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ArjinFerman  Tinfoil Gigachad  8mo ago (text post)   4486 thread views

Tinker Tuesday for May 13, 2025

This thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers.

Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.

If you want to be pinged with a reminder asking about your project, let me know, and I'll harass you each week until you cancel the service

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Is getting into 3D printing something you would recommend? I don't have any specific things I want to print. I am not into any figurines or any other such nerd table-top hobbies. I have some professional experience with microcontroller development and robotics but don't do it as a "hobby". But it feels like I would probably find interesting things I could do if I started digging into this

FDM's a great learning experience for software-side people that aren't great at self-driven efforts to learn about physical-side work -- everything from chemistry to mechanical tuning to maintenance scheduling to belt or stepper drive behaviors matter.

For actual usability, it's a mix. A lot of what's available out there are aesthetic toys at best and, frankly, more often cheap useless crap. If you've got a good use case, there are things that they excel at, but many times even they can turn into a temptation rather than an actual benefit (oh boy, a 3d-printed corner bracket!... why didn't I just get a metal one from Home Depot?). Still, for rapid(ish) prototyping, for specialty shapes, and for weird art projects.

Resin printers are more set-and-forget, since outside of support placement and cleaning there's not much to tweak with them. Better for figurines, though there are some chemistry-adjacent stuff where they have unique advantages.

You never know. When my toy railway project stalled because I couldn't be bothered to print 20 iterations to get the turnouts right, I stopped and my printer has been gathering dust since. I should probably sell it.

On the other hand, my former colleague has been printing stuff like a possessed man.

Various household items that you would normally buy on Aliexpress. Hooks, holders, handles, boxes, stands, etc.

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