A cylindrical human centipede is a really good analogy to how LLMs work.

I literally don’t know a single person from real life that uses it.

Cults3d.com

I find their site loads slow though after browsing for a while. Just clear cache.

It’s been like that for years.

I do think they have pretty high quality $$ models.

I mostly use free ones.

Makerworld has best free quality models. This is because creators are highly incentivised to post free models.

That’s where I post mine. Earn points. Buy printers and filament with it.

I’ve so far earned 3 printers and 2 ams sets. From my hobby models. Not too shabby.

Most plastic lightens and becomes “milky” when stressed.

Yeah in the slicer you can add “pause at layer”. What slicing software do you use? For Bambu and prusa, you just go to the preview, roll through the layers to find the one before it closes up. And right click on the little icon dot thing on the slider that shows the layers. On the right side. And you get an option to “pause at layer”.

Just make a cavity in your print. Pause before it closes up. Drop the weight in. Penny or nuts. Also I pause and put in some glue when I drop it in so it doesn’t roll around inside.

You could also make cutouts for pennies or nuts on the bottom and glue them in after the print finishes.

There is a Lego phone holder that does the cavity.

https://makerworld.com/models/660273

Hope that helps.

I made this. Used nuts cause I didn’t have any pennies. Worked pretty well.

There are pictures in the description. So check those out.

Hadn’t heard of this. I’ll check it out. Fusion has been a bit intimidating. Ive made a few things in it but found it confusing and not intuitive like tinkercad.

I think Ive spent all my energy on learning Blender and not much left to dedicate to a better CAD program.

Sculpting. Yeah that requires a high end PC.

I have a 12g GPU. 64gb ram. Ddr5. Ryzen 7 CPU.

And it still struggles some times, mostly when using the bolean modifer (the one that combines parts or makes cutouts). Which is something you will use a lot for 3d printing model design.

If you aren’t sculpting, but just cad stuff. You should use a different program.

Blender can do some of that but why not use a software designed for cad. ?

Blender isn’t a cad program.

Also I posted a recent 3d project a month ago. (My lastest post). Most of the was made in blender.

I ended up with 3 blender files. 7gb each. For various parts.

Because of the complexity of the model and making it fit mechanical parts there was multiple versions of each part.

All high resolution.

I had to keep making new files cause after the files get around 8gb , then everything is a slog to do in the software. So I had a head file. A body file. And a inside parts file.

No one could make that cat clock on a PC with out high specs. Impossible.

Start with tinkercad. Upgrade to fusion 360. For sculpting , blender.

To use blender you need a high end PC. Like a gaming PC.

Fusion and blender are both incredibly complex softwares that do a lot of things and take a lot of invested time to learn but there are tons of tutorial videos and online communities for both.

Most people don’t want to use a 3rd party slicer or switch out the screen.

The Bambu studio slicer and screens that come with the printers both work well.

I really doubt they try to restrict filament brands. No one does that.

Their brand nozzles are the same price as 3rd party ones.

And personally I’ve used both and the Bambu brand ones are better. They are also designed to break instead of destroying the entire print head if there is some big obstruction.

Most people don’t want to tinker with their printers constantly to get them to work.

Or install 3rd party firmware.

They just want the printers to work. Bambu just works.

So many hours have I wasted trying to fix hardware problems on my ender 3 v3. Or tweak settings in the slicer that never fixed the issues.

So much time spent on reddit and YouTube, troubleshooting.

The Bambu just works. It always just works.

If I want to tinker with something, I’ll unpack my ender I’ve put away. But I don’t see that happening.

Sounds like you are someone who wants to tinker with the printer. In your case , no, a Bambu probably isn’t the right choice.

But for 90% of people looking to get into 3d printing, bambu is the right choice.

Most people lack mechanical skills or knowledge and get frustrated with sub par printers and don’t stay with the hobby.
Bambu allows more people to get into the hobby. Which means more unique filaments because there is a market for it. More creators. Because there is a market for it.

It’s a win win for everyone.

https://www.printables.com/model/806091-nebra-sky-disc-himmelsscheibe-von-nebra

Nebra sky disk free STL file

Another one on a different site

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2308424/makes

You don’t need ams to print. All the pieces print separately.

Even eyes/pupils.

It’s designed so that anyone can print it.

Also tinkercad. It’s basic but honestly it works for most stuff I make for things around the house.

Fusion 360 is free for non commercial use.

Really like my Bambu A1. I started with an ender. Unlike the Ender, Bambu just works. Some people don’t like that you can’t use other slicers with it, but the Bambu studio slicer is pretty great imo. Their makerworld.com website is a great place to get models. They have high incentives for creators so there is always new high quality stuff being posted.

Also their replacement parts are inexpensive from them directly. And they literally sell every single part. So you can replace any thing you need to. But you likely wont need to replace anything for a while.

They also have sensors on the printers for tons of features. Oh and their printers are designed to be ran through wifi. So no more packing cards back and forth between printer and computer.

Watch some YouTube reviews videos. You will be impressed.

Also when you print at 0.2 layer hight on a Bambu. The print quality looks better than 0.16 on other printers.

No lie.

I recommend Bambu to anyone.

Well yes and no. I think mostly it’s up to you to determine if the model is good or not. .here is an example.

I wanted to make a model and I needed a female face. (A mask). I found one in creative commons. When I attempted to use the face/head model I realized it wasn’t symmetrical. Or level. And had weird internal geometry.

I fixed those issues before I could use it for my mask model.

I figured since I did all that work and it was a nice female head, I would upload it on thingiverse so that others wouldn’t have to do through all the same trouble.

But I don’t want to just print a female head. I didn’t need one. So I didn’t. There is no photo on that upload.

It’s not really necessary.

I did, however, print the mask I made and posted photos of it with the model.

I hope my example illustrates why enforcing the photo rule isn’t going to work in all scenarios.

Just fyi. On makerworld.com, in order to upload a profile file (a pre made print file), you are required to use a photo of the model.

I think it works as a rule for that.

Fusion seems legit to me and it’s free for non commercial use. It seems more intuitive than other cad software though they all have a learning curve

I found fusion360 and blender to be best for me. Fusion made by same company as tinkercad.

I tried freeCAD and had constant errors (like 20 at a time) and couldn’t figure out what was going on even tried googling. And that’s when I learned that’s just how it goes with that program.

I like blender to make sculpted models. Tutorials and figuring things out myself was frustrating but now I have a decent grasp on the basics and I find it much easier to use and keep learning new things all the time with it.

I’ve only used fusion for a few projects that required it and had to rely a lot on tutorial videos but I was able to do the modeling. I plan to learn more of it in the future but it’s pretty decent so far.

I’ve not used any of the others you have listed.

Bambulab slicer is based on prusa but has more features like the plate one I mentioned. I also think it’s more user friendly.

I do agree. Printer should be choose based on other factors but the slicer is just the cherry.

Bambu printers are excellent.

They are especially great for newbies. They just work. No tinkering. No replacing parts every few months.

They also print faster and at a higher quality.

A1 bambu

I originally had a enderr 3 v3

I will say I learned how to replace virtually every part and how to make custom parts to fix design flaws

But no. I would not recommend it.

I got the A1 bambu. It just works.

You can also use it with AMS. Which is a 4 color multicolor system (optional).

Has wifi. No need to deal with getting cards and card readers and all that. There is also an app that you can monitor your print from. With video.

If you are printing a bunch of parts and one messes up, you can cancel that specific part and the rest of the print will continue.

This kind of thing is really awesome actually.

The slicer software is user friendly. (The software you use to prepare the print file,).

It has this whole thing where you can create projects with multiple plates. Didn’t know how awesome this was until I started using it. It’s so convenient.

The replacement parts are cheap. So far I haven’t needed any but I bought a few nozzles and a fan when I ordered mine just in case. Since I figured all printers were like my ender and needed things replaced regularly.

Honestly can’t say enough good things.

If you broke. The A1 mini is about $200.

It’s just as good as the A1. Same features just smaller print bed.

I bought one for my nephew and niece. They are kids and have learned how to use it.

No way could they use the ender without my help on every print.

Cause it seems to always have some problem.

Here is how you can verify what I have said. Go to reddit r/ender3v3 and r/bambulab

See which one has constant posts about big problems.