[Hypnotically] Welcome to 3D printer meditation... Let the sound of your printer fill your ears...
Follow the extruder's rhythmic movements... slowly allow your eyes to close...
focus on the motors humming and the fans whirring... the extruder's movements are
growing dimmer... distant... far away, you see a pin prick of light - no - a shape,
bright with color... it draws closer... you see... you see... a title card.
Welcome to Voidstar Lab, but in a higher plane of abstraction.
My name is called Zack Freedman... oof, ouch!!
I swear, one of these days that's going to give me a guru meditation error. As I was saying,
today we're going to talk about 3D prints to improve your 3D printer. Personally I use
i3Mk3's and a Phrozen Sonic Mini 4k. You'll probably find a counterpart to everything I
put up here for your hunk of junk of choice I'm gonna repost many of them to Thangs.com,
in part because it doesn't take 15 minutes to load, unlike a certain other STL website,
but moSTLy because they paid me! That's right folks, today's episode is sponsored by Thangs,
the no-nonsense warehouse of free 3D models. I've been working with Thangs for a while, and they're
becoming my go-to place to host and share STL files. They now allow you to post and download
entire assemblies of models, and the interactive 3D viewer is buttery-smooth and it loads as fast
as the page itself. The spiciest feature is still the geometric search, which lets you upload an STL
file and actually search for things that look like it. It's sort of like a reverse image search,
but in THREE DIMENSIONS! I'm going to repost every appropriately licensed model I talk about
today on Thangs, so if you want any of them for yourself, you know which description to check.
Without further ado, number 10: rail guards. Most of today's consumer-grade 3D printers are
made of this aluminum extrusion. Some call it 8020, some call it MakerBeam,
some call it x-stock, v-slot, t-slot, hell, some people even call it aluminium. Savages!
Whatever your preferred nomenclature, you need to start printing these rail guards
right now. All this crapola has accreted in this crack since I cleaned this thing, like,
mere months ago, but this ends today and it ends for good. ENGAGE THE SUCC! Now, we're going to
slam the door on the dust bunnies by snapping on these rail covers. Not only do these lock out the
cruft, they protect the wires running through the channel. I don't want you to get a good look at
my sloppy disgusting crevasses. Gaze too deep into the crevasse, and the crevasse gazes back.
Number nine: Prusa Mk3s Ultimate Toolbox v2 - Modular. That's an emphatic ass-name!
Having a specific place to put everything is the most effective way to stay organized and make
sure you actually, you know, clean up. It's the only way I've found to avert the dreaded PILES.
You drop in your pliers, scraper, tweezers, caliper, SD cards, apparently infinite number
of Allen keys that always seem to be the wrong size the first time you grab one,
your alcohol bottle, your windex bottle, and of course, those glue sticks included with your Prusa
that I swear are immortal. There's like six feet of glue stick in there! Call the SCP Foundation!
You can get tool racks like this one for pretty much any printer that has
a separate Z-rail and frame - you can't, like, snap a tray to your frame if, you know,
a thing is writing on it. Just remember that these are large, flat prints - use
a brim and clean that bed spotless, or you'll get a taco instead of a toolbox.
Number eight: Spool Storage Boxes. A while ago, I came up with this brilliant idea for an
episode about what to do with your old filament spools. You won't believe what happened Next!
If you guessed "I accumulated enough empties to overflow an entire recycling bin,"
a winner is you! This is a great model. The bins are sturdy but they print really quickly,
they have linkages and a handle so you can stack a bunch of them up into a portable caddy...
it includes a drilling guide, because you do need to screw the bins onto the spool.
Most importantly this modeler is a gentleman of class and taste who too shops at Micro Center! One
day, I'm gonna write an episode in which I don't have something positive to say about Micro Center.
Notice me senpai
Number seven: EXTRUDER SPINNER POWER HOUR! An extruder spinner is a little
dingus with a tiny magnet on the end. You stick that bit to your extruder motor shaft,
and as your printer prints, your extruder extrudes and spins the spinner, so you get an entire...
wait...
I just stopped writing mid-sentence.
The Extruder Gyroscope by JeepingJohnny gives you the joy of gimbal lock with every print!
This thing, astoundingly, prints in one piece, but tumbles freely on three axes as it turns.
Bravo JeepingJohnny. Jeep off into the sunset, you Jeeping legend you.
The Wind-up Key Visualizer by printerguy74 is exactly what it says in the tin. I think
it's funny, printerguy74 thinks it's funny, and frankly, your opinion doesn't matter.
The Kinetic Extruder Visualizer engine by knickers is a delightfully intricate
functional piston engine for your squirty-choocher.
Download the .scad files to generate new engines of your own. It's an engine engine!
The Silly Walk Extruder Visualizer by Lecter is one of the nerdiest things I have ever printed.
If you get the joke, you better fill my comment section with references,
because us intellectuals are a dying breed.
The Extruder Rotation Pirate Wheel by lamisky adds some salty sea flavor to your print-arrrrr.
I used to have one of these things on my crotch. It was drivin' me nuts!
Number six:
Hang on a second, we're halfway through the video and I haven't called you to a single action!
Like comment subscribe turn on notifications join our Discord
join on Patreon follow me Instagram follow me on Twitter watch my playlist watch my
episodes come back every week... but mostly, have a lovely day.
Number six: Spool Holder and Dry Box for Enclosure v2 by ondrej stryetsky... ondr...
ondrej stryadsky. That's a lot of consonants. A dry box is a mostly-airtight enclosure with a tray
of desiccant that succs moisture out of the air. All filaments will take on moisture over time,
and as it moistens, printing it can cause bubbles, pops, it splits apart, it becomes brittle or
dull... Most makers don't have to worry about wet filament, because in most climates, PLA takes,
like, a year to take damage, and PETG takes like three or six months. But if you're printing with
TPU, polycarbonate, or especially nylon, this is serious business. These filaments can become
waterlogged and worthless in mere hours. If you're going to do a long print, you're gonna need a dry
box. This is a big ass-print, but the results are just a super-crispy box that keeps your filament
super-crispy and it has the readout to prove it. You can make a bunch of these to nest nicely into
a wall-mountable storage rack. This one is going to get some use soon, because Prusa sent me a
fancy spool of polycarbonate and I cannot wait to completely fail to print Nerf blasters with it.
Number five: Led Light Bar Prusa i3 mk2 mk3. It's weird that so few modern printers come
with lights pre-installed. These brackets replace the z-axis stabilizer things on your Prusa with
these nice wide arms that support aluminum flat stock. You mount your LED strips to the metal,
you run the wires through the hollow arms, you optionally add a power switch if you so desire,
any switching regulator if your strips are 12 volts, and you just power that
straight off the Prusa's PSU. I took mine a little further by running a wire from
the switching regulator's enable pin to the unused I/O pin 76 on the RAMBO board.
That means I can control my lights with G-code! It's pretty spiffy, huh?
Number four: LONGER! GIRTHIER! i3 Spool Holder by fffffffffffftechnology. Or FFF Technology.
You know what? I'm going to read the designer's description of this item, because, like,
it's art. I'm not doing any better than this. [Eh hem]
Many i3 clones come up with a short, unimpressive spool holder that can't even perform with the big
boys! They seem to only hold 500-gram spools, but let's face it fellas! You want it LONGER! YOU WANT
IT THIIIICKER! You want it to perform ALL NIGHT LONG!! With our spool holder, that's no longer a
PIPE DREAM! Many other designs work, but they all seem to have trade-offs that make them a hassle,
from huge usage of material to complicated designs that we would like to do without. But FFF Tech
comes to the rescue AGAIN, folks! Our insipid engineers [barely-contained laughter] mimic the
original in that it's a SCREW and NUT system but with LENGTH and GIRTH!! We've printed this
in black, because, well if you haven't noticed, we almost always print in black! Don't you judge me!
But you can print it any color you want, from "is that mayo on your crotch?" white
all the way to "I got an itch down there, doc" red! So STOP playing with 500 grams
of unpleasurable disappointment! Print a BETTER spool holder TODAY!!
[Happy printer noises]
Number three: Fart Gighter 5000 by yours truly. I found myself in a dilemma when I did the 3DnD
episode - I had to print a ton of resin, but it was just too cold to open any windows and an
air filter wasn't available. So I grabbed some parts from the Fab Lab, and I whacked together
the Fart Fighter 5000. The Fart Fighter is a chamber full of activated charcoal contained by
two foam sandwich filters. I put a spare PC case fan on both ends, I mounted it in a storage bin,
and there you go - filtered enclosure for the printer or the cleanup. This configuration
worked perfectly for me, but the flexible plates-on-rails construction lets you create
the optimal filter of your dreams. I made an adapter to attach a hose in the outlet,
but you could just slap it on the intake side instead to free up space.
Is it Taco Tuesday? Stick that hose up to a chair! Consider the Fart Fighter 5000 your
build-your-own-solution kit to discreetly contain your most malodorous miasmas.
Number two: 3D Benchy! You have certainly seen this one before, but canoe imagine a more iconic
print for your printer? Hard core-vettes of 3D printing use this model for barge-ing rights,
but I yacht to think that every maker should be able to run off a ferry decent Benchy. Of course,
I've gondola extreme and printed the brig-gest Benchy you kayaks for. Some sailor the benchy is
junk - I think it's cutter-ly adorable and it just tugboats strings of my heart. Don't frigate that
this is still a testing tool it's great to monitor your ringing, fix sloopy bridging and generally
spot problem schooner. It prints fast, so you can tweak dinghies rafter-wards and trawler gain.
BOAT!!!
Number one is...
Boo! You already did a video on the tiny gaming PC! BOOOO!!!
Not the tiny gaming PC! It's the software running ON the tiny gaming PC! Number one is OctoPrint!
BOOO!! Software isn't 3D printed! BOOOO!!!!!!
Fine jeez, here's a 3D-printed case that mounts the Pi to the printer's dashboard. You happy now?
BOOO!! Just put a Raspberry Pi Zero inside the printer, BOOOOO--
[mouse clicking]
Octoprint might not be 3D printed, and it might not be spicy and new, but a well-configured
instance running on the right hardware is the single biggest improvement you can make
to your printer. Octoprint is a super-slick print server that runs on a Raspberry Pi...
all right, or another... it doesn't have to be a Pi, but y'know...
You can install a webcam and have a computer-vision AI babysit your prints!
You can have it automatically refactor jagged curves into smooth arcs. My personal favorite
is something you see in almost every video - the Octolapse library makes gorgeous time lapses easy
by automatically moving the extruder to the same place every layer. Don't run Octoprint
on a Pi Zero - it's just too weak. I know there's a special place to install it on the Prusa, but
lookie here, the Zero takes far longer to print, it's way laggier, and the processor is overloaded
just running it, to the point where I get layer shifts. Just remember use a bigger SD card than
you're used to - you want to have lots of headroom to store all those tasty time lapse photos.
[ASMR-ishly] Sadly, our jaunt through the most meta of 3D prints draws near,
for your printer has gone silent. Its work has ended, and your new creation is complete. Slowly
now, allow your eyes to open... let your vision clear... and behold what your printer has made.
REEEEEE
Cosmic thanks to Thangs for sponsoring this episode! Use the links in the description to
download these models and check out their slick 3D previews for yourself. A hearty 'namaste' to our
Patreon Patrons, whose generous contributions, well, keep Voidstar Lab afloat! Our enlightened
Lab Assistants are: Roger Pincombe, Daniel Cadwell, TheANTIFA, Olivier Yiptong, This is a cry
for help please I am trapped this is not just a funny patreon name seriously send help oh god send
help please, Michael Dunn, Azundo, salthy, Gregory Jones, Anthony Mincarelli, Brian Santero, Jason,
Accalia, Sam Wampler, James Barry, Zanforian, RustyFlute, Bill Schuller, Varka, Tech Daddy,
Robert Berriz, powerful_cch, Taranach, and Sir Derpington of Derptopia. The highest plane of
thanks to our Co-Lab-Orators, im noT Betta Core, and cmd... command? I've hidden their mystical
names somewhere in this episode, though not in this particular scene. That's a little too meta
even for this dimension. Finally, thanks to my beloved life partner behind the camera, Brooke,
and to our insightful discord mods: MyFairJulie, Techniack, and Billie
Ruben. Brooke and I are currently moving from New York City to Colorado, as in right now,
as you watch this. I hear they have machines that wash dishes for you, and machines that
wash clothes for you, and they have them right there in your own home! It's... astonishing.
Thank you for watching me thank you, and I'll see you
in the future's future. Kiloohm... kiloohm... kiloohm...