Awesome. This person got way busier than I did [1] (I think I focus more on creating original designs on the printer). When I first got the Bambu in 2024 I did the whole Gridfinity thing. Very fun.
As their post makes clear (even to me) there are actually a lot of things out there you can 3D print. Something I printed last year (and did not even bother to post) was a center-console "compartment" for a 1995 Mazda Miata I have. I swapped out the trashy aftermarket stereo (a previous owner has installed in the Miata) for one that is close to OEM but then I had an empty "hole" in the center console. So I printed a cubby for it.
I too was like the author. Originally got into 3D printing years ago—found it frustrating. Picking up a Bambu printer a yearish ago made made all the difference in the world for me. Previously I had an Ender and it was, endlessly frustrating (pun intended). The Bambu is so next-level, the software so well integrated and polished, that I finally found that I enjoy, and I am not burdened by, 3D printing.
(The only caveat about the Bambu is that people worry about vendor lock-in. I don't believe Bambu have enshittified that way yet, and people are finding workarounds in case they do, albeit by adding complexity in setting up, printing. The price of the Bambu for someone getting into 3D printing is very attractive.)
One of the most useful things that I print is Gridfinity storage boxes and holders. I try to organize as many of my tools and supplies using it. I sometimes do a little leather working for fun and have a drawer full of hardware, all in their own bins. In my garage my sockets, wrenches, etc. all has a Gridfinity holder. I design my own as much as I use pre-made ones. A while ago I even saw a shop that used it to organize most of their small wares. It’s an incredible system.
Another note: PLA has gotten significantly better in the past few years. PLA+ is legitimately better while being as easy to print and the Polymaker HT-PLA and HT-PLA-GF are even better as you can meaningfully anneal them after printing to make them strong and temperature resistant enough for some very functional prints.
I think PLA is a lot stronger than people give it credit for, especially if printed at 100% infill. I finally had a chance to use the PLA-CF that came with my Bambu X1C for a replacement part on my tripod, and it's great.
Gridfinity seems very useful. I might try it. I spent $100 on FB marketplace 2 years ago for a AnkerMake M5C with bunch of rolls of PLA. I've printed hairdryer rack, containers, Labubus as little gifts for neighborhood kids to paint over. I thought about getting a multi-color 3d printer like Anycubic Kobra S1 combo, but the wasting of plastics is holding me back. Snapmaker U1 is much better but more expensive.
I picked up a P1S for Black Friday. I’ve been printing non-stop since December, including some stuff I modeled myself. Only failed prints have been because I printed the wrong thing. It’s been flawless with PLA. Haven’t done PETG or ASA yet.
I got a cheap Ender-3 V2 with a few modifications (extruder moved to the sled, CR-touch sensor mounted) which - after redoing the wiring which the previous owner somehow messed up, replacing some mismatched bolts, putting nuts and washers on the bolts underneath the hot plate, putting the springs in their correct locations, removing a metric ton of hot glue, aceton-glueing a few broken ABS details, installing more capable firmware [1] and tightening all bolts - seems to work just fine. Thus far I've only used PETG to print spare parts to repair broken appliances, this started out with some hiccups but works fine after installing the mentioned firmware. It isn't particularly fast, it isn't particularly pretty but it does work for my purpose: create parts to repair and build things. I have no doubt that a more modern printer can make life easier but thus far life hasn't been hard with this Ender: design a model, slice and dice it and send it to the printer which does the rest. I've printed some fairly 'hairy' models which came out fine (i.e. not hairy/thready) even though I'm using PETG. For those with some technical aptitude - in other words for people who are wont to build and repair stuff - these machines are an affordable step into the additive manufacturing world with the promise of 'spare parts at your fingertips'.
I still have mixed emotions about 3D printing. I do love the idea of being able to print a part when I need it for something. But I do hate myself at the same time for creating more plastic junk. PLA is not really getting recycled, when it fails someone throws it in the trash and it goes to a landfill. Maybe some really diehard enthusiasts are ensuring all their failed prints and broken parts get properly chemically recycled, but I bet most don’t bother and just bin it.
I feel the same and that has kept me from buying a printer. That is not to say that I never will but for the time being if I really need a particular part I can always use a printing service.
I find this concern a little odd because most people tend to do very little in their life to make a difference in ways that count way more than a couple kilograms
of PLA filament.
Let’s take 1kg of filament, which is enough for multiple print projects depending on the size of the items.
That is approximately the same weight of petrochemical material as 1/3 of a gallon of gas (making a bit of an assumption that the amount of processing per weight of both materials is roughly the same).
Every time you drive 10 miles in a car that gets 30mpg it’s like you are burning an entire roll of filament.
So the average American is using probably 1-4 rolls of filament just to get to work and back. The last time I bought a roll of filament was multiple months ago.
I’m not singling you out, I am really just pointing out that humans are terrible at understanding the quantities of things and what things actually use a lot of material and create a lot of carbon emissions.
This is especially true since cost is so detached from material use, waste, and carbon emissions.
A gallon of gas is an order of magnitude cheaper than the equivalent weight of filament.
Burning a bunch of BTUs of natural gas to make my house 4 degrees warmer and gain a trivial amount of additional comfort wastes a whole bunch of energy but costs me so little that I don’t even know what my gas bill is.
It’s cheaper for me to replace most of my home appliances with brand new ones than hire a repair service.
I can fly to Florida for $50 and burn 15 gallons of jet fuel.
If I put more garbage out in my bin I’m not charged more. I can even put furniture and appliances out there and I am not charged more.
These are all examples of waste and environmental impact where I don’t really see or feel the magnitude of them because our systems don’t show them.
Anyway I know this is kind of a huge tangent of a discussion. But really, 3D printing is the least of your worries.
I've kept almost every bit of scrap PLA I've had from printing. You can melt it into silicon molds, grind it up and feed it into a pellet extruder, pass it on to those who recycle it into filament (like https://erikaprintsshop.wordpress.com/), or for the hard-core DIYers, create your own filament recycling operation. (Though more approachable commercial options are starting to come to market (https://crowdfunding.creality.com/)
In the past I've mostly printed intersting/amusing things from places like thingiverse. But this year I had a project I needed an enclosure for, and instead of using something off the shelf I decided to print my own.
Being able to design, print, test, change, print again really made the potential of 3D printing shine for me. I must have went through a couple dozen iterations as the hardware choices solidified and I saw what worked and what didn't (like "oh, I actually can't reach that screw once these two pieces are put together"). It was a really rewarding experience and I'm looking forward to the next project.
I would encourage people who have never designed physical objects before to try to only print things they have designed themselves as an exercise. For perhaps a year or so.
If you have never designed physical objects before it is really challenging at first. The learning curve is pretty steep and, at least in my case, I discovered that I didn't have a mental language for thinking about functional 3D and mechanical design. You also start to look more closely at the objects around you and think about what went into designing them.
I started doing 3D design about a decade ago, when I got my first 3D printer. At first using free modeling in CAD and then later learning how to do constraint based and parametric designs in Fusion 360. This felt slow and perhaps limiting at first, but when you get used to it, it will save you a lot of time later and allow you to make more useful designs that are much easier to evolve and vary.
I think it took something like 4-5 years before I printed something someone else had designed. Mostly because I used 3D printing to make custom parts for my own projects, but also in an effort to force myself to learn. I know the learning curve was steep, but for some reason I have forgotten how much work it was to learn.
Now there are so many useful designs, designed by people who are a lot better than me available everywhere that I do print a lot of things others have designed. But I think learning to design things yourself is a really good opportunity to learn useful skills.
For instance, I had never anticipated that I, a software engineer, would get paid, by an actual customer, to design parts for their projects. Or even consult on physical design for someone doing product development. I am by no means at the level where I'd put it front and center on a resume, but I can design, and to some degree, manufacture simple mechanical parts.
(Along with 3D printing I've been doing some CNC at a very hobbyist level. I would still say I am very much a beginner when it comes to machining metals, but it is really fun to see that you can make reasonably precise metal parts for real applications (car parts) at home in my garage with not that much effort. This weekend I'll be doing thread milling in aluminum for the first time on a part that requires M3 screws)
I will add that FreeCAD has come a long way in constraint based and parametric part design, and I'm able to use it exclusively running an Arch-based distro.
Deltahedra has extremely impressive tutorials on YouTube. No fluff -- no long intros or filler -- 30-60 minutes of dense content, clearly explained: https://www.youtube.com/@deltahedra3D
I don't do this because I don't have the time to design wargaming terrain, but I've definitely pushed myself to do more designing for household things.
It's a really good feeling to be able to put something together that solves your problem. As I asked my wife, "Is this why people with wood shops are always so smug?"
It's also fun to be able to feel your skills building. I now have opinions on friction fit box lids.
I can express myself well spatially in code, but that doesn't help much in CAD where you have to figure out what combination of buttons and parameters will do what I want.
I can manage dependencies well in code, but that doesn't help much in CAD. I continually struggle to design parts with geometry that is dependent on the spatial relationships and constraints of how multiple parts connect together.
Since I'm a developer with no experience in 3D design, I just automated my process with freecad and vibe-code my models with GitHub copilot.
That gives me instant visual feedback plus 3d model code I can check in into git: https://github.com/micw/freecad-automation
Is this robust enough to run headless? I'm thinking of sticking it in a Celery worker to generate parametric variants, but I'm not sure if the LLM output is reliable enough to run without that visual feedback loop.
- generate the model via AI, using plain text
- review the result (using FreeCad for visual feedback)
- iterate until the model is fine
- tell the AI which parameters shall be customizable
(see my tablet holder example, there I have parametes for a Huawei MediaPad and also for an old Samsung Galaxy Tab, both using the same model)
2. 3D Model export
This can be done entirely headless and it's very robust. No AI involved, only the python code previously generated by AI.
Currently a generic 3mf file is exported, so It needs to go though a slicer and you need to apply your printer's settings (printer type, nozzle type, all that stuff).
But the generated 3mf is just a ZIP with 3d model and the settings within. So this could also easily be automated.
You can get pretty quickly at it with Blender instead of proper CAD. Just do the "donut tutorial", set the correct workspace dimensions and go for it. You can learn basic modelling in a day.
Blender is overwhelming at first glance, but it becomes incredibly intuitive once the UI clicks. Of course modelling for printing in Blender has drawbacks and limitations. It's more fiddly, but unless you are super stupid, you can get pretty far, pretty quickly. And you can do sculpting and organic shapes, which are hard/impossible in CAD. Learning Blender basics is worth it anyway, incredibly useful for thinking and sketching in 3D. Oh, and it's FOSS, runs entirely locally, doesn't spy on you, or appropriates your creations like the "free" Fusion360 and their forced cloud crap.
Once you got annoyed by Blender's limitations for 3D printing, you can learn CAD. But Blender is the best way to get into it IMO. Trust me, you won't regret learning Blender basics, in any case. It's expanding your creative horizon and is fantastic, very pleasant software.
Both Blender and Fusion have pretty steep learning curves, so you will have to dedicate a significant amount of time to get to the point where you can just sit down and go from an idea you have to something that is of use whatever you choose.
But.
The thing is that Blender and Fusion do not even exist in the same universe. If your goal is to make mechanical parts it doesn't help you to learn something that is only good at creating meshes. Just as there is little point to learning Fusion if you want to create 3D characters for, for instance, animation.
Everyone tends to start by making shapes, but if you are making 3d printed mechanical parts you soon realize you have to graduate to learning how to do CAD in general. If you are making mechanical parts you tend to deal with precise geometry and geometric relationships. It is usually 2D geometry that drives most of the design. CAD models are often also parametrized so that you can change dimensions, angles, multiples of features etc.
I'd encourage people doing engineering/functional parts to also try ASA and PC(-CF). Both are pretty easy to print on enclosed printer like Prusa Core One, and they offer unique qualities that are impossible to achieve with PLA or PETG.
Prusament PC Blend is insanely strong and stiff, I saw a 3mm PC bracket bending a high quality metal wood screw into an S-shape without breaking. PC-CF is much easier to print, looks great, and is stiffer still, even if a bit less strong. ASA looks great and is tougher than PC. Both creep less than PLA and PETG. Both shrug off 100C under load.
ASA and ABS really need a good filtration. Like actual filtration, not what the enclosure has. I personally just run a duct to my window and vent outside.
Can't help but wonder looking through the gifs, am I actually insane that I MUST fillet, chamfer, or chamfer AND fillet basically every single one of those edges[1] with with tangency weight of 1.5 where possible, until the shape takes a generic apple/bauhaus/lego/ikea style? I'm aware that doing so don't necessarily improve load distribution, but I just can't stop rounding those corners.
You are not alone. I like to round the edges and corners. I feel that it should help the strength on concave corners at least but honestly have no evidence to back this up.
No idea of your "tangency weight" bit though. I use blender bevel tool.
It really is poor taste. Parents like me might want to spend time 3D printing with children without having to tip toe around an explanation for this username.
I never really heard this word until I was 18 (in the military) and it's occasionally part of my vocabulary if I, say, drop a sturdy wrench on my foot.
My favorite model of all time is this digital sundial:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1068443
It's generated using code that knows the shapes of numbers and "punches them out" of a template object at different angles corresponding to angles of the sun/time relationships.
It would be impractical to make in any method than additive printing.
What is the latest on metal 3D printing? How long before I can send off models to a shop and they can print it close to the price of the underlying metal?
I imagine metal printing will never be something that happens at home.
43 comments
[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 58.8 ms ] threadAs their post makes clear (even to me) there are actually a lot of things out there you can 3D print. Something I printed last year (and did not even bother to post) was a center-console "compartment" for a 1995 Mazda Miata I have. I swapped out the trashy aftermarket stereo (a previous owner has installed in the Miata) for one that is close to OEM but then I had an empty "hole" in the center console. So I printed a cubby for it.
I too was like the author. Originally got into 3D printing years ago—found it frustrating. Picking up a Bambu printer a yearish ago made made all the difference in the world for me. Previously I had an Ender and it was, endlessly frustrating (pun intended). The Bambu is so next-level, the software so well integrated and polished, that I finally found that I enjoy, and I am not burdened by, 3D printing.
(The only caveat about the Bambu is that people worry about vendor lock-in. I don't believe Bambu have enshittified that way yet, and people are finding workarounds in case they do, albeit by adding complexity in setting up, printing. The price of the Bambu for someone getting into 3D printing is very attractive.)
[1] https://engineersneedart.com/blog/3dprinting2025/3dprinting2...
Another note: PLA has gotten significantly better in the past few years. PLA+ is legitimately better while being as easy to print and the Polymaker HT-PLA and HT-PLA-GF are even better as you can meaningfully anneal them after printing to make them strong and temperature resistant enough for some very functional prints.
These are the types of things I want to print. My Ender 3 was so finicky, I only got a few out before I gave up.
[1] https://github.com/mriscoc/Ender3V2S1
Let's see how much you really care: https://all3dp.com/2/best-diy-filament-extruder-kit-maker/
Let’s take 1kg of filament, which is enough for multiple print projects depending on the size of the items.
That is approximately the same weight of petrochemical material as 1/3 of a gallon of gas (making a bit of an assumption that the amount of processing per weight of both materials is roughly the same).
Every time you drive 10 miles in a car that gets 30mpg it’s like you are burning an entire roll of filament.
So the average American is using probably 1-4 rolls of filament just to get to work and back. The last time I bought a roll of filament was multiple months ago.
I’m not singling you out, I am really just pointing out that humans are terrible at understanding the quantities of things and what things actually use a lot of material and create a lot of carbon emissions.
This is especially true since cost is so detached from material use, waste, and carbon emissions.
A gallon of gas is an order of magnitude cheaper than the equivalent weight of filament.
Burning a bunch of BTUs of natural gas to make my house 4 degrees warmer and gain a trivial amount of additional comfort wastes a whole bunch of energy but costs me so little that I don’t even know what my gas bill is.
It’s cheaper for me to replace most of my home appliances with brand new ones than hire a repair service.
I can fly to Florida for $50 and burn 15 gallons of jet fuel.
If I put more garbage out in my bin I’m not charged more. I can even put furniture and appliances out there and I am not charged more.
These are all examples of waste and environmental impact where I don’t really see or feel the magnitude of them because our systems don’t show them.
Anyway I know this is kind of a huge tangent of a discussion. But really, 3D printing is the least of your worries.
Being able to design, print, test, change, print again really made the potential of 3D printing shine for me. I must have went through a couple dozen iterations as the hardware choices solidified and I saw what worked and what didn't (like "oh, I actually can't reach that screw once these two pieces are put together"). It was a really rewarding experience and I'm looking forward to the next project.
If you have never designed physical objects before it is really challenging at first. The learning curve is pretty steep and, at least in my case, I discovered that I didn't have a mental language for thinking about functional 3D and mechanical design. You also start to look more closely at the objects around you and think about what went into designing them.
I started doing 3D design about a decade ago, when I got my first 3D printer. At first using free modeling in CAD and then later learning how to do constraint based and parametric designs in Fusion 360. This felt slow and perhaps limiting at first, but when you get used to it, it will save you a lot of time later and allow you to make more useful designs that are much easier to evolve and vary.
I think it took something like 4-5 years before I printed something someone else had designed. Mostly because I used 3D printing to make custom parts for my own projects, but also in an effort to force myself to learn. I know the learning curve was steep, but for some reason I have forgotten how much work it was to learn.
Now there are so many useful designs, designed by people who are a lot better than me available everywhere that I do print a lot of things others have designed. But I think learning to design things yourself is a really good opportunity to learn useful skills.
For instance, I had never anticipated that I, a software engineer, would get paid, by an actual customer, to design parts for their projects. Or even consult on physical design for someone doing product development. I am by no means at the level where I'd put it front and center on a resume, but I can design, and to some degree, manufacture simple mechanical parts.
(Along with 3D printing I've been doing some CNC at a very hobbyist level. I would still say I am very much a beginner when it comes to machining metals, but it is really fun to see that you can make reasonably precise metal parts for real applications (car parts) at home in my garage with not that much effort. This weekend I'll be doing thread milling in aluminum for the first time on a part that requires M3 screws)
Deltahedra has extremely impressive tutorials on YouTube. No fluff -- no long intros or filler -- 30-60 minutes of dense content, clearly explained: https://www.youtube.com/@deltahedra3D
It's a really good feeling to be able to put something together that solves your problem. As I asked my wife, "Is this why people with wood shops are always so smug?"
It's also fun to be able to feel your skills building. I now have opinions on friction fit box lids.
I can express myself well spatially in code, but that doesn't help much in CAD where you have to figure out what combination of buttons and parameters will do what I want.
I can manage dependencies well in code, but that doesn't help much in CAD. I continually struggle to design parts with geometry that is dependent on the spatial relationships and constraints of how multiple parts connect together.
1. 3D Model code generation
- generate the model via AI, using plain text - review the result (using FreeCad for visual feedback) - iterate until the model is fine - tell the AI which parameters shall be customizable
(see my tablet holder example, there I have parametes for a Huawei MediaPad and also for an old Samsung Galaxy Tab, both using the same model)
2. 3D Model export
This can be done entirely headless and it's very robust. No AI involved, only the python code previously generated by AI.
Currently a generic 3mf file is exported, so It needs to go though a slicer and you need to apply your printer's settings (printer type, nozzle type, all that stuff).
But the generated 3mf is just a ZIP with 3d model and the settings within. So this could also easily be automated.
Blender is overwhelming at first glance, but it becomes incredibly intuitive once the UI clicks. Of course modelling for printing in Blender has drawbacks and limitations. It's more fiddly, but unless you are super stupid, you can get pretty far, pretty quickly. And you can do sculpting and organic shapes, which are hard/impossible in CAD. Learning Blender basics is worth it anyway, incredibly useful for thinking and sketching in 3D. Oh, and it's FOSS, runs entirely locally, doesn't spy on you, or appropriates your creations like the "free" Fusion360 and their forced cloud crap.
Once you got annoyed by Blender's limitations for 3D printing, you can learn CAD. But Blender is the best way to get into it IMO. Trust me, you won't regret learning Blender basics, in any case. It's expanding your creative horizon and is fantastic, very pleasant software.
But.
The thing is that Blender and Fusion do not even exist in the same universe. If your goal is to make mechanical parts it doesn't help you to learn something that is only good at creating meshes. Just as there is little point to learning Fusion if you want to create 3D characters for, for instance, animation.
Everyone tends to start by making shapes, but if you are making 3d printed mechanical parts you soon realize you have to graduate to learning how to do CAD in general. If you are making mechanical parts you tend to deal with precise geometry and geometric relationships. It is usually 2D geometry that drives most of the design. CAD models are often also parametrized so that you can change dimensions, angles, multiples of features etc.
But a heck of a lot of what I print doesn't exist, or only exists in disparate parts. So I am forced to RAD a lot of stuff together.
Prusament PC Blend is insanely strong and stiff, I saw a 3mm PC bracket bending a high quality metal wood screw into an S-shape without breaking. PC-CF is much easier to print, looks great, and is stiffer still, even if a bit less strong. ASA looks great and is tougher than PC. Both creep less than PLA and PETG. Both shrug off 100C under load.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46713872
Am I really the only one?
1: http://numpad0.com/imgs/2026-01-23%20001128.png
No idea of your "tangency weight" bit though. I use blender bevel tool.
I never really heard this word until I was 18 (in the military) and it's occasionally part of my vocabulary if I, say, drop a sturdy wrench on my foot.
It would be impractical to make in any method than additive printing.
I imagine metal printing will never be something that happens at home.