Several years ago I leapt enthusiastically into the realm of 3D printing by buying a massive, expensive delta-type printer. I had to put it together myself, which was fun, but after that I struggled to get it to print well. Even simply trying to get the prints to stick to the bed were difficult, leading me to add huge brims to all my parts which were a pain to cut off afterward. Eventually I gave up fiddling with it and it’s been gathering dust ever since.

I know that a lot of you treat the hobby as an opportunity for endless tinkering and optimization, which is great, but I think I’ve realized that what I’d prefer is something that just works out of the box with a minimum of adjustment.

  • ShepherdPie@midwest.socialEnglish
    1·
    18 hours ago

    Trying to force people to use a cloud account just to get functionality of the piece of hardware they already paid for with no technical reason behind it whatsoever is ludicrous.

    There is a technical reason behind it which is integration with MakerWorld and being able to browse files from there and send them to the printer remotely from your phone or other device along with being able to watch a live feed of your print and control the printer.

    Again, I won’t argue against the whole privacy aspect as I get it, but I just don’t really think it’s a big deal or something of consequence if we’re simply talking about 3D prints. They do have the option to use them locally now, but apparently this doesn’t include all their models (which you may have mentioned already or it was someone else).