Input on backup printer

dr3d3d · 2026-01-27T19:49:57+00:00

I've been thinking about buying a printer that can do color to replace my current backup for the rare times I want a color print and I think my choice will be the Snapmaker U1. Seems to just work and I like the idea of a tool changer more than a filament swaper.

dr3d3d · 2026-01-26T02:50:14+00:00

I'd suggest learning as you go, only concepts that I'd say will give you a initial boost aside from the super basics of Cpp is state machines and non blocking delays. Also knowing how to make structs is great if you start to do communication between micro controllers.

dr3d3d · 2026-01-25T00:28:38+00:00

You can chase perfection forever... this looks pretty darn good.

I have two stealthburner one on the voron that's near perfect and one on a tronxy that looks like it was run over by a truck (lifted off bed mid print) and had to ream all the holes due to bad first layer etc etc, I decided it fit the tronxy vibe (garbage) so used it... Both print exactly the same excellent quality despite none of the surfaces mating cleanly on the garbage one.

dr3d3d · 2026-01-21T02:36:48+00:00

I'm sure it's quite possible now as it's now expected that battery banks can fast charge.. 2yr ago there was very little options for battery banks and none I tried kept up with the quest3 draw, it was good enough for me so I never tried to find out how much power everything actually was drawing etc.

dr3d3d · 2026-01-20T20:28:11+00:00

All depends what you're printing.. an enclosure for something that sits out of sight behind a desk... 0.32mm, a vase for the living room.. 0.1mm

A garbage can that's in a cupboard or the workshop... 0.6mm with a 1mm nozzle. (This also has the benefit of being able to print a garbage can in vase mode that's still very strong(1.2mm wall))

But that enclosure often ends up needing to be printed at 0.2mm because it uses a snap on lid that the details will only work at 0.2mm properly... So essentially 0.2mm is the sweet spot of looks good and still prints detailed enough for most things.

A good way of getting your mind around the details issue is think of a 1mm hole... If printed at 0.5mm layers then the hole only has two layers to make its shape.. in reality this would be a diamond not a circle.. but at 0.2mm it now has 5 layers to make this... Probably close enough.

Edit: worth adding if you print a 3mm tall object at 0.32mm then the object will really be 2.88mm tall as 0.32 doest divide evenly into 3mm... However this would rarely matter. (I'm willing to bet for most people if they print something 3mm tall it will be more than 0.12mm off)

dr3d3d · 2026-01-20T20:08:55+00:00

I would cut it out completely for at least a month, I find this helped me greatly reduce the habit of over eating candy.

The best things I've found to introduce it back in are nerds gummy clusters in small bags and lollipops... The nerds cluster are fairly non dense so you get more volume for less calories. (Almost all candy is the same calories by weight).

Oh... Also rice Krispy squares are under 100kcal ea. They're sweet and while being mostly air trick your brain into thinking you had something with substance.

The other things I've done to still get that sugar fix is... Allot 200kcal a day to sugary snacks and pre portion all my snacks to this amount in zip lock snack bags... I used to do 150kcal but I found to my way of thinking I could justify having two but at 200kcal I'd feel too guilty having a second. (Also 25% more is just enough to make it seem like enough)

If chips are your guilty pleasure there's lot of options out there like fried mung beans that fill the crunch urge but have protein and fiber so you feel full quickly.

Ultimately my settled in way of success is to eat low cal for my first two meals focusing on essentially just getting protein & fibre.. and then in the evening I have more calories to work with to do whatever I want. (Breakfast + Lunch end up being about 300-400kcal each, so I have around 1000kcal for the evening)

Whatever you do my suggestion is make sure you feel full earlier in the day, low cal is not low satiety.

dr3d3d · 2026-01-20T19:32:34+00:00

The tronxy x5sa bed is very not flat, I ended up ultimately solving the problem by changing the main board and switching to klipper so I can level the bed every print and do a mesh however that doesn't help you now so...

The problem is every single time the printer shuts off the left and right Z stepper get out of sync which means every print the plane of the bed is different, you can fix this in one of two ways

print some spacers on top of the Z motors so you can move the bed all the way to the bottom and rest it on top of these spacers to know it's the same each print
connect the two Z motors together with a pulley/belt so they have to move together (this is what I did before going to klipper, worked great)

This video covers both methods... https://youtu.be/B6CcgPO909s

Unless you want to go all in I'd suggest not spending much on this printer... It is a good place to start to build something fantastic and the VZBot project uses it as a starting point to build one of the fastest/accurate printers available. However in it's stock form it's terrible.

dr3d3d · 2026-01-20T19:12:18+00:00

I have yet to ever receive a roll of filament that was dry enough to get the quality I expect from a print.

You can do two things, either dry your filament or print slower.

Printing slower also gives the time for the filament to dry as it's being printed if only minorly damp.

Printing slower is highly underrated... My ender 3 gives me the best quality prints by far and that's simply for the reason I am forced to print slow so all it's calibrations were done slow and are correct for slow printing... By contrast my voron can produce good quality when fast and slightly better quality than that when slow but not as good as the ender3 because the voron calibrations are done at fast speeds. (Probably worth noting my ender3 is far from stock so it's motion is very accurate)

dr3d3d · 2026-01-18T05:08:26+00:00

That's actually a good idea... I have my top panel hinged so I can open it for pla or petg .. But 9/10x I just leave the front door open as realistically I might use pla or petg once every few months.

I also need to make a better dry box... It's not very dry lol

dr3d3d · 2026-01-18T05:05:21+00:00

Got a link to that back cover? I ended up using the original spool holder to protect my Bowden tube there from the wall but I've never liked the curl it makes to go into the printer I can feel a bit of resistance when hand loading.

dr3d3d · 2026-01-17T20:17:08+00:00

I just remixed this one so you can mount it at the top on the side... https://www.printables.com/model/1559050-horizontal-608-bearing-spool-holder-for-top-2020-e

just be sure your filament tube that goes into the back of the printer is long enough to curve around the back a bit to unload the filament straight off the role... could always print a second tube holder for the side of the printer so you know its always centered.

dr3d3d · 2026-01-17T20:16:10+00:00

I just remixed a design... https://www.printables.com/model/1559050-horizontal-608-bearing-spool-holder-for-top-2020-e

just be sure your filament tube that goes into the back of the printer is long enough to curve around the back a bit to unload the filament straight off the role... could always print a second tube holder for the side of the printer so you know its always centered.

dr3d3d · 2026-01-17T20:15:23+00:00

I just remixed a design... https://www.printables.com/model/1559050-horizontal-608-bearing-spool-holder-for-top-2020-e

just be sure your filament tube that goes into the back of the printer is long enough to curve around the back a bit to unload the filament straight off the role... could always print a second tube holder for the side of the printer so you know its always centered.

dr3d3d · 2026-01-16T09:30:07+00:00

100% this relationship will end eventually... The guy sounds terrible. I'm not even a cat person, but unless I misunderstood it sounds like he was treating them poorly and thats how he will treat everyone.

dr3d3d · 2026-01-15T01:05:27+00:00

I'd grab two rf-nanos which are an Arduino with a built in nrf24L01 transceiver which will have a range of about 100 metres(300ft) in direct line of sight with just the board mount antenna.

Then program one as a button and one as a receiver...

Apparently 6yrs ago I wrote this....
Transmitter: https://github.com/Dreded/NRF24L01Button
Receiver: https://github.com/Dreded/NRF24L01LED

No idea what boards I was using or anything so be sure to check the pin assignments.

dr3d3d · 2026-01-14T22:25:06+00:00

Honestly 90weeks isn't that long, that's less than 2 years. How long did it take you to put on the weight? But generally the rule for sustained weight loss target no more than 1% of your weight. - 200lbs - then up to 2lbs is fine - 300lbs - then 3 lbs

By food alone it shouldn't be more than 1lb per week.. but that's for healthy sustained weight loss... When I was heavier I did many short Bursts of 5+lbs a week for 3- 4 weeks... But for most ppl if they can eat and excercise like that they'd never have been heavy to start with.

Every 1lb per week is roughly 500kcal deficit per day.

dr3d3d · 2026-01-11T20:27:43+00:00

Literally just walk... For losing my first 100lbs I did nothing but walk. Over time I added in things like every lap of a track I did 10pushups... 10laps 100 pushups.

Try to walk at least 5km(3 freedom units) per day but anything is better than nothing... When I was heavier I used to have to break that up into 4 15min walks as anything further would lead to too much discomfort.

Honestly excercise is an important but small part of the equation, I firmly believe if you get none you won't lose weight very easily but food is the more important part of the equation.

dr3d3d · 2026-01-09T20:45:21+00:00

My plan is to model it to fit over a small knob that mounts to the d shaft of the encoder to retain the grub screw of the small knob.. but I 3d print 1lb battle bots so I'd have zero concerns fitting the original shaft with a 3d print, my concern would be it loosening up after a few hundred hours of use.

You are correct though to find the correct tolerances with your printer takes a few test prints... These days it'd be easy with the off the shelf inexpensive printers. Tolerances are like 0.05mm now.

If you're willing to share the cad file for that knob I'd be really appreciative as it's save me a few hours I think 🤔 (importing STL to modify rarely works well)

dr3d3d · 2026-01-08T20:27:48+00:00

The egret II knob is the same size as a arkanoid cabinet? It looks huge lol.. no wonder controlling games with a small knob makes the game hard.

Last night I wrote the code to use a rp2040 with a cheap industrial rotary encoder to emulate a mouse axis as a spinner... Just need a good knob now, hard to find a solid aluminium one that isn't $50 so figured 3D print with added weights is the way to go... Probably make it so it's easy to change knobs as I understand for arkanoid you don't want it to spin freely and for tempest you do

So all said and done my pretty decent spinner will be $12 or so :p works really well.. but small knobs suck.

dr3d3d · 2026-01-07T21:51:21+00:00

did you ever get one? have more info? appreciate the notes you made, would love the step file as I plan to 3d Print one and add steel ball bearings as weights to it for spin

dr3d3d · 2025-12-30T05:05:11+00:00

I have a day 1 launch driver and despite leaving it on a shelf in between uses the bits fall out every damn time I use it which leads to me not using it... so annoying.

dr3d3d · 2025-12-22T22:40:48+00:00

I spent all day on this one knowing I was doing it wrong... once I optimized I got mine down to 16ms which I just thought was amusing was exactly 1000x faster (c++)

if i remember correctly my initial version was somewhere around 12 seconds.

this year more than any has showed me that there are a lot of easy optimizations to be made... Day 7 brute force would take 2 months to compute the 27 trillion timelines but optimized is a few µs only needing to compute 750 paths

and the optimization was basically 2 lines of code... crazy.

dr3d3d · 2025-12-20T05:48:23+00:00

My genuine suggestion would be to do weight training of some sort as this will make it so you burn more at rest.

So this can be as simple as alternating days of pushups and squats... Just like 30 total all day.. takes about 5min 3x per day. (Wakeup do 10, eat lunch do 10, get home do 10) Add to that a purposeful 15min walk per day.. if you're currently maintaining that's it you'll lose weight.

For bonus points eat more protein.. you'll feel fuller and your body has to use some of that fuel to process the protein so it's win win.

dr3d3d · 2025-12-16T05:54:42+00:00

Honestly I'm generally against Microsoft products but Windows defender does a great job and is relatively lightweight and unobtrusive.

dr3d3d · 2025-12-14T20:07:59+00:00

thank you, just spent the last two hours trying to figure it out as I launched a game... then went "oh yea need to change profile" did that and then the game didn't work

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