About 8 or so years ago, I bought a 3D printer for about $700.
It was a Prusa i3 Mk2, and it looked something like this.
At the time, this was pretty good. It offered auto-bed leveling, and support for multiple filament types. These two features alone were groundbreaking.
But there were so. Many. Problems. All the time.
I felt like I spent >90% of my time tinkering rather than printing.
There were websites where you could share STL files with others like thingiverse, but you needed to spend a lot of time slicing and doing trial and error.
I won't bore you with the details, but just know that it was a pain in the ass to print anything at all, for the most part.
Eventually, I just gave up on it and sold it at a loss.
I didn't touch a 3D printer for the following 7 or so years.
Last year, I bought a $220(!) printer from Bambu Labs. It's called the A1 mini.
And let me preface this by saying they have never sponsored me in any way and probably don’t even know I exist. I don’t even have an affiliate link to give you.
Anyway, this is what it looks like.
I was immediately blown away. I cannot believe how good this thing is for $220.
Because truth be told, I don't want to tinker with a 3d printer. I don't want to fiddle with the settings, I don't care to learn the ins and outs of it. I want to press a couple clicks and have it print something, and this does just that.
And btw, I don’t even know how to model, you don’t even need to. You can go on sites like makerworld and there's a sea of models for you to download and print.
It's been 3 months since I've got it and I already went through 20kg of PLA. Probably also why I haven’t uploaded as often, nor written this newsletter.
Most of the things I print are organizational items like this, this or this. But also functional ones like this, or this.
There's so much out there that, as I waited for delivery, I already had a long list of things I wanted to print.
What a difference 7 years made in this space. There's an abundance of models, much better software. Little to no tinkering needed and much cheaper filaments.
But after 3 months of continuous printing, I now have the printer off most of the time. And I treat it kinda like a regular printer. If I need something, I just turn it on and print it.
Just the other day I was getting annoyed with my AC remote in the bedroom always taking up space, downloaded this, problem solved.
My grocery bags kept falling in the trunk, got this.
My hats were always disorganized, this fixed it.
All in all, I'm pretty sure this printer already paid for itself. If you go online to places like etsy you'll find a ton of 3d models that people will happily print and ship it to you, but obviously these come at a cost.
A caldigit mount on Etsy costs about $20 after shipping and takes days to arrive. I printed mine for less than 70c in filament, and it took only a couple of hours.
So yeah, now that I think of it, this has already paid for itself, maybe even more than once.
Monthly Picks
A handful of new finds that I think are worth sharing
BusyCal - After years of paying for fantastical, my renewal notice came up and I couldn't stomach paying a 6$ monthly subscription for it. It's just absurd, I capitulated and moved on to busycal. It's 90% as good and not a monthly subscription.
Hoog/fern/Atrium - Really enjoying these types of channels lately. They cover interesting topics and animate everything beautifully.
Adolescence - This was filmed in 1 take. Hard to believe. Enjoyable watch.