• 2 Posts
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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: June 28th, 2025

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  • I tried a Volcano, and because of the long melt zone, I wasn’t able to completely tune out the oozing/stringing (on my Bowden at least). I dunno if the newer high flow hotends still have this problem or not (or if they’re fine on direct drive); something to consider.

    I actually have a Orbiter 2, and think I’m going to try the Volcano again. I still need to print a new toolhead for it.

    I have a Dragon SF on my Voron which seems to work well (in a Stealthburner/Clockwork 2). I like that I don’t need to use 2 wrenches to change nozzles (unlike a V6) and that it securely attaches to the toolhead with screws (in the Stealthburner).






  • I’m guessing the cheap, good quality, printers are cheap because they want to capture market share and enshitify (all the proprietary stuff they use is a hint).

    I was looking for something to replace my old Creality CR10S a few months ago, Bambu and Qidi were tempting because of the price, but I didn’t like how proprietary everything was. The Prusa Core One looked nice, but looks like they’re going a little less “free” now with their Open Community License and locked boot loaders. I would have got a Troodon (Voron-derived pre-built printer), but they were out of stock. I settled on just getting a Formbot Voron kit. Took a very long time to build, but I’m very happy with it. I know the printer inside and out, so it’s easy to debug, modify, or repair if I need to.

    In my opinion, if you’re already somewhat familiar with 3d printing, I’d build a Voron from a kit. If not, I’d get a Voron-derived pre-built like a Troodon or Sovol SV8 (I think the Sovol has a proprietary toolhead though). If you want an easy Apple-like experience, but still pretty “open,” I’d get a Prusa.

    If you think you’re going to want to print higher-temp, warp-prone filaments like ABS/ASA/PA, I would not choose a bed-slinger (e.g. Mk4s), because they are harder to enclose nicely and take up a lot of space if enclosed. As one data-point, my core-xy Voron produces much higher quality prints (e.g. less artifacts) and is faster than my bedslinger CR10S.





  • On the other hand, I’ve seen a lot of stories of people getting addicted to the “agentic harnesses” and personally (and happily) blowing through hundreds to thousands of dollars/month. I’ve seen people write articles about how their $200/month subscriptions are such a good deal, lol. Companies are forcing their employees to use AI at insane costs. Nearly every software engineering job posting mentions using AI tools as a requirement. Anthropic’s revenue is set to double this quarter and be its first profitable quarter (likely using a lot of accounting tricks).

    I’m really curious if this AI industry can self-perpetuate itself with stupidity and greed indefinitely as everything becomes shittier and unreliable, and civilization slowly crumbles.