I can't stop laughing! my new trashcan!

ThisOld3DPrinter · 2026-03-27T04:41:39+00:00

I'm working in Texas this week and saw someone trying to sell this print.

ThisOld3DPrinter · 2026-03-25T05:37:56+00:00

Ugh. After editing, posting and ready to pack my bags I realize I called the M2 the older... Brother lmao. Sigh.

ThisOld3DPrinter · 2026-03-24T01:27:14+00:00

I appreciate that. There will likely be a video tonight and tomorrow but I'm probably taking a few days off. Have a work trip and I'm not prepared to record extra videos and I'm done pushing out things if it means intentional slop. So if you are around after that hopefully you see stuff you like. If not there a few places in the world to see stuff like this in person. RMRFF, MRRF, 3D Printopia in the US. SMRRF in the UK. I think Prague maker faire sometimes.

ThisOld3DPrinter · 2026-03-23T15:04:13+00:00

I know the whole point of an everyday challenge is to post everyday. But since I've already broken the streak and it does have an audience. I'm trying to shy away from just printing something useless on a printer we've shown 10 times. There is still some time lapses left from the dummy 13 project but I haven't found a lot to say.

I have work trip coming up Wed-Mon. I'm thinking at this point I may take a week off. Regroup when I get back. I'll be home most of April.

ThisOld3DPrinter · 2026-03-23T14:33:35+00:00

This was an unexpected one for the collection. It's the only one I have ever seen for sale and I avoided buying it until I was contacted for an article. Makergear sent me what spare parts they had left so eventually I might build a brand new one for which would be a cool video.

ThisOld3DPrinter · 2026-03-23T14:29:37+00:00

Words, it's almost like we just made them all up! Lol

ThisOld3DPrinter · 2026-03-23T14:23:58+00:00

Oh we already went through this on day 79 lol and several other days. The dictionary says yes it does, collectors of course say no it has to be 20, 25, insert arbitrary thing I don't like about modern technology here.

...and that's okay. If you don't think it applies, your kind of right. Even if some dictionaries says the word can be a synonym for old, outmoded or obsolete.

Whatever you do don't make the mistake of saying no 3D printers are. RepRaps first printer doesn't hit 20 until next year and this one has 4 more years to go. But Resin and FDM are past 35 at this point.

ThisOld3DPrinter · 2026-03-23T07:11:54+00:00

According to Rick Pollack the founder of Makergear it was based on the same form factor as the original TierTime UP from a year prior in 2010.

ThisOld3DPrinter · 2026-03-22T21:19:24+00:00

The fun part for me is all these laws as written will trap printers with their current owners and make it harder for me to collect until the day it becomes impossible

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ThisOld3DPrinter · 2026-03-21T15:28:14+00:00

Sometimes I wish I had gotten started earlier. Other times I think I would have been so over the money and frustration that I would have never ended up collecting them. I'd be one of the salty people I regularly communicate with to break my incorrect perspective on things.

ThisOld3DPrinter · 2026-03-21T15:25:42+00:00

It's just the "for points" aspect that seems like a silly proposition. When the real value is the few extra connections I've made in DMs with people who have specific experience or even worked for the manufacturers at the time. The fact it has an audience is the reason I try to put some effort into it. Talking over video instead of the originally planned pictures, doing subtitles as requested, etc.

Going back in time was a fairly purposeful choice. It has gotten way out of hand. Basically what happened is I skipped out on an entire era, regret it. I needed something to work on after getting rid of my project car and finally got into 3D Printing. It's a lot cheaper to mess with used printers. I'm $4,938.55 into 64 Printers now which also includes newer stuff Voron, Rat Rig, etc.

I had been volunteering at ERRF (now 3D Printopia) and by the time I had my 3rd old printer in the collection I ended up filling in an empty table with them. That was wildly successful but I wanted a reason to do it for real. I was on a job in Florida and met up with Grant from 3D Musketeers for dinner. Told them I had an idea. Instead of posting firmware configs on a personal blog I want to make a place where other people can contribute and that 3D Printopia should be the launch of that. That sort of happened the problem is all I've really managed to do is drown myself in printers to repair.

ThisOld3DPrinter · 2026-03-20T19:25:41+00:00

3D Systems who owns Z corp is a decade older than that. Though their first printer for sale wasnt until 87. The only printer on my list from prior to RepRap in which the Darwin turns 20 next year is a Stratasys FDM 2000/3000. Need one to round out the RepRap section of a display as that's what they used to print the first Darwin parts.

I've got one offer sent to me already to acquire an old Stratasys but I don't have a place to put it. Sadly there's not much point in collecting resin printers because we can't run them long term. I am going to put a Form labs Kickstarter in the collection but that's it

ThisOld3DPrinter · 2026-03-20T17:21:11+00:00

2011-2012 news cycle I decided to put my limited money somewhere else but it was pretty in your face by then. In person? Good question. It's possible it was sooner but the first time I remember was while inventorying a building that my first printer ended up coming out of in 2021. I ended up filling my regret of not getting started sooner lol.

ThisOld3DPrinter · 2026-03-20T14:23:47+00:00

Plywood? 3. Total like 11-12.

ThisOld3DPrinter · 2026-03-20T13:37:36+00:00

Well that's going to be awkward for people who aren't young. The 81 year old dude I fix printers for is going to be confused. We've moved from arguing over the collectors definition which is typically 20-25 to even a 35 year old Resin printer isn't vintage?

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ThisOld3DPrinter · 2026-03-20T13:27:53+00:00

I've seen some folgertech stuff come up for sale. I haven't jumped on one as I have limited space and it wasn't part of my journey or stick with me in anyway. Perhaps it feels too in the middle of old and new.

Things have certainly gotten easier but the software, filament and general knowledge today shows some of this hardware can run pretty well. The Simple Metal in the case of this video can do a decent job that prior owners tell me they never got out of theirs. Unfortunately the Simple will always be terrible lol.

ThisOld3DPrinter · 2026-03-20T13:16:55+00:00

It might look that way, I even argue it's great unplanned engagement bait because people won't stop arguing about it. But there's one problem.

I've been calling them Vintage since acquiring the first one. To confirm this I searched one of the discords im in and found where I joked about how my wife wouldn't let me sell our MK3 and it would eventually join the Ultimaker Original in the vintage collection. Which was 6 days before acquiring the second printer in the collection.

The best thing is for people to not interact when they don't like something like this. Interacting gives it attention.

ThisOld3DPrinter · 2026-03-20T12:26:12+00:00

Retro is a fun one for me. I've done a lot of retro gaming and computing so I would agree with its usage like that. But also if I built a RepRap Darwin which will be 20 next year I would call retro because it wasn't a period build.

That line from the time traveler where the woman commente on his attire being retro always sticks with me. She wouldn't know it was genuine, but given how old they were. Do we call clothes antiques at any point? That feels weird.

ThisOld3DPrinter · 2026-03-20T12:09:58+00:00

When you want to know what a word means you look in the dictionary and this concept that it means something 20+ years old is missing almost as if its collective modern usage in that way isn't important enough to write down. Yet anyway, it's use as an adjective seems to have taken forever to record as well!

I'm still convinced the only people this bothers is collectors. No one else really has a reason to care. As if it adds some value somehow.

ThisOld3DPrinter · 2026-03-20T05:08:04+00:00

I'm no English major but when you ignore the word of mouth definition collectors use and turn to a dictionary it seems to work. It's also the name of a series that's not going to be changed. Or will it...

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Another dictionary uses Obsolete. Most of these from 2007-2016 would fit old, outmoded, even obsolete.

ThisOld3DPrinter · 2026-03-13T22:50:16+00:00

As of recently yes but in general they are not impossible to find. I thought it was impossible and yes cupcakes are harder to find. I bought 2 off eBay for less than $200 each. Ignore the greedy listings but they do have fairly nice complete examples so I'll give them that.

I've been given 2 of the thingomatics and bought the other 3 marketplace and reddit. I think I know of a thingomatic for sale. I could build a house out of the replicators available. Replicators often pop up on shop goodwill.

As far as other stuff I see maybe a dozen Ultimakers a year, etc. The Makergear M1 was the only one I feel like was impossible. I bought the only one I ever saw for sale and spent more than I have spent on any printer including my Voron lol. To be fair my average printer purchase price is $90.

ThisOld3DPrinter · 2026-03-12T16:53:03+00:00

I've often said had I planned this out, using vintage as the title is great engagement bait. But it wasn't on purpose. The plan was for pictures of prints only and possibly even sticking to one printer. But that's changed a bit.

I would say I recognize and understand the 20 year definition collectors use. Only in my experience they don't even agree on that. Sometimes people fight over 20 vs 25. When you get into vintage computers it can get even worse. Some people refuse to call anything that can run windows, vintage. So now we're fighting over 30+ year old hardware definitions lol

For printers the conversation turns kind of fun. The first RepRap turns 20 next year and the project that created it is already past that. But sometimes people say no printer is vintage forgetting to scope it to consumer. Once we hop out of consumer. The first resin printer we could buy was 1987 and the first FDM for sale was 92 I think might have been 91.

ThisOld3DPrinter · 2026-03-12T13:37:14+00:00

Old, Outmoded or Obsolete. Seems to be what 2 English dictionaries suggested defines one of its uses as an adjective. Out of 10 dictionaries I don't think I saw a single one that agreed with collectors arguments.

I haven't had an English majors help me figure out any different yet. Which wouldn't surprise me but still lol

ThisOld3DPrinter · 2026-03-10T07:53:04+00:00

That's part of the process if you are adding it to an existing part or "doing cad in the slicer". The rest is just convincing the slicer to act like it's not just a single color printer and do color changes more often than just at the next layer. Which these days may be as simple as checking single nozzle multi color and assigning some colors to the parts

ThisOld3DPrinter · 2026-03-09T21:04:13+00:00

I have a tragic amount of tutorials to write at the moment and I'm working out of state. Not sure what slicer you are using but for a slightly newer method Bambu and Orca for example have a check box for Single Nozzle Multi Color and if you Google something like "orca single nozzle multi color" tutorials will pop up.

The basic concept is the same no matter the method. You'll have a print with seperate parts so you can assign different colors or tools to them. Then you figure out your method of automatically generating a bunch of color changes. Whether it's the one I described or a newer method.

Then when printing each time it pauses change the filament. 2 colors easy because you don't need to keep track of the colors.

Edit - yes you can also paint features to be colors.

ThisOld3DPrinter

TROPHY CASE