There was a stretch of time I was looking at videos of budget gaming PC builds and they’d be like “How to build a gaming PC for $150” and a lot of them went like “Buy a used Optiplex for $120, max out its RAM for $30, then use this GTX 2080 I got from nvidia for free because I have two billion subscribers.”
Me: Should I buy a prebuilt 3D printer?
Reddit 3D printing sub: Oh, heck no. I put mine together for $18.22 plus some spare parts from seven printers I got of craigslist for $1 from some widow. Only took me three weekends to do it, plus a couple hundred hours to update the firmware to match the parts and troubleshoot it.
Me: Uh, so does it print better than the one I could just buy?
Reddit: Well, I’m still tuning it for all my filaments. I’ve been through about 40kg, and I’ve got a trashcan full of benchys though. The last few have been pretty good.
Building a 3d printer is really its own hobby. You don’t build a 3d printer because you want to print stuff, you build one because you want something to tinker with
- Average Linux user
Am the Linux user, can confirm.
Yeah those communities are wild. Before I bought my own printer I thought 3D printing is mostly fixing your printer and buying better parts and bed leveling and tuning etc.
Wasn’t looking forward to it so I bought an off-the-shelf printer with minimal assembly from a “boring” Chinese brand - couldn’t be happier with it, it just prints without any hassle and I have no urge to switch firmwares or tinker with the printer itself instead of with the printed stuff. To each their own I guess.
(Still plugged in a raspberry pi for octoprint and did some initial calibration for the filament of course …)
There is no world in which that machine is under a million dollars.
Hear me out: what if you made it entirely from parts created by a larger CNC machine?
Self replicating CNC Machines. That’s not even a guy operating it, it’s 3 smaller CNC machines in a trench coat and hat
A trench coat made by a slightly bigger CNC machine.
It would be very very impressive if your CNC machine can produce and assemble electric motors, wiring and circuit boards from raw materials. But then it would not be a CNC machine anymore.
Sure it could. A 5 axis CNC head could mill out the shape for a motor and be given a tool that spools out wire… It wouldn’t be easy, but it could build a motor with just that
It could also be given a head to solder circuit boards
CNC (computer numerical control) refers to the control systems rather than the act of milling materials, a 3D printer is a sub category of CNC. They can even use the same control boards.
You also usually process materials before putting them in - they’re good at detail work, but if you start with a block of steel you’re going to lose a fortune changing out expensive heads (and take forever). So it’s fair to assume you’re not using raw materials
It would be even more expensive!
You see, there is this unwritten agreement between the creator and the viewer that they like stuff explained to them, but they don’t actually replicate anything shown in the video. At best, they half-arsedly order some materials and then never get to it.
I feel personally attacked by this comment.
It’s the same contract we have with all cooking shows and food videos.
man you’re following the wrong channels then, there’s a good chance any food videos i watch will at least give me ideas for how to improve my own cooking
“Now I used this 40 thousand dollar rig to save time, but I have no reason to believe you couldn’t do this on a table saw”
Just ran into this like a week ago with a wood working video. “How to flatten a board without a planer!”. The whole premise was that planers are expensive, so here a little trick for hobbyist… The next scene was them using a router table jig that’s like 5x more expensive then any planer.
I think they’re just trying to show off…or trying to monetize to pay for the damn thing, lol
When repairing my car I snapped a bolt in an awkward place. This really sucked.
Worse, so many of the “guy in a garage” youtubers were like “Yeah luckily I already have the engine block out…”
Or “Grab your handy dandy lathe…”
“Super easy you guys, just get your welding torch…”
Welder isn’t too crazy of a tool. It’s usually more like, get your 3d printer AND your welder AND your CNC AND your drill press AND your table saw plus a million other hyper specific gadgets.
Who doesn’t have an edm cutting machine and a metal sintering 3d printer in the cupboard under the stairs?
I’m sure you can get both in a bundle on wish for 14.99
I mean if you have space for them, those are obviously good tools to save up for.
When I bought a welder I started noticing all these shitty fixes I had done that would be so much better welded. It paid itself off in the first week.
Even the $150 harbor freight welder is a game changer for anyone who makes or works on things.
Meanwhile, Mark Rober accidentally making a guided missile:
I remember when it had the opposite problem. “Today, we’re going to make a working fusion reactor out of an old HP laptop I found in my garage”, and everything is specific to that particular HP laptop.
That machine costs well over $381k. We had a much smaller 3 axis lathe installed in the machine shop I worked in during my early 20’s and it was $3M. That was 25 years ago, so it probably costs infinity dollars now, given recent inflation. Hell, you probably can’t even buy them now, just lease them on a subscription for eleventy bajillion dollars per year.
My first thought, written by someone who has no concept, likely a kid.
I have the same problem with most DIY-videos as I don’t own a glue gun.
So buy one? It’s like $20
It’s honestly more of an arrogance thing. I have a nice drill, screws and different types of cold glue. I don’t want my projects to be anything like the crap I see in 5 Minute Crafts, so I avoid the tool. I know, it makes no sense, but so far I have never really needed a glue gun.
