3d Printing

3D Printing (Or The Diamond Age machine)

Holy crap I love having a 3D printer. I got a Prusa Mini printer. If you order the pre-assembled kit, the setup takes about 30 minutes. It's good to go out of the box, but you can tweak it to get better prints. I still recomend Prusa printers despite their premium price these days. I am VERY skeptical of Bambu since they are starting to limit what you can do with their software, and all the peices are in place for them to start behaving more like HP.

Upgrades/Mods on the Mini

Notes on buying parts for a Prusa: cheap parts do exist online, but the quility is all over the place. Get genuine parts from their manufacturer.

Dual Gear Extruder from Triangle Labs: I believe this is a copy of the extruder offered by Bondtech. Helps when printing with flex filaments like TPU. I've found it also makes swapping filaments easier as well.

E3d .06 Nozzle X: Tool Steel nozzle for printing with abrasive filaments. Has a coating on the outside that helps with plastic sticking to the outside of the nozzle. The .06 diameter helps prevent clogging with some filaments, and also speeds up print time.

E3d .25 Nozzle: Finer diameter nozzle. This is the one I use for printing table top gaming mini's. Prusa Slicer's profile for this is fantastic. You can get a tool steel version of this nozzle, but more abrasive filaments will more than likely jam the nozzle. I haven't had any issues with using just PLA. Print in .5 or .7 layers and you will be good to go. NOTE: Order from Prusa or E3D directly. I bought one of these from Amazon and it was 1. not a geunine e3d part, and 2. it broke after 2 prints....

My Prusa Mini Printed mods Collection on Prtinables: A collection of handy printable parts for the Prusa Mini. There is a brace that helps with the tower wiggle, a case for a SBC that can run Octoprint, and a few other "nice to have" parts for cable/wire organization. I removed a few of the other prints since their usefulness was... well dubious at best. If you are having quality issues, check Prusa's documentation.

Some of my favorite 3d Prints and links to them.

Steamclip and battery pack holder. Adds some serious weight to the Steam Deck, but really enhances the portability when traveling. A very slick project.

Mini network rack for my home lab. The nut handles are a special print too.
Pictured are my cable modem, SBC mini server, Trendnet gigabit switch, and the home built OPNSense firewall.

The GPU stand and a PCI Fan holder. Moves the hot air that swirls around near the GPU. Helped my temps and over clocking.

Parts drawer. Used for the nuts and bolts for 3d print projects.

Modified fan grill for 5v 40mm Nocuta fan. I wanted to hide Noctua's well known brown color scheme.