I'll be getting a different Klipperish printer soon so this caught my eye.

Hi, all. So I'm pretty new to this hobby, and this might seem like a short-sighted question. But I was wondering, how important is the brand name when buying filament? I live in South Korea, which means AliExpress orders arrive here pretty quickly and are generally a viable option. The thing is that I see filament on Ali for half the price of the reputable brand name stuff I can get in Korea. Do any of you have any experience with the cheaper, no-name stuff? Is plastic just plastic, and the brand is just jacking up the price because they can? Or is there an important difference between the filament produced by the big brands and filament made in China that I can get for much cheaper? Any and all advice would be much appreciated.

It seems so much faster. Mainly due to the high flow nozzle and better cooling. I bought my MK4 back in 2023, when it released. Then printer says I have 73 days of print time, but I bet I have double that due to some factory resets.

Hi folks. I obtained a pre-owned Anycubic Vyper. Alas, every print features defects in the surface as shown in the picture. It occurs in any type of material. Does anybody know the source of this type of defects?

Update 2: tl;dr: had to turn off (or maybe tune) z contouring.
So after looking at it and pulling it apart and several times missing the window to go look as its happening, it looks like it wasnt extruding enough to actually stick, eventually there is enough of a ball that it sticks and it repeats causing that pattern.
I literally just found out after idk how many years of 3d printing that the post slice view can be switched to visualize different things including flow which coloured specifically those areas blue or really low, like down to 0.1 even. Going through everything one by one to make it consistent flow, it turned out to be 'z contouring' was on and presumably very misconfigured. I still cant believe it wasnct the broken extruder. I even threw the bmg clone and calibrated it to get the same results as the repaired pap lite.

Update: Shockingly the broken extruder that was somehow still extruding wasn't the cause. I printed another a4t shell and the same areas have that defect. It seems to occur mainly on just the exterior wall of both inward and outward overhangs but parts of the same section dont have it, and this model is the only one I've seen this on. I'm waiting for the printer to heatsoak for further testing but at 3 teardowns in, I'm just guessing now.

Edit: It was the extruder. One of the belt gears sheared off, and there was enough friction between the pieces that it still worked at slower speed, even well enough for the calibration test prints I tried. I had spares that I printed ages ago and now it works.

I started getting this weird exterior wall defect that I haven't seen before. Calibration testers come out clean though and it's driving me insane.

Using orca slicer with an e3 switchwire trying to print parts for my other printer so I can rebuild this one into something not a switchwire.

Relentless 3D sculptor MZ4250 sculpted the entire Dungeons and Dragons 2014 Monster Manual - now he's working through the 2025 version!

Hello! I have been on the fence about getting a printer for years. Now my wife is getting interested too, and I feel that now it's the time.

What are the recommendations nowadays? I am trying to steer clear of Bambi Labs due to their controversies (I'm also a supporter of open source software).

I've seen a few mentions of Prusa in this community. Would that be a good start? I don't want to get in at an extremely basic level and then need to upgrade in half a year.

What y'all think about the PHA Filament, is worth the cost? in USA I only see ecogenesis for $36 and colorFabb for $41

I made an enclosure for build-in induction cooking hobs. The build-in models are usually much cheaper and have better features than the free-standing ones. The corner blocks and ventilation grills are 3D printed and the side panels are 6mm thick aluminium composite plates. The plates are glued to the corner blocks using epoxy.

The price of the ACP plates and glue combined is still far cheaper than the difference between build-in and free-standing induction hobs and it's quite a simple model.

Here is the model and design file.

https://www.printables.com/model/1769315-induction-hob-enclosure

Hi, all. So my first ever 3D printer is on its way to me. I went with an Elegoo Centauri Carbon, partially for the option of using OpenCentauri firmware. I have been looking at various models on printables.com and Thingiverse, getting excited for the possibilities. I would just like to ask if there are any big pitfalls I should look out for as I'm starting my 3D printing adventure. What mistakes did you make when you were just starting out? What resources do you wish you were aware of earlier? What general advice can you give me?

Thanks in advance, and have a lovely day.

I'm trying to do something that feels like it should be simple, but I'm struggling to find a way. I have an stl file that has spots for two items and I wanted to reconfigure it to only have one spot. I just want to cut and merge but this seems impossible. Any suggestion on tool and how to do this?

I am looking for stl. Anyone have this stl? It is not on website anymore.

Started printing this filament shrinkage test and had to leave the house. When I came back, the whole upper half of the part had shifted after the first few layers, and it left two solid blobs attached and one ball of spaghetti. The magnetic bed doesn't appear to have moved. Part is still solidly adhered to the print bed. How did this happen, and how can I keep it from happening again?

I recently replaced my aging but well dialled in FLSun Q5 with an Elegoo CC2.

I am very pleased at being able to print much larger things, but I get this effect at height. This is an egregious example but even cleaner prints still have obvious layer shifts.

I have spent parts of the last 2 days trying to finish calibrating a hardened stainless steel .60mm nozzle with Sunlu PLA+ 2.0 filament.

I have been trying to print a test cube and I couldn't get the first layer to stick period. I washed plates, I swapped plates, I removed the nozzle and reinstalled it.

I swapped different filament brands, and they all printed flawlessly. Try that Sunlu white PLA and instant failure again. I was about ready to admit defeat and dry my first spool of PLA ever because I could think of nothing else to do.

But I took one last look at my settings for this filament. And I finally noticed my flow ratio was set at .096 rather than .96. I didn't even know the slicer would allow a number that small.

Once again the error was found to be located between the chair and the screen.........

Normally you'd post a FixMyPrint issue where the OP asks for a solution. Here instead I post an issue and the cause/solution immediately as well, hoping that it helps others.

This issue looks this way in a CoreXY printer, on a Cartesian printer you probably have only one axis looking weird.

The top part of the image has two printed objects in it, they're corner blocks for an enclosure I'm making. The right one has a bend in it. The toolhead would consistently move 1mm to the right or left at the exact same location. Normally a layer shift occurs due to warping or loose belts or hitting the infill somehow.

The left block is what it's supposed to look like.

Upon closer inspection of my belts it appears that one of them was stretched a small amount. These are cheap generic belts from Aliexpress that did last quite a while but were probably not the highest quality. At some point the filling material breaks and the belt stretches by a small amount. When that part of the belt goes over the stepper motor you get a layer shift.

Now I got Gates belts and hope that they last longer.

Because of course it now does. Welcome to Bambu.

(Subscription-based after 14 days, they don't mention it to catch people)

Source: https://connectified.com/@masukomi/116736929422875166

I've been thinking about print-in-place joints, and playing with my new multi-head printer.

Has anyone been playing around with making one half of a joint from PLA and the other from PETG to get snugger PIP joints? Seems like that would be a good way to get real right tolerances without bonding.

I did a casual search and I couldn't find anyone talking about it.