Comment on 3D printer for someone who rarely prints

AbsurdityAccelerator@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• tal@lemmy.today ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  My experience with a small home 3D printer was that normally, there is tweaking that needs to happen on a per-printer basis to get good output. My feel – and maybe I’m just out-of-date here – is that I can’t just expect to take a 3D model, feed it to any old 3D printer, and get output that’s just fine. Maybe things have changed in the past couple of years.

  Paper printers are to the point where one can expect to get pretty much the output one expects by just feeding a file to a given printer.

  I’d like to be in a world where I could just go down to the office supply store and use their expensive 3D printer the way I do their expensive paper printer. But my impression is that we aren’t there yet.

  My guess is that at the very least, if we were in a world where that happened, there’d need to be printer description files that would list a printer’s and filament’s capabilities very precisely to the point that their output could be reliably and closely predicted for a given model, and that I would be able to see a “3D print preview” of what the printed output would look like in advance.

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  • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    If the library or maker space machine is already dialed in and has automatic bed leveling, I’d think it’d work for most prints. The issues you were pointing out are mostly first time things, rather than issues everyone would need to do. Even if not, you can ask someone else there to help you if you’re having trouble.

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    • brenticus@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Some libraries will also retry prints if they don’t look right, or will consult with you if it’s something really weird or complex. As long as a print doesn’t have really specific tolerances it should turn out fine with no additional effort, though.

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