A year already?

Wow it's been a year already. The Plex Server has been working great, my daughter uses it occasionally when she can't find anything she wants to watch on streaming services (so not that often these days).

I have switched focus back to 3D printing. I got into 3D printing in 2012 with a Solidoodle 2. It worked well enough but indoctrinated me to the deficiencies of 3D printing. Then Solidoodle as a company failed (2015) so there was no upgrade path. My Solidoodle "broke" and I finally donated it to a maker space.

Years passed and I was anxious to see what advances have been made in the 3D printing world. In the interim the industry had a large shakeout as everyone recognized the limitations of the current technology. I started watching YouTube channels to bone up on the current state of 3D printing.

I set my sites on 2 printers, the Creality CR-10 for it's quality and huge build volume (300x300x400mm) or the Anet A8, for it's low cost and "good enough" build volume (220x220x240mm). The Creality clocks in around $370 and the Anet A8 is only $160. The Anet A8 is a DIY kit, whereas the Creality CR-10 is mostly assembled. I opted for the Anet A8 since pulling the trigger on a $160 purchase isn't a big deal.

I am so glad I bought the Anet A8! A DIY kit is just what I needed to forge a deeper understanding of FDM technology. And the Anet A8 is a good printer "out of the gate" but benefits from numerous printable "upgrades" that improve performance and use.

I'm still getting my bearings with the Anet A8, and my improvements have been limited to things I can print and a PEI sheet for the print bed ($15). I just ordered a bunch of parts to upgrade the bed and extruder power distribution, the factory state is barely adequate and perhaps dangerous. I also added a fused power switch ($8), and cleaned up X & Y belt tensioning (with big improvement in print quality).

And in homage to my love of the Raspberry Pi I've setup an Octoprint server to manage print jobs. Octoprint is an opensource (free) application that acts as a management interface for 3D printers. I added a camera (pi cam for $25) and now have timelapse videos of my print jobs. Pretty cool.