Upgrade!

This past year finally decided buy a new 3D printer. The Ender 3 Max was just released and was really reasonably priced, so I picked one up. This printer is an absolute dream to work with, it's quiet, it's accurate, and it's reliable.

I've been using the Prusa Slicer with this printer since it was the only one with a preset for the Max when I started. I'm a big fan of this slicer even if it doesn't have all the bells and whistles Cura does.

My grandfather also showed me that you can use a dial indicator to level your bed, which has been a godsend.

Joints

Since my new printing is way more accurate than anything I've had access to before, I decided to start playing around with more advanced features. I've found a number of videos about different kinds of printable joints and I thought I'd try my hand at a few of them.

The two I'll show off here are sliding and snap on joints. The sliding joint is really slick for large covers and the snap on joints are useful for smaller things.

Nightlight

The first time I employed a sliding joint was for a nightlight for my housemate. This was pretty easy to design and print, and it turned out excellently.

I set up a pretty cool analog circuit using a photoresistor, a mosfet, and a potentiometer to dim the light during the day and crank up the output at night. I also included an on off button for if the light was too bright at night.

Under the cover I arranged the LEDs to shine edge on into a sheet of acrylic, which is supported by a second sliding plate. The bulk of the electronics are stored at the very bottom beneath both sliding plates.

Electronics Covers

I made a few of these snap on electronics covers for the lab I work in. They're great for covering Arduinos, PCBs, motor controllers, etc. I change the design a bit each time to fit the different boards.

They're pretty cool and super satisfying to pop together.

Casting Patterns

The more I get into my metal casting hobby the more I find myself printing new patterns. This one on the right was from my bronze dagger project.

As I get into more advanced casting techniques, I'm looking forward to designing, printing, and casting increasingly complex geometries.

Thingiverse

I realized with my old 3D printing page that I'm rarely ever going to update this one, so I'm just going to upload my projects to Thingiverse going forward.

I'll try to put this link in some more accessible places on this website, but for now I'll just drop the link below this text.