Oh well. Sadly the corners of my box warped. Time to try a brim and some additional tweaks.

On the plus side, the part I'm printing looks good so far with no lifting, blobbing or stringing. Which is good, because I have a LOT more parts to print over the next 3-4 days.

Printing in ABS on the K2 Plus for the first time and despite double filtering (I have HEPA + charcoal on the printer itself and then a separate HELP + charcoal filter box actively evacuating the air from the chamber) I can definitely smell it. Time to open a window!

When I see Amazon giving a window of 'now arriving between' I just assume it'll turn up about 30 minutes after the end of that window. I'm usually right. Their predictive algorithm sucks (or more likely, assumes superhuman levels of performance on the part of the driver that will not happen).

Don't know why micro Molex cables seem to be hard to get, BTW - Amazon has some but they're all shipped from US / China and will take days, and I need a custom length, so chopping mine up it is.

The plastic plate at the back got slightly dinged up due to glue squeeze-out and my poor attempts to remove it, but since no-one will see it I will suppress my natural urge to design and print a replacement that's perfect.

This allows me to snaffle the micro Molex cable it came with to cut up and use to power the extraction fan in the new top cover that I printed for the U1, since there's a port up there that is used for the Snapmaker cover's vent. With a small hack to the firmware, the printer will use it.

The back of an Anycubic ACE Pro filament feeder box, showing the added USB port and a cable plugged into it.

Changed my Anycubic ACE Pro filament feeder / dryer over to use a USB-C connection rather than micro Molex, since it connects to the Snapmaker U1 via USB anyway. Moment of doubt when it kept failing to feed, but turns out it was the filament I was using. All good now.

But short of getting rid of (selling) my K2 Plus and U1 and replacing both with an H2D, that ain't going to happen. And I have issues with the lack of a true LAN mode and their source code stance. Bambu is the Apple of 3D printing - I'd buy their phone, but not their computer.

Now, in truth, if I were willing to buy Bambu, the H2D would have done me all along. It's big, capable of doing most filaments, and has a dual extruder so PLA + PETG is easy to do without significant poop or change time.

I think the U1 will do me for now. Short of INDX being so much better or coming in a large enough form factor, I think my multi-colour / material needs are covered, as long as it continues to perform well and not break.

The downer of being in this hobby (for me) is the constant desire to buy new printers. I already don't have space to store the ones I have, second hand value is not great, and lugging 30-40kg up and down stairs SUCKS.

Of course, there are radical ideas out there like multiple toolheads on the X axis simultaneously, printing simultaneously with multiple filaments. Rumours of a four-extruder toolhead coming from Anycubic. For people who care mostly about multi-material rather than colour count, that would win.

For my money today, toolchangers with multiple independent filament paths are the sweet spot. Close to zero waste and minimal change time. INDX looks to be the way forward here for more toolheads in the same space. But it's taking its sweet time getting here, and Prusa is not hugely affordable.

Don't @ me with the H2C, BTW. Nozzle changers are pointless if you have to retract to and extrude from the AMS every time. Yes, less waste, but all the swap time. The Atomform Palette 300 with its parking system that reduces the travel time for the next filament to just a few mm is intruiging.

But for parts that have overhangs, if you care about the state of the surface underneath, multi-material supports with zero interface gap is the answer all day long, and for me that means the U1. It's what I bought it for.

I still use the K2 Plus, for single-colour, high volume / large part work, or where support is just on corners (ie no 90 degree overhangs). It's bigger, faster and can do more filament types (though TBH I use PLA, PETG and TPU and that's all I really need) because actively heated chamber.

This is really only practical with a toolchanger, though. The swap time for my K2 Plus would be longer than the print time, and the poop would weigh twice as much as the model. Thank heavens for the Snapmaker U1.

The whole 'print in PLA, supports in PETG' thing really is a game-changer. Provided you get the settings right. Very weird seeing a bridge looking like it came straight off the build plate instead of being a mess.

If Orban loses, do we think he'll go quietly?

Note to self - don't accidentally touch your 3D printer nozzle when it's heating up. Ouch. At least it wasn't at full temp, but 142C still burns. It's a spot burn, superficial, but it's going to sting.

For these I need some 1 mm thick MDF, which I don’t have any stock of. It needs to be reliably thick so that the surface is flat. I do have some 2 mm MDF, so I might use that and just deal with the tracks being a bit sunk in.

A drill press with self-made table and centre disc removed for display.

A drill press and self-made table with removable disc installed.

I’m making a better table for my drill press. Unfortunately, as often happens, I’m discovering that MDF is never quite as thick as it’s supposed to be, so the t-tracks (which are for the fence I’ll be making next) don’t sit flush with the surface. So now I need some shims.

Oh no. Nick Pope died. RIP.

As a non-religious person with no remaining family who likes to be able to shop, Easter Sunday is not my favourite day. But hopefully for those of you who celebrate, you’ll have a happy one. While I am grumpy.

So, we invent streaming - where you can watch what you want, when you want - and what do they do with it? Release one episode a week like it was broadcast TV. Meh.

Clocks went forward finally. Sunset not until 1930 tonight. It's been bright, if not hot, recently. Maybe I could go out. <Looks outside. Checks forecast for the week>. Sigh. We really can't have nice things, can we?

If you value fresh air over being warm, you’re wrong. End of story.

I'm increasingly finding little use cases like this where an hour or two designing and printing a small part can fix a big problem for me. Plus, it's fun. What's not to like?

I turned the bottom 5mm of the adapter into an H6 hex so I could use a hex bit to turn the adapter into the tapped thread on the extrusion end, and once in place... the caps fit. All it cost me was an hour or so of design time and a few test prints to tweak it until it was right.