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I mean… I wish my printer worked as well as all my Bambu friends, but this helps a little… this helps…

Just of note, many other brands are now very competitive with Bambu, even beating it in value in some cases! For example, Qidi has some very good value enclosed printers like the Q1 Pro and the newer Q2, Elegoo’s Centauri Carbon is exceptionally good for the price, the Snapmaker U1 undercuts Bambu’s H2 series by a lot while being compatible with OrcaSlicer OOTB, and of course you have Prusa being cool as always, letting users upgrade from the MK4S+ to the Core One with a kit, which can later be upgraded again to a tool changer with the upcoming INDX.

Nice, good to hear! Radicale is really nice and simple to setup too. If you want a good desktop calendar app, I know that both GNOME Calendar and Thunderbird work well with Radicale (I currently use the latter).

1. Always read the documentation!!!

Now for specific recommendations, I can can share my own experience. I started out with hosting something very basic that I had a need for. Nothing fancy, something that’s relatively easy to set up. I hosted Radicale, a CalDAV server that can sync calendars. It was a little fussy about permissions but I was able to sort it out by reading the documentation. I heard Baikal is another good option for that too. Previously, I only used local calendars, as never bothered with Google or Outlook calendar, and if was refreshing to have my events be locally synced! Super neat!

If you have a small, simple need like that, it can be your baby steps into self-hosting. A small calendar, a to-do list, DNS (i.e. PiHole), web server, something like that which you have a need for. Just make sire you read the documentation!

Afterwards, you can “level up” to more complex projects. For file hosting, I use Nextcloud, but OpenCloud is a good option if you need something lighter weight. LearnLinuxTV has an excellent guide on installing Nextcloud! You also have Immich for photo backup, and the documentation for it is excellent. You really should read the docs, for any kind of software! And if you do any programming, having a local Forgejo instance is always good for an additional backup to a cloud git repo service like Codeberg or GitHub. If you have a large collection of media of any kind, Jellyfin (for videos), Audiobookshelf (for…audiobooks), and Navidrome (for music) are all recommended.

As for the OS, I would recommend Debian. It’s rock solid, there’s a bazillion guides for it and Ubuntu (a Debian derivative), and it works well for my use case. Much of the documentation for all kinds of self-hosted applications assumes that you use Debian or some derivative of it. However, if you want a better way to manage networking, RAID configurations, etc., going with an OS tailored for use in NAS systems would be better. I heard that TrueNAS is a really good option for that! Just make sure you read the documentation before you fiddle around with settings.

On the hardware side, I would always go with something you already have over buying new hardware, and if you really don’t have anything, getting some used is always good. Reduce e-waste and save your money! I used (and still use!) an old laptop for self-hosting, since it was what I had available and my storage needs were not massive. That poor 512GB SSD is really putting in the work.

Have I mentioned that you should always read the documentation?

Aside from a lot of the ones that are abbreviations (like GNU Image Manipulation Program, or GIMP), most of them are fine I think.

Immich, it sounds like “image”, which makes sense for photo hosting. Inkscape is a landscape of ink, suitable for a vector graphics editor. “Chrono”, the clock app on Android, is named after the embodiment of time. Radicale, the CalDAV self-hosted service, is the word “radical” conjoined with “calendar”. KeePass is a password manager, a master key is used to unlock the vault. KDE likes to put “K” in front of a lot of their app names. KCalc, KGet, Konsole, KOrganizer, KAlarm, KWrite. Their functions are pretty self explanatory. Okular is a PDF reader by KDE, and the name is a play on the word “ocular”, used to describe vision, but with a “K”! MarkText lets you write text in Markdown format. LibreOffice is a free (as in freedom, or libre) open-source office suite. Writer, Impress, and Calc are related to documents, presentations, and spreadsheets. And then there are all the apps that are not unique and are simply what they are. Think “Offline Translator”, “OSS Document Scanner”, etc. (very common with a lot of Android apps I use)

I would imagine Kittygram refers to the vast quantities of cat photos on Instagram.

Having a large internet personality like Pewdiepie advocate for privacy, self-hosting, and open-source is always good!

Vikunja is a great option, but the mobile app is still in development (lots of missing features). I like it, but I have found that using a simple markdown editor like Markor (on Android) and Marktext (on Linux, available on Windows + Mac too) works for me, and I use Syncthing to sync with my laptop. Note that Marktext isn’t being actively developed anymore, but it was the best one I could find that respects the folder structure of my notes. Obsidian is great too, but it’s closed source and having everything in vaults is annoying for me. You might also like VSCodium or Kate, which are code editors that also have markdown highlighting (but not Markdown preview).

However, you can’t easily use custom themes with Markor and Marktext. For Markor, you can only change the background, font, and text colour of the editing mode (not the preview mode!) while Marktext does let you change the font universally, but you have to use one of the prebuilt themes (I found One Dark to be the closest to my system theme). One day I would like to try my hand at making my own cross-platform markdown editor, maybe once I have less schoolwork to worry about.

As per his video, he states that he wishes that he could magically make AI go away and that he “hates everything in his project”, but since that’s not possible, he would prefer if people using AI did so using their own hardware and not some company’s cloud servers.

Make of that what you will. I think it’s pretty neat, not for me, but I’m sure someone will find it useful.

Note that I have seen a lot of people make some really cool “rehousings” of their laptops to turn them into transparent boxes mounted to the wall, usually made of something like acrylic. They look awesome, but haven’t tried it myself since I just self-host using my laptop in its original chassis

I personally use Syncthing-Fork. It works well enough for me, but I know a lot of people run it through Termux. Haven’t tried it myself though, so unsure what the limitations are. BasicSync is also new to me. There isn’t a “proper” way, it just depends on your use case I think!

Two built for Android, Syncthing-fork and BasicSync, and the latter is meant to be less featured and simpler (or basic! Wow, it’s in the name!)

And the third is the desktop service for Linux, Windows, etc. Technically, you can install the Linux one with Termux or similar on Android, but it’s a little jankey. It is possible though, as somebody else has already mentioned!

PLA

A toolchanger option you can purchase right now is the Snapmaker U1. It has a relatively low price tag for a tool-changer and uses a modified version of OrcaSlicer to print stuff, not some proprietary nonsense! It’s pretty recent though, so reliability and such are not guaranteed.

Definitely avoid Bambu, they have been very hostile towards open-source developers! And this is speaking as somebody who owns an A1 bought before the ecosystem lockdown shenanigans (my printer is now in LAN-only mode to allow continued use of OrcaSlicer).

The Elegoo Centarui Carbon seems to be an excellent option from everything I’ve heard online. They recently released the “Canvas” multi-material unit, which looks pretty interesting, but the reliability of it is undetermined. It works fine now, but there hasn’t been enough time to see if it will last. Could be a thing to consider if you will be using the printer for anything important! I’ve also heard that Qidi’s Q1 Pro is excellent, and their new Q2 is the successor to that with support for their “Qidi Box”. It looks like a neat option too.

Although much better than Bambu, as they support stuff like OrcaSlicer and OctoPrint out of the box, they aren’t the most open. In both cases, they used a custom version of Klipper that is not open. I do know that there is the “OpenCentauri” project that is working towards an open Klipper for the CC, but full support (esp. for the Canvas) is not there yet.

Ideally, if within your budget, the Prusa Core One will be the most open option you can get. Great customer service, best in class build quality, repairable, etc. It supports the MMU and, in the future, the INDX for a toolchanger!

It turns out it was an issue with the model, the bottom was a very thin edge instead of a flat base. Cutting 4mm from the bottom fixed the problem!

It’s only 4mm, so it’s no big deal. Plus, this is a helmet shape, so the other sides are round (and therefore need more supports, using more filament and such)

I was able to print by lowering the models by 4mm, making the bottom flat enough to correctly adhere! It turns out that it was an issue of the model, not my hardware

the results are just so good I still recommend them

It helps that other brands have become much more competitive in terms of feature set, pricing, and customer support! Perhaps they were ahead of the game in the past, but brands like Prusa, Qidi, Elegoo, Snapmaker, etc. are leapfrogging Bambu nowadays!

Looking more closely at the models I am trying to print, it looks like the base is very thin and isn’t flat. Could that be why the first layer easily shifts? Maybe I need to manually add supports, since OrcaSlicer only adds supports to either end of the curve. I will try that and report back whether it works!

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I have tightened those screws now, will see if that fixes the issue. Some of them were not fully tightened. I will see if the print works correctly…

My printer has 676 hours. I will try looking for the screws of the heat block and see if any are loose!

It does feel like a sheet and isn’t stringy

I have edited the post with a large first layer print. There are many imperfections, what does it mean?

The bent bit in the corner was from me trying to peel it off the build plate, ignore that

First layer test print worked fine for me, quite smooth aside from a few bumpy bits. This is a 60x60cm square I found on Printables.

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There are minor bumps near the middle, are those of any concern? This is immediately after I used the automatic bed levelling function

It’s PLA, forgot to mention! Have edited the post with that detail.

It doesn’t look like any of the motors or such are slipping. I have also lubricated the rails of the moving bed recently.

My printer keeps the bed heated until the print is finished. Don’t think that’s the problem!

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My attempts at printing the large models (see how they are all stringy, the filament is not stuck together as a solid object)

Ohh, that makes sense. I think that’s probably it. Next time, I will scale down my prints as to not reach the height limit.

But I am still running into the issue where filament isn’t correctly adhering to the build surface!