I Automated Pressure Advance Using a Bed-Leveling Sensor
Automatic Pressure Advance calibration with a Prusa nozzle load cell: how a bed-leveling sensor can tune K values, find max flow, and monitor prints.
Articles · 112 entries
The lab notebook
Every video, written up: what we tested, how we tested it, and what the numbers say. No AI articles — written by humans, from tests we actually ran.
Half a Million Views Later… BumpMesh Is Way Better
BumpMesh update: mesh checks, remeshing, undo, project saving, 3MF export and a five times faster exporter — three months of community-driven changes.
Is This Laser the 3D Printing Solution We Needed?
Can a laser cleanly mark 3D printed parts? I tested UV, MOPA fiber and blue diode lasers on PLA, PETG, ASA, TPU and PC — pigments matter more than the polymer.
Bambu A2L: My Honest Review After 400 Hours
Bambu Lab A2L review after almost 400 hours: build volume, print quality, the cutting module, and whether it really earned the 2 in its name.
Bambu Lab X2D Review: Affordable Dual-Nozzle Printing, with a Catch
Bambu Lab X2D review after 250 hours: dual nozzles from $649, a heated chamber, and why the bowden-fed auxiliary hotend is the real compromise.
Stop Using Fuzzy Skin - I made something better!
BumpMesh is my free, browser-based tool for real displacement textures on STL, OBJ and 3MF files — hide Z-seams, add grip and stiffen vase mode prints.
Are Our Heat-Set Insert Datasheets Wrong?
Our own datasheets recommended hole sizes that make inserts hard to fit. Size the hole so the insert just pre-seats: that's easy installation and full strength.
Anti-Aliasing for FDM 3D Printing Is Finally Here (Micro-Non-Planar Printing)
Z Anti-Aliasing smooths FDM stair-stepping by varying layer height inside a layer. Ra drops from 80 to 25 µm on shallow slopes — measured, plus the limits.
The Beginner 3D Printing Guide I Wish I Had
A 3D printing beginner's guide from 10 years of experience: printer setup, filament types, slicing basics, your first print and fixing common problems.
The H2C Review: Better Than a Toolchanger?
Bambu Lab's H2C swaps six induction-heated nozzles instead of flushing filament. Teardown, print times and waste compared to the Prusa XL and Snapmaker U1.
What Prusa Got Right (and Wrong) with the New CORE One L
The Prusa CORE One L doubles the build volume to 300x300x330 mm for €1,699. Print quality, VFAs, noise, chamber heating — and the annoyances they fixed.
Stop Printing Flat: The 45° Secret for Stronger Parts
Print orientation decides how strong a part is. Tensile tests at 0°, 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° show what angling really buys you — and where it backfires.
The P2S Is the Upgrade No One Expected – But Everyone Wanted!
Bambu Lab P2S review: quick-swap nozzles, a clever new cooling system, HD camera and touchscreen — and why it makes the X1 Carbon completely obsolete.
This FREE AI Tool Auto-Generates Gridfinity Bins!
TooltraceAI turns a photo of your tools into custom Gridfinity bins for free — no CAD needed. How it works, my settings, and printing them in two colors.
Bambu Lab H2S – The XL Printer Everyone Asked For
Bambu Lab H2S review: the H2D's big build volume without the dual nozzle, $800 cheaper, 340 x 320 x 340 mm — and what the single-nozzle head costs you.
Carbon Fiber Nylon in 3D Printing: PA6 vs PA12 Tested
Carbon fiber PA6 vs PA12 tested: stiffness, strength, impact, creep and heat resistance, and how much moisture and annealing change the results.
High-Temperature Resin Curing for More Strength
I honestly don’t print a ton with resin, yet when I do I’m always impressed with the amount of details this process can achieve.
How to use our Threaded-Insert Removal Tool
Our Insert Extractor pulls heat-set inserts back out. Set the iron about 20 °C above printing temperature, and don't reuse a PLA insert in a PETG part.
Brick Layers - Make 3D prints stronger!
Slicers stack flat layers, so parts split along them. I re-ordered the print moves into an interlocking brick pattern: PLA got 14% stronger, PETG 10%.
Calibration Cubes are BAD! This is how you calibrate your 3D Printer
Tuning steps/mm with a calibration cube probably made your printer worse. They're too small to measure well and can't detect skew. Here's what I use instead.
Recycling Plastic Cutlery into 3D Printing Filament
I washed, shredded and extruded used plastic cutlery into filament. It works if you sort and clean properly, and virgin pellets keep it from going brittle.
Does a HEATED CHAMBER make your 3D prints STRONGER?
I tested ABS and PC Blend at different chamber temperatures. Every extra degree helped layer adhesion, and an enclosure alone already gets you most of the way.
10 AMAZING 3D Printing Projects: Rocky Mountain RepRap Festival 2023
Ten projects that stuck with me from the Rocky Mountain RepRap Festival: a chocolate printer, co-extruded carbon fiber filament and a rotary resin caster.
E3D Revo High Flow Review
Revo High Flow keeps up with Bondtech's CHT in my tests, and the numbers give a handy rule: budget about half a watt of heater power per mm³/s of flow.
Who would even buy a new Prusa MK4 in 2023?
Prusa's MK4 costs $1099 assembled. After 200 hours it's a better MK3 in every way, but slower than a Bambu Lab X1 and it launched without input shaping.
CHT High Flow nozzle for the BambuLab X1 & P1P
I fitted a CHT nozzle to my Bambu Lab X1 and P1P. With the stock hotend, layer strength peaked near 36 MPa at 12 mm³/s and then slid to 31 MPa as flow went up.
Which Glow in the Dark filament is the best?
Glow filament eats nozzles: one lost 0.18 mm of tip in a single test, another barely wore at all. Overture Green glowed best, colorFabb glowFill looked nicest.
Which is the strongest 3D printing Extruder?
I measured the pushing force of a dozen extruders, from the basic Ender feeder to the belt-driven ProperExtruder, to see which one grips filament hardest.
Arc Overhangs in PrusaSlicer*
3D printing is often called a disruptive technology where anything is possible and engineers have total design freedom. Complexity is free.
How the color of PLA filament influences 3D printed part strength
Color does change PLA strength, though not by much. The bigger surprise was annealing: silver and white warped 4 to 7%, while natural distorted by 19%.
Impressive 3D Printing Technology at FORMNEXT 2022
What stood out at FORMNEXT 2022: a company that recycles your printing waste into filament, a variable-diameter nozzle, and an induction-heated hotend.
Testing a $2 High-Flow nozzle from Aliexpress
A $2 high-flow nozzle from Aliexpress with a copper insert you can easily fit backwards. Assembled right, it kept up with far pricier nozzles in my tests.
Arc Overhangs - A new way of printing without Supports
Steven's ArcOverhang script prints overhangs as concentric arcs instead of straight lines, so they hold in mid-air. Still a proof of concept, but it really works.
Conical Slicing: A different angle of 3D printing
Conical slicing tilts the layers into cones instead of stacking flat planes, which lets you print steep overhangs without support. The catch is your printhead.
A Guide on how to use Conical Slicing
A step-by-step run-through of the ZHAW transformation scripts for conical slicing, including the slow speeds you need: 15 mm/s on perimeters, 25 on infill.
How To use Threaded Inserts in Resin 3D Prints
Heat-set inserts work in resin prints too, if you glue them instead of melting them in. Superglued inserts held 52 kg, close to screwing straight into the resin.
The RotBot: 4-Axis Non-Planar 3D Printing
“Complexity is free” is a sentence that’s often used for marketing 3D printers and 3D printing technologies.
Building a VORON 2.4 R2 in 2022 (LDO Kit)
I built a VORON 2.4 R2 from the LDO kit. Assembly, Klipper setup, and what I'd criticize after living with it: great prints, but a few rough edges in the kit.
Transparent FDM 3D Prints are Clearly Stronger!
Printing PETG with parameters tuned for transparency gets you almost perfect layer adhesion. The parts look great and they're significantly stronger and tougher.
Can Acetone Glue Layers of 3D Prints together?
Filament based-3D printing is a great technology - not only for prototypes but also for real functional parts.
Volcano Hotends are Obsolete: Just use Nuts!
Stacking nuts on a nozzle gets you most of a Volcano. The V6 topped out at 14 mm³/s while both the real Volcano and my nut stack reached 20 mm³/s.
What's STRONGER - 3D Prints or Wood?!
I built my studio benches from wood, then wondered if I should have printed them. A PETG hook at 100% infill held 110 kg, and here's how that compares to timber.
How to set Extruder Tension?
Almost nobody sets extruder tension properly. If it isn't grinding, leave it alone: in 95% of cases the real problem sits after the extruder, not in the gears.
Tool SWAPPING with the WhamBam MUTANT V2 - Review
WhamBam's MUTANT lets you swap toolheads by hand. Print quality stayed flawless, but on my Ender-3 it cost about 30 mm of height and a chunk of the bed as well.
Extrusion System Benchmark Tool for fast Prints
Chasing a fast Ender-3 profile in PrusaSlicer, jerk turned out to matter more than acceleration. Going from 8 to 20 mm/s fixed the corners and cut 12 minutes.
E3D RapidChange REVO Review
Revo swaps nozzles by hand in seconds, and up to 15 mm³/s it matches a V6. But the part cooling fan pulls the temperature down hard, and one core failed on me.
MEKANIKA EVO CNC Router REVIEW
Mekanika's EVO is a belt-driven CNC router that handles wood and plastics well. The belts cost you a few tenths of a mm in accuracy, and z clearance is tight.
CNC Kitchen Volcano Adapter: Manual
How to install and remove our Original Volcano Adapter, and why you must never tighten it above 240 °C: the brass loses strength and the adapter can break.
CNC Kitchen Volcano Adapter: Anleitung
So installierst und entfernst Du unseren Originalen Volcano Adapter, und warum Du ihn nie über 240 °C anziehen darfst: Das Messing verliert an Festigkeit.
Non-Planar 3D Printing by Bending G-Code
I bent the G-code after slicing to print non-planar curves on a normal printer. It works, but without a tilting head your printhead clearance sets the limit.
Putting 3D Prints in a home compost
There are a ton of filaments for 3D printing on the market that advertise themselves as being biodegradable or compostable.
HOW STRONG is PET Bottle Filament?
Pull-trusion turns a PET bottle into filament with no shredder. It printed at 59 MPa and my hook held 67 kg, though you're working in 20 g pieces at a time.
Do High Flow Nozzles mix Dual Color Filament?
Dual-color filament keeps its split even through a high-flow nozzle. Polymer melts are hard to disturb, so you can run this stuff on basically any FDM printer.
Nozzle Spacer - CHT for Volcano Hotends
Our high-flow spacer turns a Volcano into a serious melter, holding up to 40 mm³/s. Bondtech's CHT still edges it out, but by less than I expected.
Cetus MK3 to Mellow FLY RRF E3 conversion
Tiertime's CETUS had good hardware wrapped in proprietary firmware I never liked. So I swapped the board for a Mellow FLY E3 and put RepRapFirmware on it.
Dual-Color, Dichromatic 3D Printing Filament
Dual-color filament is made by feeding two melts into one die so the strand stays half and half. Here's how it's made and how it actually prints.
DIY High Flow 3D Printing Nozzle
I drilled my own high-flow nozzle to see if I could beat the CHT. Up to 30 mm³/s they're neck and neck, but past 40 mm³/s the CHT pulls ahead of my version.
3D Printing with a 0.1 mm nozzle
Kaika sent me a 0.1 mm nozzle. The detail is genuinely amazing, but a 3DBenchy takes over a day to print, so this only makes sense for very small parts.
Bondtech CHT High Flow Nozzle Reviewed
The CHT splits the melt across three bores instead of one. Bondtech advertise 30% more flow and in my tests that's the minimum you can expect. I'm impressed.
Fixing Inconsistent Extrusions Systematically
My Cetus printed inconsistently for years. It turned out to be the extruder gear, so here's how I tracked it down systematically instead of guessing at settings.
Tips & Tricks for Heat-Set Inserts used in 3D printing
How to set our heat-set inserts properly: soldering iron 10 to 20 °C above printing temperature, melt only 90% of the way, then press the rest flush with a tool.
Eco PLA filament with Spent Coffee Grounds
I extruded PLA filled with spent coffee grounds from my morning cappuccino. It costs about 10% strength, 58 MPa down to 53, and my hook went from 69 to 61 kg.
G-code Basics for 3D Printing
If you are in a foreign country, it's immensely helpful to understand some of the spoken language.
Tipps & Tricks für Gewindeeinsätze im 3D Druck
So schmilzt Du unsere Gewindeeinsätze sauber ein: Lötkolben 10 bis 20 °C über Drucktemperatur, nur zu 90% einschmelzen und den Rest mit einem Werkzeug drücken.
GUIDE: Resuming a failed 3D print
A print failed halfway. Keep the bed hot, measure how far it got, then cut the G-code at that layer so the printer picks up where it stopped. Here's the process.
Recycling Old 3D Prints into New Filament
I shredded more than a hundred 3D Benchys back into filament. The recycled material only lost 6 to 12% strength, though diameter consistency is the hard part.
Making simple PLA filament with the 3DEVO Composer 450
Extruding my own PLA on the 3DEVO Composer 450: pellets, 2% color masterbatch, and a diameter that holds to about ±0.05 mm once the process is dialed in.
Prusament PC Blend Review
Prusament PC Blend, where PC Blend stands for PolyCarbonate compounded with other polymers and additives is Prusa’s engineering grade material.
Essentium PCTG Review
PCTG isn't polycarbonate. It takes 24 kJ/m² on the notched impact test, way past PETG and up with ABS, but it goes soft at 80 °C and layer strength is modest.
High Speed Printing: Hot End, Temperatures, Silicone Sock and Materials
So recently, Albert from 247 printing posted a video on his sub 9 minutes 3DBenchy that he printed on his basically stock but input shaper tuned VORON 0.
Texturing 3D prints in IdeaMaker for Strength
The 3D printing slicer IdeaMaker made by Raise3D recently implemented an innovative feature in their latest version 4.1.1 called texturing.
Prusa MK2.5S DUET 3 Mini 5+ conversion
This was the first Prusa I ever bought almost 5 years back, and that has probably done more than 10000 printing hours with hardly any problems during that time.
ARTILLERY Hornet 3D Printer - First Look
I usually don’t post write-ups of live streams that I did because it doesn’t happen that often that I’m really impressed by a product right after unboxing it.
Bang-Bang or PID Bed Temperature Control?
Swapping my Prusa's board made the heated bed sing. That sent me down a rabbit hole into PID versus bang-bang bed control, and why PID is almost always better.
The VORON 0 - A Mini, Fast & Awesome Core XY 3D Printer
The VORON 0 is tiny, beautifully engineered and fast: 120 to 150 mm/s at 4000 mm/s² with Klipper. Then my carbon fiber nylon parts crept and I had to rebuild it.
Testing BiMetallic Heat Breaks
The bi-metal heat break is the next evolution of the regular heat breaks that we know from our 3D printers.
First Thoughts: VORON 0 Kit from Formbot
First impressions of the Formbot VORON 0 kit from Aliexpress: what's in the box, what the parts are like, and where the kit made the build harder than it needed.
Snapmaker 2.0 Review
The Snapmaker 2.0 prints, lasers and routes for $1800. Nothing it does is best in class, but everything is better than okay, and it even cut aluminum for me.
3D Printer Nozzle Camera
I built a camera that rides along with the nozzle to watch extrusion up close. Here's the build, the footage it gets, and the exposure problem I haven't solved.
Multi-material Coat Hook on the E3D Toolchanger
We were renovating and the old coat hooks had to go, so I reprinted them in two materials on the E3D Toolchanger. Overengineered, but they look and feel great.
The Influence of Extrusion Temperature on Layer Adhesion
I tested layer adhesion across the whole recommended temperature range. Print at the low end for looks, the high end for strength. Too hot hurts adhesion again.
Testing colorFabb varioShore TPU - Foaming 3D printing filament
Previously, we've already been taking a look at another of Colorfabbs foaming filaments, and that was Light Weight PLA.
3D Printing Trimmer Line
Trimmer line is cheap nylon on a spool, so I printed it. After a night of drying it prints great and my hook held 30 kg. Ventilate well, the fumes are nasty.
FLUX Beamo Review - A 30W Compact Laser Cutter/Engraver
The Beamo is a 30 W CO2 laser that just worked out of the box. At $1500 to $2000 it isn't cheap, and the Beam Air purifier didn't clear the smell in my small room.
Testing the strength of 3D prints re-melted in salt
Embedding prints in salt and remelting them really does work. ABS layer adhesion jumped 150%, reaching 90% of the solid material's strength with no layer lines.
FLSUN Q5 Delta 3D printer review
My first delta printer. The FLSUN Q5 prints nicely for the money, but stock accelerations cap at 1000 mm/s², there's no linear advance, and the board stutters.
Annealing 3D prints in Plaster
Packing prints in plaster lets you remelt them without losing shape. PETG went from 30 to 41 MPa and the layer lines vanished, but PLA turned into a brittle mess.
How designs the strongest hook? - Polymaker competition
Of course this is a marketing campaign by Polymaker, though I haven’t been paid for this video and will even participate on my own.
The difference of PLA and PLA+ tested! (feat. Polymaker)
Regular PLA is really easy to print and stronger than some might expect, though if a PLA part actually fails, it shatters quite violently.
PC-Core ABS - Testing Dual-Material Filament for Warp-less Annealing
A filament with a PC core inside an ABS shell, meant to anneal without warping. ABS hit 35 MPa and the PC nearly double, but heat treating changed almost nothing.
Machining a 3D printer nozzle on a Mini Lathe
I finally bought a mini lathe, so the first real project was turning a 3D printer nozzle from scratch. Then I cut it open to see how bad the inside really was.
CR-6 SE - Crealitys NEW $4,400,000 (over)hyped Kickstarter 3D printer
This is the Creality CR-6 SE that was launched for their 6th anniversary on Kickstarter and was a huge success with over $4 Million in pledges.
Helicoils, Threaded Insets and Embedded Nuts in 3D Prints - Strength & Strength Assessment
Considering the view count of my other two videos on threaded inserts, you seem to be really interested in that topic.
Simple 3D printer noise reduction with a concrete paver
I print a lot and this also means that many of my prints run overnight. Unfortunately, our bedroom is right next to my office in which my main printers usually are.
Creality Ender-3 Pro VS Alfawise U30 Pro - Which is the better budget 3D printer?
Don’t judge me that I’m a little late to the game, especially with the Ender-3, though I just didn’t have luck with newly released printers in the past.
Investigating different methods of filament drying (Dehydrator, Vacuum, Oven & Desiccant)
I compared vacuum, a food dehydrator, the kitchen oven and a silica drybox for drying filament. Vacuum alone disappointed, heat works, and storage matters a lot.
How to use modifier geometry in CURA
A step-by-step guide to adding modifier geometry in CURA, so you can change wall count, top and bottom layers only where a part actually needs it.
How to 3D print face shields faster
Printing face shields for local hospitals, I worked through what actually cuts the time: layer height, extrusion width and perimeters, without losing strength.
Effect of disinfectant (70% IPA) on common 3D printing materials
I soaked printed samples from a dozen materials in 70% IPA for 48 hours. Some lost real strength, PA12 went 85 to 74 MPa, but none became brittle or unusable.
Building a Hand Cranked Shredder for Recycling Plastics
I built the Precious Plastic shredder from a laser-cut kit, then added a printed hand crank and stackable sieves to get a consistent particle size for extrusion.
Flow Rate benchmarking of a Hotend
You can measure your hotend's flow limit with nothing but a scale. A stock V6 tapped out around 10 to 15 mm³/s at 215 °C, and temperature moves that a lot.
ColorFabb LW-PLA - Testing Foaming PLA
A couple of months ago Colorfabb released two really interesting new Filaments that are called VarioShore TPU and LW or Lightweight PLA.
Comparing PLA, PETG & ASA - feat. PRUSAMENT
Even though you can nowadays get almost any thermoplastic as a 3D printing filament PLA, PETG and ABS are still the most common ones used.
Removing Zits and Blobs on your 3D prints - Adjust your Slicing Resolution!
Zits and blobs often come from too many tiny G-code segments. Raising maximum resolution and deviation in CURA cleaned my prints up completely.
Gradient Infill for 3D Prints
My script varies extrusion so infill gets denser toward the walls. It looks great, but on my test hook it didn't beat simply raising the infill percentage.
Threaded Inserts for 3D Prints - Cheap VS Expensive
Almost a year ago I released a very popular video on threaded inserts for 3D prints on which I got a ton of suggestions and comments.
Big nozzles - How do they make your 3D prints stronger?
I’m sure you’ve all heard or even experienced it already that using a larger nozzle in you 3D printer seems to result in quite a bit more sturdy parts.
Two Trees Sapphire Pro - 3D Printer Review
The Sapphire Pro is a project, not a tool. Mine wouldn't print at all until I fixed PID values that overshot by 40 °C, and the power supply fan is always audible.
The effect of Extrusion Width on Strength and Quality of 3D prints
Nobody touches extrusion width, but it matters. Wider extrusions squish harder into the layer below, and that measurably improved layer adhesion in my tests.
HOW MUCH abrasive filaments damage your nozzle!
In the past I never really worried much about nozzle wear because I rarely printed abrasive materials and when I did, I switched my nozzle for a hardened steel one.
The influence of layer height on the strength of FDM 3D prints
Thinner layers look better, but are they stronger? I tested a range of layer heights, and the ratio of nozzle diameter to layer height matters more than the number.
Better performing 3D prints with annealing, but... - Part 1: PLA
Annealing PLA got me 7.5% more tensile strength and 16% on lying hooks. Layer adhesion didn't budge: 42 kg before, 42 kg after. Heat treating won't fuse layers.