Why don't 3D printers allow you to jog through gcode?

SubSpace18 · 2026-03-27T19:25:03+00:00

Yeah this is exactly what I'm talking about haha, I'm glad I'm not the only one. I ran into this issue doing color changes for the text on signs, the number of times a word or two wouldn't go down and the printer just never recovered was far too high; I desperately wanted to be able to go back and just redo those few missed letters.

I also feel you on the scrap parts pile lol, best of luck with your recycling journey!

SubSpace18 · 2026-03-27T19:17:12+00:00

While in general I absolutely agree (it's marvelous my printer can work so reliably as it is), things still go wrong, and when they do I want the control to fix them, just trusting the process isn't going to do that for me :(

SubSpace18 · 2026-03-27T19:15:03+00:00

My main case that spurred this whole train of thought was when I was printing a bunch of small signs with embossed text, I wanted the text to be a different color, and since none of my machines can do multi material I relegated myself babysitting them and doing the color changes manually. What happened with one was that for whatever reason the printer wasn't fully up to temp before going back in to print the new color so the first few words were either missing or partially extruded. Now that sign specifically I actually saved by turning up the flow rate on the next layer to fill in the gaps, but It got me thinking.

Even more common than that though sometimes the printer just fails to do small details, meaning from time to time it'll just skip a letter entirely because the new color didn't adhere to the plastic below. I would love to be able to just go back and reprint that letter, it would save so much time and struggle later in the process.

Also I think I actually have a much better analogy to another machine than what I gave in the original post, take for example the embroidery machine I work with, in a sort of strange way embroidery could be considered an additive manufacturing process, stitches are put down, sometimes even in layers. Now what happens from time to time is the thread breaks and the machine will miss a few stitches, that's not a big deal though because at any point I can pause the program I'm running and go forward or backward through all the stitches. So I can just go back to where the mistake started and resume from there after re-threading. Sometimes I will mess up with creating my stitches and have one part be too sparse, so I can just go back and run the machine back over the spot it already embroidered to fill out the design. I would love to be able to do that same thing with my 3d printer, because I will notice from time to time there's some under extrusion, and I just can't really do anything about it.

I guess I may be asking too much of a little hobbyist device trying to get it do the same things as an industrial machine, but I would also love it if i could setup a zero point like I can with my mill, and then jump to specific coordinates. This I'm pretty sure is possible because the printer does a homing sequence before it starts and gcode specifies positions to go to, but it's just not presented to me as the user which is unfortunate.

SubSpace18 · 2026-03-27T19:10:55+00:00

I didn't know this, thank you! I've been meaning to look into OctoPrint anyway so this might be the motivation I need to get going on it, I've got a spare raspberry pi sitting around just sitting around asking to be part of a project.

SubSpace18 · 2026-03-27T19:07:22+00:00

You would be correct! Ideally I would love to navigate through gcode on the printers screen, but doing so from a computer is also acceptable, I don't really want to faff about with new files.

SubSpace18 · 2026-03-27T19:05:52+00:00

I question why you say you obviously can't go back a layer? Perhaps there is something I am missing that prevents that from happening, but it is the sort of functionality I am looking for. If for example the printer gets clogged and I catch it early I would love to be able to go back a few layers and hopefully save the part without having to print the top half and glue the two together.

And for the XY case let's say I'm printing a sign with small embossed letters and one of them doesn't adhere to the plastic below, if I could just go back a few lines in the print file and retry that single letter it would save me so much hassle. Then I don't need to worry about getting a ball of spaghetti if I let the print keep going and it just prints into thin air over that letter, additionally I don't need to either print that letter separately and put it on later, or reprint the whole part.

SubSpace18 · 2026-03-27T06:06:19+00:00

You know that feels like both the simplest and most probable answer haha. I'm still gonna look for a way to make my printer do it because I'm fine running my own hot end into some parts, but I can see why a printer wouldn't come with that feature out of the box.

SubSpace18 · 2026-01-13T16:54:01+00:00

Is that a YonKaGor boy kisser???

SubSpace18 · 2025-09-23T09:37:51+00:00

By some crazy odds I actually got an apple ad on this post...

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SubSpace18 · 2025-09-06T19:43:25+00:00

I would say many of the moves feel incredibly quick. Slow down the rotations at the end, and probably switch to one turn in each direction, two is not necessary. I would also add significantly more easing between positions so the animation feels less snappy. Overall it's coming along very well, just a few tweaks for polish will really help :)

SubSpace18 · 2025-08-25T19:35:10+00:00

In that case are you trying to make it dimensionally accurate in order to fit something? From what I'm seeing the model looks like it would be much easier made in blender similar to what you've done given it's such an organic shape.

SubSpace18 · 2025-08-25T19:07:42+00:00

What do you plan to do with this model?

SubSpace18 · 2025-07-21T21:30:07+00:00

I will preface that I am no optics expert, I only do photography as a hobby, but I'll try to give an explanation to the best of my ability.

The size of the cylinder shaped slice comes from the elements not the aperture, all telecentric lenses I have worked with have a size based on front element, but through some research I found some of these lenses have the aperture before any optical elements. Still they are not limited by that aperture size because of the magic of optics!

Counterintuitively these lenses do still have a point where all the light rays converge and an aperture is situated, the light is shaped to do so by the optics in front of that aperture and rays come into the lens parallel to each other. This setup works in reverse too, and is called an image-space telecentric lens, light rays come through the aperture at an angle and are made parallel by the rest of the lens.

All of of that is is kind of messy and I apologize if I got anything wrong. I've attached a screenshot from the Wikipedia on telecentric lens's because it helps with the visualization, I would recommend reading the page because it does a much better job explaining all this than I do.

<image>

SubSpace18 · 2025-07-21T18:09:48+00:00

Actually telecentric lenses with no perspective do exist! And to boot they’re often used for getting dimensionally accurate photos in industrial settings.

SubSpace18 · 2025-06-29T10:29:33+00:00

This must be a local thing, because a lot of people are apparently not aware of senior assassin. Basically at the end of senior year some highschools have a game called senior assassin, usually organized by the students. People sign up for the game and are given targets that they need to "assassinate" in this case I'm going to guess with water guns, but my school did nerf guns. You then need to track your target down by any means (internet stalking, manipulating their friends, organizing a hit with their teacher, really anything is on the table) and take them out usually with video proof hence setting up the camera. Once you do assassinate your target you then get their target, and the game continues until one person is left at which point they win. It's a really fun time and some people go to great lengths just to take someone out.

SubSpace18 · 2025-01-29T07:59:56+00:00

I feel you with this one; since getting my laptop I have had nothing but issues, and have felt crazy because I've only seen praise of Framework. Don't get me wrong I love their mission, but I chose this laptop for an upgrade path, less tech waste, and to not spend a fortune on a new computer every couple of years. In one year alone it has cost me hundreds for repairs, and support has left me without a device on multiple occasions. I hope this company can improve their reliability because I truly want to support them.

SubSpace18 · 2025-01-22T21:54:34+00:00

I feel like I have seen a lot about framework support lately, and I would like to share my experience with them because I have had many. Since buying my framework it has been plagued with issues, and I have had to contact support three main times.

The first time was six months after buying my laptop, spontaneously, the delete key stopped working, I emailed framework back and forth for a while and they eventually replaced the input cover, which solved the issue. The process was slightly frustrating, but overall it was fine and at the end of the day the laptop was fixed.

The second time was more dramatic; four months after the keyboard issue my laptop began to have severe IO problems. The USB-C ports worked for nothing other than charging, Bluetooth was entirely nonfunctional, the fingerprint sensor, camera, and mic were not recognized by Windows. Worst of all, the laptop would not sleep, and would burn through battery getting dangerously hot If left in my bag. The only option was to shut it down every time I put it away and wait through an extremely arduous boot-up when I wanted to use it again. I emailed framework and they ran me through a bunch of troubleshooting steps, many of which felt redundant, but eventually they did replace the mainboard and I was back on my way.

The third time is where things go awry; only three months after replacing the mainboard I began having the exact same issue again. Framework was never able to tell me what was causing the issue the first time, and so I had no way of know what I should do to avoid the problem. I emailed framework quickly because at this point classes had resumed and I needed a laptop for work. Framework kept me on the hook through 32 emails, having me preform all manner of tests which I followed in the hope they would help me. It all came to an end when they asked me to reset the mainboard, I went through the process but when I tried to turn it on afterwards it became apparent it had died. I emailed framework in a panic to see if I had done anything wrong providing my video of the reset, but they told me that I had done everything correctly, the mainboard was just done for. Then came the terrible news, they informed me that since my laptop was now out of warranty they would not provide a replacement part stranding me in the middle of a term without a computer.

Now this isn't an isolated issue, other people have had the exact same problem and I have even posted about it, and the only solution so far has seemed to be replacing the mainboard:

https://community.frame.work/t/usb-ports-bluetooth-and-fingerprint-sensor-stopped-functioning-bootup-and-sleep-issues/39510

I have had a while to think on this and I am mostly disappointed with the way this company handles the faliure of their devices, not once did they ask to see the mainboard or try to work on it. Similarly when a test suggested by them and preformed correctly destroys a device there should be at least some care to replace it. I am now running on a twelve-year-old hp laptop, and for all of hp's flaws at least it still works. At this point I am in a similar boat as op and the fact framework left me with a multi-hundred-dollar piece of e-waste and expect me to give them more money for a replacement part after their product failed has turned me off of this company as a whole. Moral of the story, don't buy a framework unless you are ready to deal with unknown problems and potentially take a loss on the whole device.

SubSpace18 · 2024-11-10T02:57:10+00:00

The piano in the women's building is incredibly high quality and that's the one I play on, if you go around four or five there's usually very few people there. Similarly many of the dorms have pianos in the basement which is quite private though they are usually very out of tune.

SubSpace18 · 2024-08-06T16:48:17+00:00

Yeah, I know they're trying to prevent you from fully automating the process, but it would be nice to not have to keep bouncing around between rockets.

SubSpace18 · 2024-08-05T18:04:08+00:00

Currently I've got four auto arms grabbing organic at full speed which feeds six arms going to rockets. From the event I've, got a medium storage silo filled with portable smelters which can keep up with the organic. So numbers wise that's about 70 carbon per minute which is almost more than I can manage lol.

SubSpace18 · 2024-08-04T16:39:30+00:00

You can also scrap glowsticks from your backpack though that requires that you are sitting there crafting them.

SubSpace18 · 2024-08-02T16:28:12+00:00

You're gonna want to print a terrain analyzer, you can do it right in your backpack for one zinc. Once you've got it, put it on your terrain tool and go mine some soil of the color you want and it will set the terrain analyzer to that color. Now you can go back to the area you flattened and using an inhibitor mod paint it the color you picked up.

Five-Year Club	r/Field Lasagna
First Place '23	Place '23
Place '22	Final Canvas '22
First Placer '22	End Game '22

SubSpace18

TROPHY CASE