3DPrinting

Walked away from a print this morning and came back to a blob being dragged all over the printer.

The blob of pla was in and around the hot end sleave and just everywhere.

Is this salvageable or do I need a replacement hot end?

Printer is a creality k1

I got some cheap asa cf off amazon and the texture is really weird it looks almost like cordura.

Printed this vertically to match the layers to another part its being attached to.

Print settings:

Line width .62

Line height .24

Temp 270 -260

Flow ratio .95

So, the end of the flap of my mini split deteriorated and crumbled - from just age, I don't know. The shaft of the motor just spun freely in the little nub, and the flap wouldn't open. I tried glue, but the brittleness of the nub made it just crack in a different spot. So this is what I came up with. Just a small brag. To me this is what 3D printing is all about.

I got a huge laugh out of this and thought I'd share.

Edit: forgot the link https://makerworld.com/models/2628961

I'm back with an update, in case anyone is interested.

If you want to know the lore, here are my previous posts: Do NOT buy Creality, and Creality K1 woes

Quick summary: I still think Creality is garbage.

I started with a used Ender 3 v2 that I picked up cheaply to see if I even liked 3D printing. It drove me insane, but I figured it was old and used, so maybe a newer printer would be better, easier, and less frustrating. During Black Friday 2025, I bought a Creality K1.

It was a nightmare the entire time I owned it.

The machine had constant problems, and Creality did the bare minimum to help. When it became clear that the printer was not reasonably repairable, they still refused to take it back. I ended up reporting the issue to Consumer Protection through Ontario's Ministry of Public and Business Service Delivery and Procurement.

Because of that, the store I bought it from eventually refunded me and took the machine back. I still lost several hundred dollars on extra hotends, replacement parts, repair attempts, and the camera Creality sells separately. I sent all of it back with the K1. During that entire mess, Creality offered me one free replacement part, never apologized, and never made any real effort to make things right.

I'm done with Creality permanently and forever.

That said, I still wanted an enclosed printer. I spent a few weeks researching options, narrowed it down to a few brands, and eliminated them one by one until I landed on Elegoo — specifically the Centauri Carbon 1. I bought it in early April when it went on sale. It ended up costing roughly $100 CAD more than I paid for the K1 during Black Friday.

And honestly? This printer is the absolute tits.

After almost four months and dozens of prints, it has failed twice. Both failures were filament-related, and both were fixed by restarting the print. I've run several brands of PLA and PETG through it, from brand-new rolls to old filament that had been open for months and never bagged or dried. It just chews through everything and puts out clean, reliable prints.

It has been such a relief after dealing with Creality.

The other interesting update is that Elegoo actually followed through on their multi-filament system for the Centauri Carbon. It's called CANVAS, and it's listed at $80 CAD, compared to the $600 Creality wants for theirs. I might buy one eventually, but I'm not an early adopter anymore, so I'll wait until people have the first units in hand.

I've mentioned the Centauri Carbon in comments before, but I wanted to make a proper post after spending enough time with it to feel confident recommending it.

One note: it does not have a dedicated mobile app. That said, I've been using OctoPrint with it, and it has been flawless for me.

TL;DR: I will never buy another Creality product. The Elegoo Centauri Carbon has been amazing and super reliable, and I genuinely think anyone buying a new printer should consider it, at the very least.

Mine looked like shit inside, and I bet yours do to.

I had some TPU85 tangled up in the gears, requiring a disassembly, so I figured I'd give it a proper clean while I already had it taken apart.

Hey 3dprinting,

I'm trying to create something similar to the attached image, to hang hotwheels track, for a family member but I'm really struggling to find the dimensions of the underneath of the track.

Does anyone know of a marked up drawing or model that I could use?

Cheers

Alright, kiddos. It's time to... Kick! That! Beehive!

You may or may not have been following the recent drama involving the Tesseract Lemmy UI. Much hilarity has ensued. I will spare you the synopsis.

What this has to do with 3D printing is, I naturally took it upon myself to run with the suggestion and design an award for anyone cool enough to be on the Tesseract secret ban list.

A physical award, mind you.

You can download it from Printables here.

I included the FreeCAD source file also, which alas includes some rather heavy duty prerendered text for the front part, but perhaps you can mess with it as you see fit anyhow. I realized belatedly I was probably unconsciously inspired quite a bit by that old "winners don't do drugs" seal that used to appear on arcade machines back in the day. I kind of like the vibe, though, so I'm sticking with it. It's got wings, a hang tab to dangle it off of a lanyard or zipper pull, it's got it all.

I would be remiss if I did not mention for them as do not own or have access to a 3D printer that I am also selling these already printed on my shop, under the perhaps misguided assumption that I will neither get crucified here for my crass commercialism nor go broke on postage mailing them out.

Now that Bambu is off the table, which budget-friendly 3D printer would you recommend?

Once upon a time, I wanted to order Light Purple PETG, and the only company which sold it was a GELO band on Amazon. Several years later and I needed more.

While their Amazon listings were gone, their website was still up and their item still in stock. Since it's local I'd thought I put an order in.

This was July 14. My first point of concern was that I got no confirmation email from them outside of PayPal. But I waited, and sent a request for an update on the 16th. Just to confirm the order went through.

I then asked to cancel my order on July 20th, again to no reply, and today I went to paypal to get my Money back.

Stay away from gshop.ca as it's at this point a ghost company, and you'll be more likely to get a full spool of filament from Amazon's Reuse store than from them.

Hi y'all!

I've been wanting to have a go at tpu-gf. I mostly print mechanical parts, so reinforced tpu with its stellar layer adhesion seems very intriguing! Does anyone here have any experience with printing Glassfibre-filled TPU? How did it go?

Also, are there any shops selling it within the EU?

Greetings, Waffle :)

Edit 1: First print went well! Got an amazon spool from "Tinmorry" (a brand i've never used before). Glue stick is a must, and i'd recommend some 110%-130% nozzle size extrusion line width (maybe even more). I used a 0.6mm steel nozzle.

I printed a model in PETG shortly after a PLA print, which was fine, and it damaged the plate as shown. What's odd is I've printed this same model with this same filament on this printer and it was fine. The temps in the gcode are the same between those prints.

Is this a Z-offset issue? Would PLA and PETG require different Z-offsets on the same printer?

Edit for more details: Creality Ender 3 V3 SE, stock plate.

First, I've got to admit that i don't have a 3D printer, but I have a friend who prints stuff for me.

For this project, we need ABS as material. My friend has several years of commercial experience and research in this area, so it take this as granted.

While he has a good match for "Light Bluish Gray" and "Dark Bluish Gray", his "Blue" is off in comparison to blue LEGO bricks.

Has anyone found a close match that would be worth trying?

so i need navy blue and sunlu doesnt seem to have it. i have only used sunlu. what do you guys recommend?

EDIT: Thank you to everyone who responded. prusament seems to be a favpriye but i will try all of them. as @daannii@lemmy.world said, my bambu hasnt been picky but i also have some ender memories

I'll be getting a different Klipperish printer soon so this caught my eye.

Hi, all. So I'm pretty new to this hobby, and this might seem like a short-sighted question. But I was wondering, how important is the brand name when buying filament? I live in South Korea, which means AliExpress orders arrive here pretty quickly and are generally a viable option. The thing is that I see filament on Ali for half the price of the reputable brand name stuff I can get in Korea. Do any of you have any experience with the cheaper, no-name stuff? Is plastic just plastic, and the brand is just jacking up the price because they can? Or is there an important difference between the filament produced by the big brands and filament made in China that I can get for much cheaper? Any and all advice would be much appreciated.

It seems so much faster. Mainly due to the high flow nozzle and better cooling. I bought my MK4 back in 2023, when it released. Then printer says I have 73 days of print time, but I bet I have double that due to some factory resets.

Update 2: tl;dr: had to turn off (or maybe tune) z contouring.
So after looking at it and pulling it apart and several times missing the window to go look as its happening, it looks like it wasnt extruding enough to actually stick, eventually there is enough of a ball that it sticks and it repeats causing that pattern.
I literally just found out after idk how many years of 3d printing that the post slice view can be switched to visualize different things including flow which coloured specifically those areas blue or really low, like down to 0.1 even. Going through everything one by one to make it consistent flow, it turned out to be 'z contouring' was on and presumably very misconfigured. I still cant believe it wasnct the broken extruder. I even threw the bmg clone and calibrated it to get the same results as the repaired pap lite.

Update: Shockingly the broken extruder that was somehow still extruding wasn't the cause. I printed another a4t shell and the same areas have that defect. It seems to occur mainly on just the exterior wall of both inward and outward overhangs but parts of the same section dont have it, and this model is the only one I've seen this on. I'm waiting for the printer to heatsoak for further testing but at 3 teardowns in, I'm just guessing now.

Edit: It was the extruder. One of the belt gears sheared off, and there was enough friction between the pieces that it still worked at slower speed, even well enough for the calibration test prints I tried. I had spares that I printed ages ago and now it works.

I started getting this weird exterior wall defect that I haven't seen before. Calibration testers come out clean though and it's driving me insane.

Using orca slicer with an e3 switchwire trying to print parts for my other printer so I can rebuild this one into something not a switchwire.

Hi folks. I obtained a pre-owned Anycubic Vyper. Alas, every print features defects in the surface as shown in the picture. It occurs in any type of material. Does anybody know the source of this type of defects?

Relentless 3D sculptor MZ4250 sculpted the entire Dungeons and Dragons 2014 Monster Manual - now he's working through the 2025 version!

Hello! I have been on the fence about getting a printer for years. Now my wife is getting interested too, and I feel that now it's the time.

What are the recommendations nowadays? I am trying to steer clear of Bambi Labs due to their controversies (I'm also a supporter of open source software).

I've seen a few mentions of Prusa in this community. Would that be a good start? I don't want to get in at an extremely basic level and then need to upgrade in half a year.

What y'all think about the PHA Filament, is worth the cost? in USA I only see ecogenesis for $36 and colorFabb for $41

I made an enclosure for build-in induction cooking hobs. The build-in models are usually much cheaper and have better features than the free-standing ones. The corner blocks and ventilation grills are 3D printed and the side panels are 6mm thick aluminium composite plates. The plates are glued to the corner blocks using epoxy.

The price of the ACP plates and glue combined is still far cheaper than the difference between build-in and free-standing induction hobs and it's quite a simple model.

Here is the model and design file.

https://www.printables.com/model/1769315-induction-hob-enclosure