What’s the best 3D printer out there these days for someone who values being able to self-repair and extend their machine but also doesn’t want to spend all their time maintaining and fine-tuning it? Is the Prusa CORE One the best middle ground here? #3dPrinting

🐠 3D-printed helix shelters increase baby coral survival rates

https://phys.org/news/2025-09-3d-helix-baby-coral-survival.html

#coral #animals #oceans #3dprinting #manufacturing #conservation

🐠 3D-printed helix shelters increase baby coral survival rates

https://phys.org/news/2025-09-3d-helix-baby-coral-survival.html

#coral #animals #oceans #3dprinting #manufacturing #conservation

So I've printed the "All modern infrastructure" #xkcd and learned a few things:

1. On big surfaces the ironing flowrate is too low.
2. My settings for the "grid" support structures are so phenomenally bad that I accidentally made a statement about code in the backend or under the hood often being really scuffed. 😅
#3DPrinting

So I've printed the "All modern infrastructure" #xkcd and learned a few things:

1. On big surfaces the ironing flowrate is too low.
2. My settings for the "grid" support structures are so phenomenally bad that I accidentally made a statement about code in the backend or under the hood often being really scuffed. 😅
#3DPrinting

A really exciting milestone happened today, a ton of my local hacker friends got together and signed a lease for a new hacker space!

It's not open yet but be sure to follow us here on mastodon for updates -> @dma

https://dma.space/about

#CapitolHill #Seattle #WA #MakerSpace #Hackerspace #cybersecurity #linux #3dprinting #amateurradio

A really exciting milestone happened today, a ton of my local hacker friends got together and signed a lease for a new hacker space!

It's not open yet but be sure to follow us here on mastodon for updates -> @dma

https://dma.space/about

#CapitolHill #Seattle #WA #MakerSpace #Hackerspace #cybersecurity #linux #3dprinting #amateurradio

BusKill was awarded a $1,031 microgrant from @futo 🚀

👉 https://www.buskill.in/futo-microgrant-2025/

We have funding available for volunteers who want to contribute to document the #3dprinting of our #OpenSource #DeadManSwitch 💰🖨️

#infosec #hardware

BusKill was awarded a $1,031 microgrant from @futo 🚀

👉 https://www.buskill.in/futo-microgrant-2025/

We have funding available for volunteers who want to contribute to document the #3dprinting of our #OpenSource #DeadManSwitch 💰🖨️

#infosec #hardware

'Authorities have seized more than 1,000 firearms and gun parts in a crackdown on the spread of illicit weapons in Australia and New Zealand.

The week-long transnational operation led to more than 180 arrests, according to Australian Border Force, and the seizure of 281 privately manufactured firearms and parts, including those made by 3D printers.

In New South Wales, police located multiple 3D printers alongside glock-style pistols, magazines and 3D-printed holsters, among other items.' https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/oct/21/australia-new-zealand-gun-control-firearms-seized-weapon-crackdown #guncontrol #3dprinting #health #safety

'Authorities have seized more than 1,000 firearms and gun parts in a crackdown on the spread of illicit weapons in Australia and New Zealand.

The week-long transnational operation led to more than 180 arrests, according to Australian Border Force, and the seizure of 281 privately manufactured firearms and parts, including those made by 3D printers.

In New South Wales, police located multiple 3D printers alongside glock-style pistols, magazines and 3D-printed holsters, among other items.' https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/oct/21/australia-new-zealand-gun-control-firearms-seized-weapon-crackdown #guncontrol #3dprinting #health #safety

Since some people have already expressed an interest in buying a #NeXTcube mini, I have to collect all these interested potential buyers so as not to lose track of them. Therefore, I have set up a form on my website where all those interested can sign up.

https://layered.work/next-mini-replica-interest/

Please spread the word. Thank you. 🙏🏻

#3DPrint #3DPrinting #RetroComputer #RetroComputing #VintageComputing #NeXT #NeXTComputer

Since some people have already expressed an interest in buying a #NeXTcube mini, I have to collect all these interested potential buyers so as not to lose track of them. Therefore, I have set up a form on my website where all those interested can sign up.

https://layered.work/next-mini-replica-interest/

Please spread the word. Thank you. 🙏🏻

#3DPrint #3DPrinting #RetroComputer #RetroComputing #VintageComputing #NeXT #NeXTComputer

Left: The most accurately I could install threaded heat-set inserts freehand a couple of weeks ago. Right: What they look like when pressed into place using my parallelogram jig. I think the results speak for themselves.

You don't need to buy an expensive kit with heavy metal parts to accurately use heat-set inserts. Just some 3D printed bits and bobs that don't even need inserts to assemble - just screws.

If anyone in Australia thinks they'd like a kit of this thing, let me know.

#3DPrinting

Dear #3DPrinting people who are familiar with #CAD

Upload your "stupid" models.

There is nothing special about this "dumb" tray. It's just a five sided box with filleted edges, but it's been downloaded 79 times on Printables.

Lots of folks have 3D printers but don't know how to model things in CAD.

79 folks either got something useful they didn't know how to make themselves, or had time saved by not having to model it themselves.

Your "stupid" models are worth uploading.

Dear #3DPrinting people who are familiar with #CAD

Upload your "stupid" models.

There is nothing special about this "dumb" tray. It's just a five sided box with filleted edges, but it's been downloaded 79 times on Printables.

Lots of folks have 3D printers but don't know how to model things in CAD.

79 folks either got something useful they didn't know how to make themselves, or had time saved by not having to model it themselves.

Your "stupid" models are worth uploading.

Stamps, stamps, stamps!

#RetroComputing #3DPrinting

#Vale Wes Smith ❤️‍🩹

my 90 year-old dad died last night after a very long life, a long decline, multiple hospitalisations, and the last couple of months spent in hospital & a repat facility

lots of complex feelings for me, but I’m glad he no longer needs to struggle in difficult circumstances (largely of his own creation, but still ❤️‍🩹)

when he was young, he travelled the world in the Merchant Navy in the loud, hot bellies of large cargo ships amongst the enormous engines with pistons several times taller than himself. he only spent a short time in each port – a tasting menu, you might say – but he felt that he had seen the entire world by the time he got married

he worked many jobs in his long career, most of them spent bending metal to his will, often shaping machines into new forms to perform tasks for which they were never originally designed. he worked long hours to provide financially for his family – which he saw as his main duty in life – but also because he loved working with machines & solving engineering problems born of metal. grease. electricity.

he was a fitter & turner, a boiler-maker, a repairer & maintainer, a “keeper-runnerer”, a tinkerer. he used tools to design & make other tools to make machines. I’m sure that some of my own interests & skills were influenced by growing up watching him execute his craft, hearing him talk about his work, & being dragged along to yet another industrial robot exhibition 😩😜

he was a life-long learner, and my own love of 🤔 – or at least facility with – computers & electronics & code (oh my!) were things he saw (and understood) and supported. in the late 1970s or very early 1980s he took a programming course (which was the spelling at the time 😜) at the local TAFE, and he took me along – a rare opportunity in that era. my first hands-on experience with code at 11 or 12 years old was in the form of mapping out & writing programmes down by hand on graph paper & then encoding them on a stack of mark sense cards with a B2 pencil to be fed into a card reader (and drawing that all-important diagonal line down the side of the stack with said pencil – #IYKYK 😆)

it wasn’t long until I had begged sufficiently & got my very first computer (that we absolutely couldn’t really afford), a #CoCo – the original #TRS80 #ColorComputer model in “battleship grey” with 16K RAM 😲, later upgraded to a whopping 64K 🤯 🤯

I still have that computer over 40 years later 😊

after he retired, he always had several ambitious plans on the boil (less charitable folks might call them “hare-brained schemes” 🙃), including a petrol-powered all-terrain tracked wheelchair for a friend who wanted to be able to travel off the beaten path under his own (metaphorical) steam. it would have ended up weighing about a tonne & absolutely would never have worked (safely), but he was determined to “help” a friend & excited to work on solving an interesting engineering challenge, once again bending metal and machinery to his purpose du jour

he was happiest noodling in his workshop, oil- & grease-stained hands deep inside a machine, wielding – or welding – a new tool of his own design. I always associated the smell of machines and ozone with his presence. until after he retired I never saw his hands unstained by years of ingrained, immovable grease

in his later years he discovered #3Dprinting and became a journeyman #maker of sorts. he was exceptionally proud (and a bit obnoxious) when he was able to “teach the professionals at #U3A a thing or two” about his new hobby. his idea of a conversation had always been (impatiently) waiting for you to take a breath so he could tell you the next thing he was interested in – usually unconnected to whatever you’d shared 💁‍♀️

he used a succession of smallish 3D printers to make many, many Japanese-inspired lanterns (into which he stuffed various strings of coloured flashing lights) and Chinese-inspired dragons, amazed & delighted that additive manufacturing was able to create interlocking objects right off the print bed – after having spent a lifetime creating sometimes-intricate interlocking components using tried-and-true subtractive manufacturing processes. he gave most of these prints away to others – whether they wanted them or not 😆

he was a fitter & turner, a boiler-maker, a repairer & maintainer, a “keeper-runnerer”, a tinkerer

and he was my father

#Vale Wes Smith ❤️‍🩹
1935-2025

#GNUWesSmith
#XClacksOverhead