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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • That’s inconsistent extrusion.

    As others have mentioned, the first thing I’d look at is thoroughly drying the filament. TPU is very hygroscopic and will become nearly unprintable within a couple of days of coming out of the dryer.

    Beyond that, you may be trying to run it faster than your hotend can melt it. TPU is pretty resistant to melt and cranking temp doesn’t help a whole lot. Actual flow can vary pretty wildly between brands depending on their exact blend but I’ve seen TPUs that refuse to flow more than around 2mm³/s through a standard 0.4 nozzle. (Volumetric flow is roughly layer height * width * linear speed).


  • A 2.4 will be better than an Ender 3, but there are better options out there. The flying gantry is a solution in search of a problem, the gantry is heavy and not particularly rigid, Voron toolheads don’t cool particularly well, the rigid bed mounting is a recipe for bed taco, etc.

    Which isn’t to say that V2s are bad printers – they can turn out great prints. But if you’re starting fresh today, I’d seriously consider any number of printers over it.

    If you want to stay within the Voron ecosystem for whatever reason, the Trident’s a better design. It still lacks things like kinematic bed mounting that are standard fair on other designs today, though. I’d stay away from Tap on any of them – I’m still baffled that thing gets promoted as being a good idea.

    In terms of bang for your buck, it’s incredibly difficult to beat the VzBot kits. It’ll be a less expensive and more capable machine than a V2.4. There are panels available to enclose it. I don’t love the Z stage on it, but I can overlook it given the value the rest of the printer gets you.

    The Annex K3 is an absolutely killer little machine, but is only 180x180 build volume. The small build volume is free rigidity, though, and K3s can be made true high temp capable with less relative effort than a lot of printers. I’m not as big a fan of the larger Annex printers (K1/K2), personally.

    The Rat Rig v-Core was probably the best value CoreXY before the VzBot kits came around. Enclosing them is more of a challenge due to all the PETG parts, though. The EVA toolhead provides a ton of flexibility for mixing and matching parts, if that’s your thing.

    In terms of take it out of the box and print, nothing beats the Bambu X1 and P1P. They’re great units. They’re a closed ecosystem though, and not modification friendly if that’s what you want.

    My main workhorse printer’s a Railcore II. Great machine, but the design’s aging and I generally wouldn’t recommend a new build today outside of a few very specific applications. It was cutting edge when the design was released in 2018, but, as with the 2.4, the wider community has learned a lot since then about fundamental printer design and there are better options now.



  • Restricts Freedom to Use the Software

    I’ve always found this particular one somewhat frustrating. It’s essentially the intolerance paradox repackaged into a software licensing analog:

    “You are restricting the freedom of users by taking away their ability to close the code and restrict the freedom of other users!”

    It’s always read very “I got mine” to me.

    That said, while I lean copyleft, I also don’t find just barring commercial use entirely interesting. The goal is to ensure source code remains available to users; I think there are better ways of addressing that than trying to delineate and exclude commercial use.