What knowledge or skill improved your 3d printing the most?

[D__J]

I've been trying to learn some of the more technical parts of klipper/moonraker and what can be integrated with them. Not effecting my print at all, but has changed the way that I may set up my printers in the future.

[zav3nd]

Just switching to Klipper has made it a lot more enjoyable. Figuring out how to flash a new Marlin to my Ender 3, originally with jumper wires and some internet guide that I still don't really know what happened. Compared to Klipper (or Mainsail) giving errors with a reason and being able to quickly change and reload. Night and day. Can't see a reason to ever go back. After building a Trident, I can't see buying a ready made printer again. The closest thing would be a Bambu, but at that price I could make another Voron (or 2-3 V0's!). I feel like I could manage to build something with poorer/less documentation after having done a Voron. I had no idea about board pinouts or any of the klipper coding (or any coding tbh). On Klipper I have *some* idea of whats going on.

 

I guess I'm mostly still learning but Voron/Klipper/Here has helped me understand more of 'how'.

[dshess]

In late 2022, I started seeing Voron things, and after a few months of lurking a bit over a year ago I ordered a V0.1 kit.  I was debating how to get printed parts, since my existing printer was old.  A friend suggested buying a crappy bedslinger, and rebuilding it to print ABS in a cardboard box.  He argued that that would teach me a lot - and he was totally right!  Since it was a $50 piece of 8-year-old salvage, I had basically no worries - I stripped it down, relubed, replaced some busted bits, modded some bits, put Klipper on it, and generally did all the things I had been too scared to do for the printer I was worried about breaking.  I did braces, printed a shroud to add a bigger fan for the electronics, added a bed MOSFET, put in an all-metal hotend, flipped it to Klipper, did the ADXL thing for input-shaping, designed some parts to fix drag-chain issues (design issues, I'd say), and of course did a ton of tuning and experimenting to get ABS working well.  I also started using PrusaSlicer and then SuperSlicer so that I could easily distinguish the old printer from the new (which I let on Cura for awhile).

A side effect is that at some point I began to properly appreciate the physical constraints that went into the system.  Like how an untrammed bed affects a first-layer patch, or how z offset and flow interact.  That helped a TON, because it meant that I wasn't just trying to address symptoms by doing random tweaks.  By the time I was done that printer was arguably printing better than the better printer I had had for years.

I have no argument against buying a Prusa or a Bambu so that you can just print stuff rather than maintaining a printer.  I'm just saying that for me, starting from down in the weeds really helped inform my understanding of higher-level stuff, like how to design tolerances between pieces, or threading, or joints, etc.

[dshess]

On 4/29/2024 at 7:24 PM, zav3nd said:

Just switching to Klipper has made it a lot more enjoyable. Figuring out how to flash a new Marlin to my Ender 3, originally with jumper wires and some internet guide that I still don't really know what happened. Compared to Klipper (or Mainsail) giving errors with a reason and being able to quickly change and reload. Night and day. Can't see a reason to ever go back.

I agree with this.  I've been using Klipper, but recently had the "opportunity" to rebuild a Marlin firmware for my son's Ender 2 Pro.  I got it done, but I was honestly less than impressed with how clunky it was.  I have decades of Unix experience, so maybe I was able to just plugin to Klipper more easily because it felt like setting up a web server or database server.  I think I got the Marlin stuff right, but Configuration.h and Configuration_adv.h are a LOT to process.

[ken226]

CAD.

 

 

[mvdveer]

1 hour ago, ken226 said:

CAD.

Yeah, but I still "suck" at it! It seems the older you get the more quickly you forget the new things you have learned, especially if not using it daily. Siggghhhh 

[dshess]

1 hour ago, ken226 said:

CAD.

My main problem with CAD is that it often turns a 20-minute project with plausible results into a 20-hour pursuit of perfect results.  I enjoy it, but sometimes I have to actively set it aside :-).

[D__J]

2 hours ago, ken226 said:

CAD.

That's a good one too. I keep watching videos and then being kind of upset with myself that I couldn't figure out. I'm going through the teaching tech videos just for the general design considerations of parts, some good stuff in there.

[MrBean]

I realised that Klipper is the future but had no clue and did not want to break one of my printers. So I bought a cheap Kingroon, installed Klipper and never looked back. I learned about tuning, all the materials became easier to handle and I started building a few CoreXY printers. My knowledge grew, my CAD skills improved, I joined Discords and I am building a tool-changer now. Thank you Klipper

[BryantW]

I agree that switching to Klipper was the best thing I could do. I look at Marlin as a "fill in the forms" system whereas Klipper is a "write your own story" system.