Just posting to get on the forum try to become active. I was a long time lurker on r/fosscad. I was 80% builder initially, but have been going back and forth on 3d2a and buying a printer for the past 18 months or so. I finally broke down and bought a Bambu H2D on 26Sept, with delivery of 03Oct. I got on reddit a couple of days ago to a surprise, like many, Fosscad was wiped. Always a day late and a dollar short 😩😩. Thankfully I am in the discord and was able to find you guys again.

Hindsight 20/20 i should have been collecting build files and storing them offline just in case a issue like this arose. Anyways glad to have found you guys again. Hoping to school myself and start getting some projects running soon.

Any comments, suggestions, pointers, do’s/dont’s, hardware or software upgrades? I’m all ears!!

Glad to be here and thanks to the guys who put this all together so quickly. @TheShittinator@forum.guncadindex.com

  • KopsisEnglish
    6·
    23 hours ago

    Advice:

    • Test and calibration prints are the difference between good and great prints. I probably printed 50 little test objects in the process of learning/tuning support settings alone. The Ellis Print Tuning Guide is a good (albeit a little advanced) resource: https://ellis3dp.com/Print-Tuning-Guide/ . I say “advanced” because not everything in there is applicable to all printers so you’ll have to put a little effort into learning what to use and what to ignore.
    • Start with a reputable brand of PLA+ or PLA Pro. Skip the “artistic” filaments, and don’t bother with the engineering materials (nylons, etc.) until you have working builds in PLA+/Pro. I have plenty of experience with other materials and I still use PLA+ for the first time I print any design. Once I have 1000 rounds through something and I’m sure I want to keep it long-term, I might reprint in something more advanced. But I’ve thrown away several kg of parts over the last couple years because the print quality didn’t meet my standards, the design had problems, there were aspects I wanted to change/customize, or it just wasn’t that enjoyable to shoot. It hurts to trash $60+/kg parts.
    • Learn some modeling. Blender for customizing STL files, your choice of CAD programs for design or major modifications. It’s really not that hard to learn (just different) and there are lots of good tutorials and even interactive teaching sessions. Customizing, not just building, is how you truly take advantage of the “open source” aspect of FOSSCAD.
    • sniggglefutzOPEnglish
      1·
      17 hours ago

      I really appreciate the effort you and the other commenters have placed into the responses. Thank you for drop the print tuning tutorial. That is saved and I will start digging into it in the am. It’s seems the consensus is to take my time, be patient with it, and learn the proper way to use the software and hardware before diving deeper. All the the filament types, drying and proper storage, plate textures, etc… Really good ideas to search for interactive online learning and tutorials. I will take advantage of those as well. Learn to crawl, walk and then run 🫡