I use my 3d printer sparingly. I don’t like printing useless stuff, so I design parts when needed if I can’t find them somewhere else.
I use my printer when I need it. Once I learned CAD, the need to print toys and trinkets basically evaporated. (I did just print a tiny guitar for my daughter for Christmas as a placeholder for a trip to the guitar store after the holidays were over.)
The printer is now an extremely useful tool. The drawback is that I don’t use as much filament and have had a few spools degrade on me. It’s no biggie, but it’s a time suck to dry it and get it usable again.
Do what I do, when you have filament, extrAs, supports. Leave them in a 5 gallon bucket until 2/3 full. Then go out to the garage with your old toaster oven and make filament bricks. It takes no time at all to make…please help me I have filament bricks 9x12x1" everywhere. Please normalize this lol
I am the same way but I get hell from the wife for purchasing something that isn’t being used. So now I have a table full of articulated dragons, and a wife asking why I have so many…
I like printing those flexi Dino’s.
It’s for my niece. Honest. Grown men don’t play with Dino’s….
My favorite is Gunther’s steggo.
To print. My favorite to print! (“Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal! Ahahahah!”)
Although for testing new filaments, I usually go with a small egg-shaped spiral printed glue pot (or paint pot or small parts holders,) small things, I feel like spiral prints show flaws, as well as layer adhesion issues.
the color changing with temperature plastics are a good choice, my niece likes the purple to pink one
my niece likes the sparkly stuff. That you know… destroys nozzles.
Ah the things we uncles go through, huh?
The articulated print-in-place animals are such great gifts.
They are fun and look magical how they are just printed as one piece.
I also like the NASA fabric, it is like 3d printed chain mail, but then futuristic
May your filament be strong and plentiful and may all your beds be level.
I got addicted to converting USGS and European digital elevation data to 3d topo map prints; I just think they’re neat!
My wife is from Italy, so I printed out a topo of the valley where she grew up. It took me a long time to figure out how to change to the European projection in the software I was using, and I didn’t write down how I did it; unfortunately I’m not sure I can figure out it again! There’s a digital elevation TIFF of the whole EU available online, even Czechia! If you want to make it a project, I can point you in the right direction and give you some pointers on converting to a obj file to print. I found a couple websites that went through the process, but I didn’t find their directions very complete and had to figure a lot out myself.
Don’t ask me if my bed is level
