3-D Print General - Feeding Printers Filament

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BotulismSandwich said:
FreeCAD's a joy thief, at least the versions I used pre-1.0. Having to fully constrain every dimension is such a load of bullshit and a timesink when you're sketching relative to other features in the part, especially for me having started out mesh modelling in Softimage and Blender. I'd like a happy medium where I could just fuck around with the modelling and only constrain what geometry I want to.
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Agreed, the newer version has a different workbench (Part vs Part "Design" I think) that is a lot easier to use and doesn't work off of constraints. I finally bit the bullet a couple weeks ago and revisited FreeCAD...it's a lot more usable now.

DavidS877 said:
Just use OpenSCAD like a normal person.
I've made many exciting projects that involve a cube with holes in various places.
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This insane thing generates OpenSCAD models for you: https://adam.new/cadam
The code is even human-readable.
 
Dr. Sexbot said:
This insane thing generates OpenSCAD models for you: https://adam.new/cadam
The code is even human-readable.
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Sorry, human generated models are always superior.
2026-02-22_10-41.png
Behold, the hole sizer to figure out the perfect fit for a hex nut.
 
Holey moley!

"Debugging" an OpenSCAD model is a huge pain in the ass, unless I'm missing something. Getting the chatbot to crank out the skeleton of a model was a huge time saver.
 
Darkholme's Dungeon said:
QIDI is a good alternative if you need an ethernet cord imho.
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Can confirm. My Q2 has been rock solid for printing ASA since I've got it. If you want to print engineering filaments consistently, it's a steal.

It's also running on open source software so you can modify it. I managed to installed spoolman and klipper screen on my Q2 and it's doing just fine.
 
Darkholme's Dungeon said:
QIDI is a good alternative if you need an ethernet cord imho.
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Agreed with Qidi and would also point out Sovol as a good budget alternative. Easy to air gap which is a huge plus. I would recommend that if you get either and they have a heated chamber to replace the SSR board with a proper SSR. There were fire concerns about the Qidi Plus 4 due to the SSR board melting.
 
Zjierb said:
Agreed with Qidi and would also point out Sovol as a good budget alternative. Easy to air gap which is a huge plus. I would recommend that if you get either and they have a heated chamber to replace the SSR board with a proper SSR. There were fire concerns about the Qidi Plus 4 due to the SSR board melting.
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Sovol iirc is just a Voron+ right? There's also that valkyrie project for a reliable DIY PEEK printer (lmao).
 
It was previously reported- the 3d Printing laws introduced by New York and Washington, requiring hardware manufactures to 'snitch and block' firearms (and other 'weapons') . Ofc this is a bullshit excuse for Nintendo, Disney, and other IP holding entities to stop hobbyists from free-printing valuable Tchatchkies.

This isn't about safety, or guns, it's about IP control.

Well, now California joins the parade, and Newsom trumps them all.

The California bill also restricts sale on non-compliant printers, criminalizing their ownership. Also requiring all printers to be licensed and monitored (by the 'snitch-and-block' software.)
 
Reminder to avoid buying Bambu printers, or at the very least never connect it to the uppercase I Internet.
The sneaky chinamen region locked their printers. How will I print my funko pops and articulated plastic waste now!
leddit print.png
[Link] [Archive]
None of the newer BL printers have been cracked yet. The X1C on an old firmware version is the only Bambu printer capable of running a custom interface.
I have interacted with a few X1Cs and they are great machines, but they feel very "Apple". The raw information such as mesh bed flatness, LIDAR flow calibration and resonance compensation is inaccessible to the user for no good reason despite them owning the machine. The printer can be run on LAN only mode and remotely controlled with OrcaSlicer (FOSS BambuSlicer) but to access the printer it requires using a binary blob and it completely blocks access to the camera.

Prusa printers are not exactly great for the price point and feature set either. It may be made in Eurostan but it has half the features at twice the price of a comparable Chinese printer. Their OpenPrintTag system looks promising but of course, no Prusa printer even has the hardware to read the tags!

Darkholme's Dungeon said:
There is a conspiracy about Bambu labs and the whole security bullshit locking out the 3rd party slicers and requiring the cloud print for everything, was that it was an attempt to crack down (keep an eye) on Chinese people printing firearms in China since a lot of the americans were talking about that on Xiaohongshu.
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This is completely believable and I can't believe I have not heard about this before. With the US and Europe pushing for printer software locks, future tech will probably come straight from the factory with a rootkit and require submission of an ID and Address to a database to buy it.

Susanna said:
Pirate SolidWorks.
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To pirate SW you need to use it in an air-gapped Windows VM as it phones home with who knows what kind of data, meaning unless you are in Brazil or Russia you will get a lawyers letter in the mail. Every native SW document (this excludes exported STEP, STL, IGES etc) is marked with author info so in theory if you share any of those documents you could get caught.
It is such a shame that FreeCAD is so divergent from other standard CAD software. Blender is brilliant but for modeling parametric mechanical components it is a right pain.
I would look into Plasticity. It has the same geometry kernel as SolidWorks, looks capable of making G3 surfaces and has a perpetual license (200$), but it is not exactly parametric, it is more "push/pull". (Also I think the dev sounds like a troon) [Plasticity Dev's YT] [Plasticity Website]
 
I’m not sure when it was announced but elegoo have started taking preorders for something they’re calling CANVAS. This is their multi material system for the Centauri Carbon - https://us.elegoo.com/products/canvas-for-centauri-carbon. Like the Centauri Carbon I’m sure this will be okay if a bit compromised. Looking at the images it requires the lid to be taken off the Centauri Carbon to operate so I’m hoping it won’t take long some someone to design a replacement lid that I can print which will work alongside it.

I’ve already put my own preorder in so I’ll update the thread once it turns up. My question for those who know 3D printing better than I do- do you know of any torture tests/benchmark prints for these multi material systems? If I’m going to test this thing then I may as well do it in a way that it can be compared to other systems.
 
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Almighty Space Duck said:
I’m not sure when it was announced but elegoo have started taking preorders for something they’re calling CANVAS. This is their multi material system for the Centauri Carbon - https://us.elegoo.com/products/canvas-for-centauri-carbon. Like the Centauri Carbon I’m sure this will be okay if a bit compromised. Looking at the images it requires the lid to be taken off the Centauri Carbon to operate so I’m hoping it won’t take long some someone to design a replacement lid that I can print which will work alongside it.

I’ve already put my own preorder in so I’ll update the thread once it turns up. My question for those who know 3D printing better than I do- do you know of any torture tests/benchmark prints for these multi material systems? If I’m going to test this thing then I may as well do it in a way that it can be compared to other systems.
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This is something you can only realistically do with a multi-material printer: https://hackaday.com/2026/03/17/ful...rge-for-3d-models-but-bring-your-toolchanger/

 
Molokroid said:
To pirate SW you need to use it in an air-gapped Windows VM
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It doesn't need to be air-gapped you can just block it in the firewall.

  • Go Offline,
  • Install SW
  • Manually add blocks in Firewall or run a PowerShell script to do it for you.

Example of PS Script for you
  • Remove the space between the : and \ in the second line in the path
  • Change -Path to match any SW Directories
  • Change -Include to Include DLL's or other files as you wish

$AllFiles= @()​
$allItems= Get-ChildItem -Path "C: \Program Files\SolidWorks" -Recurse -Include ('*.exe')​
foreach($item in $allItems)​
{​
$FullFile = $item.Fullname​
$File=$Item.Name​
Write-Host $File​
New-NetFirewallRule -Program $FullFile -Action Block -Profile Any -DisplayName "SWB - $File" -Direction Outbound​
New-NetFirewallRule -Program $FullFile -Action Block -Profile Any -DisplayName "SWB - $File" -Direction Inbound​
}​
 
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