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And watch it print. Sit there and binge watch a season or two of Extrusion starring Nozzle and Build Plate. First of all, it’s got better written dialog and deeper characters than anything broadcast on television since my niece was born. Second, the folks who refuse to watch the printer print tend to be the ones wo go “It didn’t work. Why didn’t it work?” Watch it print, you’ll learn “Oh the part wasn’t being cooled enough so the edges curled, the nozzle caught on the curled up edge and the axis slipped.”

Do some of that, and you’ll start seeing the problems in the slicer before they happen.

Something I’ve seen people fail to do is watch the printer print. People go “Welp, I’ve bought my newfangled 3D printer, first out the gate I’m gonna pick out this giant model that I like, I’m gonna hit go, and I’m gonna go grocery shopping.” then they come back to a ruined model and a damaged machine and wonder what happened.

Start out small, and watch it print. You’ll find out what doesn’t work and how to design or slice around it.

I’ve got one of those big Anker Solix power stations. I have two ideas for it:

1. My wood shop is powered by one 20A breaker from my house. Running lights, dust collection and power tools is a lot to ask of a single 20A circuit, so the power station is basically another one.

2. As an emergency power source for my refrigerator. In the not infrequent event of a power failure, I have some power that isn’t a gasoline powered generator.

Turns out, it’s got a TOU mode. So if you’re on one of those time-of-use plans with your power company, you can set this thing to store power from when it’s cheap, pass through when it’s average, and provide power from battery when it’s expensive. My refrigerator, apparently, draws a near constant 165 watts. So I might look into that here.

There might also be some issues with how things are wired.

A lot of Europeans are under the impression that the American power grid distributes 110 volts. It doesn’t, it distributes 220. Our transformers are center-tapped, the center tap is considered neutral and the other two hot. Measure between the hots, you get 220, which is how we power big things like stoves and HVAC and such, normal outlets are wired between neutral and one of the hots.

The US has plug and socket standards for 220. You’d think you could take something like a British kettle, nip the weird British plug off of it, put an American 220 plug on it, and plug it into one of those 220 sockets, right? A resistive heater like a kettle doesn’t care about the AC frequency. It might care that what it thinks is the Neutral wire has 110V potential from Ground.

The answer they give you is “If you want it written, YOU write it.” Which…it’s no wonder open source software doesn’t hold up, right? It’s made by idiots who think it’s up to end users to write the manual.

I haven’t used it in awhile, but OnShape I think had the best UI, for being in a browser.

There are some macros out there I’ve found that make FreeCAD a lot better. I kinda wish they had a half-decent reference for macro writing; they’ll point you to their unfinished out of date wiki if you ask.

Look up how to use FreeCAD’s spreadsheet.

No, all CAD software sucks. I use FreeCAD myself and just got used to the jank.

Actions have consequences. And these lead addled limp dick obsoletes have dodged the consequences of their actions for 6 or 7 too many decades.