and in the background a wood tile).
Feel free to give tips and suggestions. If I picked a wrong color please tell me so I can update my tactics.

Finally took this step. Yay

There was a guy back at uni who, I'd have to say is just manipulative SOB,

I say this because of two situations:
We started uni, first week of programming homework, I helped him out, second week rolls around and this happens:

SOB: hey can you give me the answers to homework for this week?
Me: no but I can explain my idea process, which I then in painstaking detail, break down everything needed to do the homework, I thought maybe he'd understand the process and get the hang of it, he answers me with this
Me: so now that I explained everything did you understand what to do?
SOB: yeah yeah I do now could you give me the answers

But that ain't the only time, nope, at the same time for another class he was part of our team, where we decided to some ambitious project combining 3d printing + an Arduino to make a turret, needless to say my team mates knew nothing of Arduinos or 3d modelling, I did some 3d modelling in my spare time so I handled that other team mates made the Arduino rotate a motor :/ best they could do, SOB does nothing, assessment days rolls around and lecturer goes around the room we show him the turret, the Arduino and proceed to say SOB has done nothing, never contacted us through the last 6 weeks, despite us trying to do so, he begins to complain saying we lied, lecture takes him out of the room because we were starting to make a scene, and he starts crying! The lecturer gives him a B+!

I then hear him one day joking to this guy that he managed to pass Class A by doing nothing and managed to get a higher grade than the rest of his group, at the time he was copying homework from a person for the first programming class because he failed!

Later I hear in my final year he was hanging out with some first years, a friend of mine sees him and says hi, why you hanging with first years, the group of first years look at him and ask how he knows them, and proceeds to question why they were told he was a first year also...

Not only this but I heard despite failing so many papers (heard he was repeating first programming class 3-4 times) he somehow managed to graduate.... I just can't understand why, oh and he has a job too, managed to get one from a guy he knew working in IT he doesn't deserve his bachelor's degree at all!

Someone here into 3d printing? Got into the hobby end of last year and built my own new printer this year. I love this hobby! So great to print custom housings for your build electronics.

Our clients get links to a WebGL application which is rendering a modified 3D model and displaying some data in real time (domain irrelevant).

Today a client asked if there was a way to print that.

You know. Print "that". The 3D rendering of the model.

Printing a screenshot was not deemed sufficient, since it doesn't hold enough information. Also if you are thinking to just print a few key perspectives with the crucial information rendered in - they already get a PDF with exactly that.

What are they even looking for? A freaking hologram?..

I hate it when marketing people decide they're technical - quote from a conference talk I regrettably sat through:

"The fourth industrial revolution is here, and you need to make sure you invest in every aspect of it - otherwise you'll be left in the dust by companies that are adopting big data, blockchain, quantum computing, nanotech, 3D printing and the internet of things."

Dahhhhhhhhhh

Well, I was Always into Computers and Games and stuff and at some point, I started wondering: "why does Computer Go brrr when I Hit this Button?".

It was WinAPI C++ and I was amazed by the tons of work the programmers must have put into all this.

13 year old me was Like: "I can make a Game, cant be too hard."

It was hard.
Turns out I grabbed a Unity Version and tried Things, followed a tutorial and Made a funny jet Fighter Game (which I sadly lost).

Then an article got me into checking out Linux based systems and pentesting.
*Promptly Burns persistent Kali Live to USB Stick"
"Wow zhis koohl".
Had Lots of fun with Metasploit.

Years pass and I wrap my head around Javascript, Node, HTML and CSS, I tried making a Website, worked Out to some extent.

More years pass, we annoy our teacher so long until he opens up an arduino course at school.
He does.

We built weather stations with an ESP32 and C++ via Arduino Software, literally build 3 quadrocopter drones with remote Control and RGB lighting.
Then, Cherry on the top of everything, we win the drone flying Contest everyone gets some nice stuff.

A couple weeks later my class teacher requests me and two of my friends to come along on one of their annual teacher meetings where there are a bunch of teachers from other schools and where they discuss new technology and stuff.

We are allowed to present 3D printing, some of our past programming and some of the tech we've built.

Teachers were amazed, I had huge amounts of fun answering their questions and explaining stuff to them.

Finally done with Realschulabschluss (Middle-grade-graduation) and High school Starts.
It's great, we finally have actual CS lessons, we lesen Java now.
It's fuckton of fun and I ace all of it.
Probably the best grades I ever had in any class.

Then, in my free time, I started writing some simple programs, firstvI extended our crappy Greenfoot Marsrover Project and gave it procedural Landscape Generation (sort of), added a Power system, reactors, Iron and uranium or, refineries, all kinds of cool stuff.

After teaching myself more Java, I start making some actual projects such as "Ranchu's bag of useful and not so useful stuff", namely my OnyxLib library on my GitHub.

More time passes, more Projects are finished, I get addicted to coding, literally.
My days were literally Eat, Code, sleep, repeat.

After breaking that unhealthy cycle I fixed it with Long Breaks and Others activities in between.

In conclusion I Always wanted to know what goes on beneath the beautiful front end of the computer, found out, and it was the most amazing thing ever.
I always had constant fun while coding (except for when you don't have fun) and really enjoyed it at most times.
I Just really love it.

About a year back now I noticed that I was really quite good at what I was doing and I wanted to continue learning and using my programming.
That's when I knew that shit was made for me.

...fuck that's a long read.

My friend: I built a 3D printer and coded it to self calibrate at startup and connect to my encrypted remote server through VPN to securely retrieve Cad files I constructed and start itself printing when everything is ready or alert if theres an issue

Me: aren't you less than a year older than me?

This was when we were underclassmen in college a few years ago 😂 turns out the dudes just a savant

So last week I got my second 3D printer. I have done a few prints with it and this weekend I wanted to connect it to an Octoprint instance on my Raspberry Pi. Yesterday everything went great, got some plugins installed, changed all settings within octopi, connected it to my network and this morning I thought let's connect it to my printer and try to print something with it. But everytime I executed my gcode it gave an error about the heated bed not being able to heat up. Even though I did see all communication between the printer and octopi, on both ends.
I've disassembled the build plate to see what could be causing the heating issue. Did not see anything. Strange...

I assembled the whole thing again and then turned on the printer and tried printing again. Hmm, now it does work, why? Me thinking a bit and then realizing that before I didn't hit the power switch on the printer and apparently the Pi gave enough power through USB to turn on the display and do basic logic like doing beeps on touches and changing variables on the screen. The worst thing is that octoprint gave me warnings about low voltage on the Pi even though I was using the official Raspberry Pi power adapter...

Don't you just love customers?

It al began when they showed us the flyers they were printing for their new products, an some one at our company who doesn't work here anymore had the brilliant idea of copying it to their webshop, as a fucking gimmick... Ooohh man the customer didn't seem to understand it was only visually

They wanted the 3d layering effect to be dynamic, so each product would have its own with custom colours

So it was made

A few weeks later they didn't want the informational text, they wanted links to each product that the layer uses

Sounded like logical so it was made

Again some time later, they noticed that the layers were not textured, but just plain

I argued against it because it would add unnecessary loading time for some 300 by 400 px element but they insisted

So they got what they wanted

A few days later they said that the textures were of low quality, and that we had to create ones with higher quality

Again our management said, yes

We made ~ twice the size of the element in image pixels to create a higher definition image

Then the customer wanted that the layers should change based on some selection menu above it

(At this point we realized that it would no longer be just a fun little gimmick)

So we tried to refactor/rebuild it to remove most if not all the hacks we did just to make the customer happy, that took too long for them (the customer) so we had to revert back to the hacked together version because otherwise we would not be done on time (commanded by management)

But again, we ... I say 'we' as in the company but realistically I've been the only one who has worked on the fucking abomination

But I digress...

A few stupid requests later, some layer images are almost fully transparent PNG images that are almost 1mb in Filesize each (some products have 5 or even more layers) and the god damn thing now has to account for optional layers...

I AM FUCKING SPENT... I'VE JUST CAME BACK FROM VACATION BUT I ALREADY NEED IT AGAIN... FUCKING WORKING 60 HOURS A WEEK JUST TO KEEP ONE CUSTOMER HAPPY WHILE OTHER PROJECTS BREATH ON MY NECK

I have a few questions for the people having a 3D printer and/or are interested in 3D printing.

1. Where do you retrieve your models from? Or do you make them yourself?
2. What is your thingiverse name (if you have it)
3. Personally I'm missing a single good information source where questions can be asked, models can be shared etc. Thingiverse doesn't have a mobile UI and is pretty limited in my opinion. I'm thinking of creating a "social media" platform where people can share their creations, collection of information sources about 3D printing. Would you like to help or is there a good alternative for Thingiverse that I have not found yet?

The first filamment for my 3D printer had to end at 4h30 in a 5h30 program. FUCKKKKK
Tryed to replace while pausing the printer, but the fucking merlin doesn't reset the extruder stepper motor, so... when I resumed the print it wouldn't extrude filament, because the position of the extruder was wrong....
Well. At least printer time is cheap... I'll just print all the pieces and leave it until tomorow night printing lol

So...

Started 3d printing custom orders for whoever wants them, and I get a request for a giraffe.

Silly me, nearly forgot the most important thing.

Needs to be 5ft tall.

Think she's having a giraffe...

For the guys familiar with 3D printing.

Does your slicer also give you time estimates that are completely off? I'm printing something that would take 10 hours according my slicer. Started it at around 10 AM and its 1AM now and still printing. Halfway during the print I increased the printing speed to 150% because it was way to slow.

Is it just me or are the estimates completely off at each print and the longer the print takes the less useful the estimates are.

Any advice?

A platform where people can share their creations, collection of information sources about 3D printing and other CNC machines. (Alternative to Thingiverse)

I'm a software developer, but I'm finding myself more interested bio and electro-mechanical engineering. And to top it off, I'd most like to be a bio-mechanical engineer — which is very different from the other two previous mentions. ...But, I'm well paid now, my last retail start-up failed, and money talks. For now my fogponic ecosystem (fish + biofilter + fog + plants) in my backyard will have to suffice. Now I'm actually interested in waste recycling...

Yeah... I get bored while waiting for parts to come from China. Can never have too many hobbies.

Anyways AMA, if you like. It can be about robots, fish, plants, IoT, apps, web, solar power, 3D printing, VR... You name it!

Hmmm 3D printing, VR gaming and tabletopgames. Love to combine it all.

3D printer.
fillament.
Pieces won't fucking stick.
Hey 3D guys. So... I changed to my second fillament rool, from white to black PLA.
The white worked perfectly, but I'm having lots of problems with the black. It just doesn't stick right on the table and than drags strings , with ends up fucking the piece.
I was printing at 200C, now upped to 220C and it just seams to cool to fast or something...
Cleaned the table, leveled like 30 times so far, using lots of airspray...
Do I need to up the heat more? Or may I already givint to much?
the fillament says from 220C to 260C, but I'm afraid the 3D printer can't handle arround 250C

3d printer
I only assembled it from prusa parts but still it was lots of fun, learned a lot about how 3d printers work.

Then it was printing trex using 3d printer and it was funny to because it took me about a month to do so just because of amount of parts and the problem with parts that were broken and needed to be fixed.

From software projects, once I build a browser plugin in 2-3 hours cause I was pissed off with those shitty popups all around. I published it on browser store, made code opensource and forgot about it.

Recently I got some survey from a german university about it and I was like wtf ?
I looked at a statistics and my plugin had about 500 daily users and I was amused because the ui is shitty as fuck and the ux is even more shitty.

I plan to update this plugin but since I am focused on a bigger personal project for almost half a year now I have no time to do it.

Hi guys,

I don't really know where to begin so I'll just spew words and hope they make sense.

I was on an app called afterglow. Kind of an anonymous group therapy doo-hicky thing. I quite liked it. Then it closed. (Yes I've messaged the Devs, nothing)

I would rewrite it myself but I just CBA, which leads me to the main part.

I'm depressed. Severely. I won't go into details but I'm stuck in my job for a year, I has a repair and 3d printing sidehustle which I love, but my main job is fucking it up.

I'm not suicidal or SH, but I just wake up and wish I hadn't every morning.

How do you guys get yourself out of a rut?

P.s tell me to grow a pair, and I'll just take yours

I got asked to teach a bit 3D printing to a physics class at my old high school. But I consider myself an amateur at 3D printing at best and don’t think these kids are going to learn as much as their teacher thinks they will.
Especially if the printer is above the hobbyist level and doesn’t require user added upgrades and improvements

Started with 3D-Printing last year, bought a cheap Creality Ender 2 and upgraded almost everything except the mecahnical parts.

Upgrades include a new Mainboard, stepper drivers, stepper dampers, custom firmware, new printed case, better extruder, OctoPI Server etc.

Oh yeah, and Animu ^^

Anyone on here obsessed with 3D printing and Rubik's Cubes willing to help me talk some ideas through with them

!rant

Spend the past few days 3D printing those mask holders on my 3D printer, currently sitting at about 72 pieces in total to give away to friends and family around here :)

Spent about 2 weeks 3d printing splash visors to get distributed to hospitals / care homes etc.

Logistics got fucked up and even though I posted them mid April, they still haven't arrived.

That's nobody helped with visors, 2 weeks and 5kg of 3d printer filament completely wasted.