This is the first time I can remember where i've been able to truley go all out on something:
I bought a 3d printer. BUT, this time I didn't do my normal thing - buying the cheap and/or DIY version and building it myself, probably also trying to mod it on the way. THIS time I bought a prebuilt printer!
3D printers are maddening, like normal paper printers but with a middle finger jammed in your eye, or at least they were when i was in college 10 years ago! I tried going the cheap route then, building a kit, and it just ruined printing for me for a full decade. Horrible instructions, no support, and printers just in general didn't have all the QOL features of modern printers. All that means that it was a struggle just to assemble the thing properly, then things like manual bed levelling, extruder setup, all this crap made for a terrible waste of my free time betwern classes.
Now, 10 years later, I wanted to have a printer, NOT as a hobby (I've already got plenty of those), but as a tool, a way to make silly little parts I cook up in my head, and tools should JUST WORK! And I finally have a few extra bucks to spare on a nice tool.
So, I bought a fully assembled Prusa Core One printer! Printing with this is like a whole other universe compared to my college days! The manufacturer has a beautiful slicer (with linux support!) and the printer has all the built in features that I want, in particular LOCAL NETWORK ONLY online monitoring!
The reason I chose Prusa over Bamboo Labs is because of this; Bamboo printers have to go through their online servers to do anything remotely to their printers, and the enshittification of everything guarentees that they will either paywall it or shut it down in the future. Figured I would get ahead of that and get a printer from a company that is hacker-friendly, with fully featured offline functionality. To prove my point, I have not set up this printer online at all, just connected to my wifi, which lets me access the print status web page directly, no internet! I can also upload new print files via that page, and start prints from it, very fully featured all things considered!
That said, I do have a camera on the way, because the only way I have to monitor the print visually right now is a crappy old security "camera" that I have to refresh a webpage constantly to get individual frames, and they look like ass:
The camera is a pretty new accessory from Prusa, and currently requires linking it to a free app to use, but Prusa has a feature roadmap including LAN direct live view, so the second that drops I'm enabling that for sure! Hopefully I can factory reset the camera and re-do the serup without an online account - local only is the way to go!
exhaust filter (some filaments have nasty by-products)
multi-filament unit (not installed yet, I'm waiting for a few more parts to show up)
sealed containers and dessicant for filament storage (some filaments absorb water, which makes them difficult to print with).
Hardened nozzle (for filaments with metal/carbon fiber fill)
taped some filter material over the air intake, to keep dust out
Right now I'm manually changing filaments until all the parts show up. Unfortunately I could not buy the printer with the filament changer pre-installed (at least, I didn't see the option). Thankfully, Prusa posts very detailed guides (with pictures!) on how to do regular maintenance and upgrades to their printers. So far, all the work I've done has been realtively easy and straightforward!
Only issue I have run into so far is a partially clogged nozzle after printing a few parts with PETG, the filament extrusion slowed to a trickle and left whisps of filament on the bed rather than actual layers. Took me a couple of tries to get it unclogged, but I think I got it! I'll know if I didn't, since parts won't print right until I do!
So excited to have what I really wanted for once - A printer I can just hit "go" on and get a part a few hours later, without yanking my hair out on the way! The future is now!
