• 3 Posts
  • 49 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • This looks great! I’m super happy with my MK4, and have never had to do anything with it after the initial kit build and re-seating the LCD cable to fix some early screen-blanking issues.

    I’ll probably skip this for my own printer since it seems like most (but not all) of the speed up comes from layer height, but $99 is not terrible for anyone who gets value from it. And anyone buying a new printer gets this stuff with no price increase, which is nice and makes the MK4/MK4S even easier to recommend.

    I didn’t know how much more dimensionally accurate Prusa’s prints are compared to the competition, but it makes sense now why there are so many calibration models online if that just isn’t the way every printer works. I’ve designed some parts that need an 0.1mm first layer because I’ve never had any failures with that, but I guess if I share the STLs other people might have trouble.


  • I do think it’s important to be unassailable, because it’d be easy to say “the libs are making misleading claims” and then people not paying lots of attention will think there’s a “both sides” situation going on. I’m sure we all assumed it was literally on display as an exhibit; I was mislead. If you stick to transparent, honest language, the “both sides” stuff falls apart.

    The MAGAs are unreachable, but the poorly-informed are out there too, and making them easier to confuse (by actually also spewing misleading-but-technically-true things) is not a good strategy.




  • The best I have is to be careful to minimize dependencies, and minimize when I change the number of faces an object has, but of course that’s unavoidable sometimes. I don’t buy it that all CAD tools have the same problem or that this is how real professional CAD designers would work, though.

    To minimize dependencies for example, instead of drawing the sketch for pad 2 directly on a face of pad 1, I might draw it on the base plane and transform the sketch to line up with pad 1’s face. The main consequence is that I need to manually move pad 2’s sketch if I change the size/position of pad 1. It’s a tradeoff, because I’m giving up some of the benefits of parametric CAD in exchange for easier fix-up.

    I agree, mapping a datum plane to a face should have the same topo naming issue as just drawing on the face, so I don’t know why the guide would suggest that. The comment below about mapping datum planes to a simplified skeleton is interesting though.

    The good news is that the next release (which sounds imminent) apparently improves it quite a bit.



  • They definitely don’t know what they’re doing. They featured this one, which is a death trap. It has a disclaimer that it might not be safe above 120V, but it’s absolutely unsafe and a code violation in the US, where we use 120V (and are very litigious). The disclaimer says they’re trying to get it approved which implies they believe it could be and that the design is sound, but fundamentally it cannot meet code in the US for mains voltage use.

    Even if the design were sound, there are material requirements, and having seen the quality of prints some people find acceptable, there’s no chance allowing random people online to print their own boxes is safe.

    I think they basically run the contests and feature things based on “ooh this is neat” and “this will excite people to use 3d printers”. It’s a marketing thing, and I guess I accept it because I have low expectations of even pretty-good businesses. But if it’s illegal…someone should probably let them know.






  • This is an interesting suggestion. The unsupported overhangs at the transitions are part of why I don’t like using gyroid infill; I don’t need my infill to introduce new potential problems in a print. That said, reducing layer height would be disappointing in most cases because I also don’t need my infill to slow the print down (and with some filaments, it’s also pretty visible), so the other suggestions might be more difficult-but better-ideas. It’d be cool to try a patch someone submits.





  • It’s not necessarily fluff; features do matter, but which ones matter and how much they matter is complicated. Do you want to tinker with a printer, or do you just want a tool that works?

    If you want a tool, I recommend a Prusa or maybe a Bambu. My Prusa just does what I ask it to; I’ve done zero calibration, optimization, tweaking, etc. Cheaper printers often require understanding bed leveling, figuring out how to adjust them best, etc. or vary more copy-to-copy (so one Ender 3 might work great, while another might be a source of frustration) or require upgrades to really become enjoyable.