Every Developer Needs a 3D Printer

Welcome to Syntax. We got an episode for you on three d printing. I think that every developer should have a three d printer. I have held off on it for so long, and I've had mine for only a month and a half.

And I I have gone full tilt. I absolutely love it. I have so much to say about it, so much that I think I convinced Scott to also get one. Right? Yes. In fact, mine arrived

yesterday, and it arrived at, like, 07:00.

And, you know, I've definitely purchased it under the guise of, like, my kids will learn so many lessons from this. Right? I want them to and and especially, you know, they're gonna be excited by, like, printing toys or whatever. But, like Yeah. I told them, you know, the the point of this is for you guys to think about stuff that you would want, stuff that, you know, you might want to, like, even create to sell someday or even, like, invent some things, come up with some crazy ideas. And they both went to their rooms that night and started just sketching. It was crazy. They were so excited about it. So, when it arrived, the first thing they did was just, like, oh and ah over even, like, taking off the plastic of it. I've never seen them so enthralled by something. So I just arrived yesterday. I printed a couple of, squishy turtles that were, like, built in on the machine for them and then, like, a scraper that came onto it. Now I'm printing some baskets. So I'm on my fourth print, and it just got here less than, like, twelve hours ago. So Oh, man.

So I'm about, I think, five hundred, six hundred hours into printing, which I did the math, and it's I I think, like, for the weeks that I've been home, because there's two of those weeks I've been I've been away, it's been printing almost half of the the time. So I've just pretty much always have it running.

And I'm really excited about it because, like, both for myself as well as for my kids, I always want to foster this idea of of making things and being able to build things and showing them that this is Node of the tools in your tool belt is really important to me. So my idea behind this, like, I consider myself a a maker. Right? Like, I I feel like I have a high level of skill in not a high level of skill, but I have a high level skill in in many different areas. Right? Like, coding, I am I'm very good at, but then I also feel like I'm I'm relatively good at electronics. I'm relatively good at at video. I'm relatively good at, graphics and home reno and and building things and and whatnot.

And that, like, one area that I've I've sort of had a hole in is is three d, both in modeling as well as being able to to three d print stuff. And people will come up to me every couple weeks. I can't believe you don't have a three d printer. I can't believe it. You gotta get one. So many things that could solve. And I've been putting it off because I I don't need another hobby. Mhmm. But I finally hit a point where I realized there are so many problems that could be so quickly solved with having this tool.

So for my birthday, I got it this year, and I've been been absolutely love loving it. So this show, we're gonna sort of go through explaining three d printing, what the different printers are, things that you can print, you know, not just printing stupid flexible dragons and whatnot, but, like, actually using it as a a life improver, talk about the different filaments, talk about designing your own stuff, and a little bit about coding

models and using AI to to generate models as well. Nice. Yeah. I'm I'm stoked for it. And those of you out there who are also makers, there's no doubt that you are making bugs in your applications. That's right. Because we all do that. I I'm currently doing that. I'm I'm working on a bunch of new components and new things for the new syntax website. We're working on the the third version of the syntax website.

And I know there's gonna be bugs, so I'm making them right now. So for me, right now, it's especially important that we have a tool like Sanity on our Node. So that way, when we launch this thing and when we're testing this thing and, we're able to make sure that, Node, JS fast, two, that it it actually works well, three, that it's up all the time. We have uptime monitoring through Sanity, and that our users are having a good experience without errors and bugs and all those things. And if those errors and bugs do happen, we know about it before they have to message. Because, you know, Deno who's gonna message you saying your site's broken? I mean, maybe maybe syntax listeners are more likely to do that than normal people. But if you're working on a product, man, most people aren't going to message them and be like, hey. The checkout flow didn't work. They're just not gonna buy from you. So you want a tool like Century on your side. That's sentry.i0 forward slash syntax.

Sign up and use the coupon code Sanity treat. Get two months for free. This service and tool is really something extremely important to have on your side if you are writing production grade software. So check it out at Century. This podcast is presented by Century, And let's talk all about this. You know Yeah. I think you gave a a great introduction to, you know, just sort of broadly what this is all about. I do really resonate what you said. It's not about printing the three d dragons.

You know? Like Yeah. Because there JS so much junk in those, in the maker's sites and all these things like that. There's so much junk. And, I wanted to tell my kids before it came. It's like, listen.

Sure. We can print some toys here and there. Right? But, like, this thing isn't gonna be about printing toys nonstop for you guys or just, like, fill the house with a bunch of junk.

It's gonna be, like, what can we make that is either inventive, interesting, exciting, or getting you, you know, interested in in seeing something come to life here?

Totally. And I I've sort of broken it down into a few of the different areas that I I find it to be helpful in. Because, when I posted that I got, a lot of people are like, do you have any ideas for for things to do? And it's it's not like I sit around Mhmm. Looking for things to print, scrolling through the list and whatnot. It's that there are things in my life, and and these are the categories. Right? First one is fixing things. I have so many little things that can get broken. And what do you do when something broke breaks? So for example, we needed this massive baby gate for our house. It's, like, like, 15 feet long. Right? So I found one on Facebook Marketplace, and I went to go pick it up. And the lady says, alright. Here it is. Oh, by the way, the latch is broken. I was like, oh, you guys shoulda told me that. You know? So I'm looking at it there. She's like, you could probably glue it. And it you know you Node, when you glue stuff and it it just breaks immediately, it's never gonna be the same. So I was kinda looking at it being like, okay.

I'll give you a I I offered her, like, $20 for it. I was like, you didn't tell me this was broken. She's like, alright. Fine. $20. So she took it home. I took it home, and I was like, alright. Well, took took this piece Scott, and then I was able to find a similar piece for the same gate. And then I took that, and I I extended the model.

Boom. Boom. Boom. Printed it a couple times to get a perfect fit. Slapped it in. Boom, the whole gate is is fixed. Right? And to me, I'm I'm big on on saving things and and not having to throw things out. So being able to fix things by printing a small little part, huge, huge bonus to me. Next one we have here is organizing things. This is also huge as well, like hooks, dividers, sorters, rails. So I have these little DEWALT organizers for all of my screws, and I I built some, like, wood things where I slide them in and out. And that's good, but I want them on drawer slides so I can slide it out and open it without having to take the whole thing out.

And there's people that have designed these little things that can hook them right into to rails, right, or tons of little hooks. I'm printing this whole thing called multi board where for the gym, so I can hang up all of our different attachments on it. And there's just this hue it's it's like open source software. There's millions of different hooks that people have

already designed, and you could just you can make your own or you can just download an existing one. And the organization on this stuff is is top notch. Yeah. I think that's a big thing for me. I am an organizer in general, and we we bought so many of these, like, container store bins and things like that. And they're just Yeah. They're expensive for what they are. They're just so generic in terms of, like, how they fit into your space. So you end up, like, cramming, like, several of them that kind of fit into your your your location.

We're like, with these systems, I'm really excited to start to take bins that are more not necessarily, like, I'm not gonna get crazy into the custom ones that, like, fit a pair of scissors exactly. But, like That

that seems like a bit much Wes, like, people people take what we're talking about is people there's this thing called Gridfinity Wes people take their drawer, and you you make your whole drawer into a grid. And then you can, like, make little cups and little scissor outlines Yes. For every single tool that you want. And there's no chance I would stay on that because, as soon as they get one new thing Yeah. Where JS it gonna go? What do you do? Or, like, the people that show examples, like, oh, you have three tools?

Like, literally thousands of tools. I do plan on using I that's it. I do plan on using Gridfinity for my drawers. Yeah. Just just, like, with a more generic, just, system for it. Because I have seen some really good ones for, like, especially, like, cameras and lenses of which I have, of which are just in bags and stuff. Like, I mean, like, padded camera bags and stuff, but, like, I could really use the system for that. And my drawers are definitely not being utilized, in a a good way because I just toss in there. So Yeah. Yeah.

There's a whole system out there called Underwear, which is for cable management. So you basically print you put this, grid on the bottom of your desk called multi board. That's what I've been printing for the GitHub. But then you can there's a whole system of stuff that clicks into the multi board Mhmm. For, like, power bricks and and hubs and cords and cable management and all kinds of stuff, which I very much need to do under my desk.

I heard you get to that. Yeah. The organization is is a pretty cool area.

Improving things is is another area where you have a product and you want to improve it. So for example, at our cottage, we have a little Google Node.

And where the plug is, it it sucks. Right? So we just kinda have it sitting on the ground. Right? And I just three d printed this thing. The Google Home goes in it. The cord wraps around it, and it hangs right out of the plug. That's a simple little thing. And you can buy them on Amazon for $15, or you can print one for, like, a dollar's worth of worth of filament. Randy, our our producer, he just borrowed one from his friend, and he's going bananas with printing all kinds of, like, adapters for his rack Node stuff. He printed a little monitor stand that like, it's like a little drawer that goes underneath his monitor. Basically, like, taking products that are popular and simply just improving them a little bit by adding a little adapter or adding a drawer to something seems like a a great approach.

Yeah. There's so many things here.

And another one you have here is adapting things, shop vac mounts, all all kinds of little things. If you go into any of these, you know, whatever maker apps or websites or whatever, you can just search for, I have this specific tool.

And the amount of different mounts or attachments or additions or anything onto your various Vercel, it's crazy,

the the amount of stuff that exists for this. I think that's been the most shocking thing for me is just how many things there are out there that fit everything. Yeah. Yeah. Like, it it's amazing that like, we're gonna talk about building your own things and designing your own things, but, like, at 90% of the time, somebody's already made it. And you can just go ahead and and find it. So the adapters are huge. I made a bib dryer as well that hooked on. So our sink, we have those, like, main posts where the the the water comes out. Right? And we have a little sprayer.

So I built this little, like, collar that goes on the sink and then has two little ears that come off of it, and we can take our baby's bibs and put them on that, and they just drip into the sink. You know? Like, that doesn't exist because our it's a very specific sink. You know? And I was able to just quickly mock it up and and print it, and it's so nice to be able to to do that. And then the the last thing is just, like, I I say it's just junk. Right? Like toys, fidgets, cardboard construction, We still do print quite a bit of those JS my kids love them. My daughter was bringing them to school and selling them. She got in a bit of trouble for that. I was wondering about that. I'm all for it.

Because, like, I was always, like, a little huckster as a kid, you know, bringing to the school, trying to sell it and whatnot.

So she was starting to, like, sell it for money and for what she was trading it for, like, gum and things like that. But then we got an email from the teacher, which I knew was coming, but

I I was like, go for it. Go for it until they tell you not to. Yeah. It it is funny. I I come from the the I'm sure I mean, we're from the same era. But in our school districts, it was always like, you cannot bring pogs to school because kids are trading and fighting over pogs and selling pogs and all. Like, they were that would that they were such a, you know, firm line against, like, bringing stuff to sell, yeah, on Scott property.

Nobody liked that, just specifically because of pogs. I think they were were getting out of control. There may be, you know, Pokemon stuff eventually. But, yeah, I I it JS, something that I I would encourage our kids to think of things that they could sell on Etsy even if not a single one sells just for that experience of, like, let's come up with an idea of something that you would want that you think other kids might want. Let's make it, and let's try to sell it. And, you know, you can tweak on that or whatever. It does not matter, like I said, if it sells. I just want them to get those experiences of creating a product and and really getting through that. Last thing I'll say about this is it's almost always

cheaper, faster, and and better than buying something off of Amazon, I've been been finding, because you can get it obviously, you can get it faster. It's dirt cheap to print this stuff, and it often is the exact size or the exact fit that you need and not something that is is sort of close enough to to what you want. So that's also been a a massive improvement, for this type of thing. You Node, people are always ESLint, like, it's kind of an expensive printer, but, like, even just the wall storage alone that I've printed for our gym, if I were to buy that in in pegboard and pegboard attachments or if I were to use, like, the IKEA Scott, it would have been a couple hundred dollars. And I probably paid for 20% of the printer on that that one thing itself.

Yeah. Crazy. Yeah.

So let's talk about the actual printers. We're gonna be talking about, like, filament printers, meaning that you get these rolls of of 1.75 millimeter plastic. There's also resin printers, which is a totally different ballgame. We're we're not gonna dip into that.

There are lots of different printers out there.

Right now, at the time we're recording, the some of the best ones are from Bamboo Labs, and they are a Chinese company that is aggressively taking over the space because the space is traditionally very much open source and build your own printer and, like, very community oriented. And it's a relatively large company sort of coming in. They sponsor every single YouTuber out there. By the way, neither Scott or I got our bamboos for for free. I have no contact with them if if you're wondering. But they do they literally will give anybody with a pulse, a free printer if they'll make a video about it. Yeah. Well, I like, I I thought about it, but I was like, I hate having to, like, do these Oh, yeah. Brand deals where you gotta, like, make a video and whatever. Just it's too much of a pain in the butt. And even if they're like, they sent this to me for free, but my opinions are not, you know, beholden to that. It's always like, okay. Sure.

You know? Yeah. Sure, they aren't. Yeah. They sent you a Free. But you pnpm ESLint printer for free.

Yeah. Yeah.

Which I I I'm not above, so I I will still do it yet if you like to send me one. Yeah. Just send I could take two. So, Bamboo, Get At Us. Yeah. I'll wear the hat. Which one did you get? I got the the BambooLab

x one c.

I got it in, like, a couple days after maybe, like, one day after I bought it.

My friend, former guest on the show, Topher, was like, hey. Did you get it before the tariff price increase? And I was like, what? And I got it, like, what, like, maybe 24 hours before they bumped the price by several hundred dollars. I was just gonna ask that. Yeah.

Yeah. So really lucky on that one. Holy cow. I had no idea. That's great. I also got the the x one c because three d printers are very fussy. Yes. And Bamboo has come out with this x one c. They have a couple other models as well where they take a lot of the fussiness out of it. So previously, you've had to level beds on on a lot of the models, and some of them need a heated chamber, and then there's a heated bottom. And there's just a lot that can go wrong. Think about how awful a color printer is and why literally nobody has a color printer anymore because they're so awful to work with. That that's two d. You know? If you've ever opened up a just a regular printer, there's a lot going on there. So imagine you also have to do something that is point two millimeter precision, but in every axis, and things are heated, and it's different materials, like this gummy stuff that can Sanity clog it up. And there's a lot that can go wrong. There's so many different variables. And and if you don't like that type of thing, you don't like the sort of hobby of trying to fix things and whatnot, I do like that type of thing, but I honestly don't need to fuss with something else because I have bamboo is just basically, you just buy the thing, you plug it in, and, while it is quite a bit more than than a lot of their competitors, it just it's it's like the apple of the three d printer world, whereas it mostly just works.

I gotta say. And it's really good. That was the thing I was the most impressed about about the entire experience getting up and running. I I've set up so many different tech things. I gotta say, there was so few roadblocks in getting this thing going. It's like Yeah. I was just shocked that every single thing I was supposed to unscrew had an arrow pointing to it. Every single thing I was supposed to do in step by step was perfectly outlined with no things missing. You just did it. You, you know, you set it up. You plugged in the stuff here and there. I clicked print, and the first thing I printed came out perfect. It's just like, alright. This is this is amazing, and the app is great. The, ecosystem is great. I was able to even, this morning, just click on something, a couple things on my phone and click print directly from my phone. It has a little camera inside, and I can watch it print. It's just like,

wow. It has LiDAR on it. So it what it will do is it will constantly monitor with the camera and the LiDAR. And if there is what's called a spaghetti failure, where it it lays down, basically, layers of plastic. And if one of those layers doesn't stick or the whole item you're printing becomes unstuck from the plate that it's printing on, it will just start spewing plastic into the air, and you can come back hours later and just find just this whole spaghetti, mess. So it will try to detect when that that type of thing happens, and it will pause the print and send a message to your phone. A lot of the other ones. So Elegoo, Prusa, Flashforge, there's several other big names in in the space as well that are also have similar features as well. The Elegoo Centuri Carbon is a new one that is so the one we got was let let's talk in US.

I paid 1,600 Canadian. What what did you pay?

1,500

US. Yeah. Okay. So you maybe did get some tariff then as well because No. It's like the combo.

It was like yeah. The combo price I think I'm I'm talking about, like, after tax and everything. Okay. After tax and ship yeah. I guess I didn't pay shipping. But after tax, all said and done. How about that? Okay. So they

Elegoo has one that's, like like, 300 or or $400 as Wes, so significantly cheaper. Doesn't have all of the the nice features, but it's it's fairly similar. And then also, Bamboo also has several models as well. You can go down the YouTube rabbit hole watching everybody compare them all. But if, right now, if you want just to not fuss with it, the x one c is probably your best bet. And they just about a week ago, they just announced one called the h two d, which has two nozzles.

So maybe we should talk about that as well. So if you want to print multiple colors, the x one c, you can buy it with what's called the AMS, the automatic material system, and it you can do four rolls up top.

And that what it will do is you between those four rolls, it will allow you to switch colors. So if you're printing something that is is multiple colors, like like the syntax logo right here, in my case, I printed all the black first, and then it goes and purges. It it's called poop. It poops out all of the rest of the black, and then it it loads the yellow up. And I don't have to, like, stand there and wait for it to to manually switch, which is you need something like that. Otherwise, you're gonna be manually feeding in the the filament every single time you wanna load a different color. And I bought a, like, a hundred dollar 1 at a at a Amazon return auction, just to, like, fuss with one a little bit more. And it's it's a lot of work having to do it on and off. It makes you not want to print it because it's so much extra work.

That's specifically why I got the the x one c or the bamboo in general. I was looking for specifically the thing that would be the least amount of effort for me because I Node that yeah. I need that.

In my life right now, that's what I need. Yes.

Exactly. So you you can load up all the colors that you need and and just hit print, and it will switch between the things. And you can also do multiple colors on the same layer, and it will switch between the two. It's a little bit more wasteful because every single time it switches colors, it has to to purge, the resin that's in the nozzle. And the the h two d has two different nozzles, which is both faster and is less wasteful on the plastic.

Yeah. So those are the the printers out there. I would highly recommend getting the best one that you can afford just because you're going to want to print big stuff and you're going to want to print as fast as you possibly can, because this stuff takes takes a long time to to print the these things. Like, this this Syntax logo took about two hours this morning. But I've I've done stuff that has has taken, like, thirty hours, which it's it's an absolute marathon. And even the the big pegboard that I printed, it was maybe three feet by five feet, and I think that cumulative was something like ninety hours of of printing or something like that. Just for the whole thing. You're doing it in pieces. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Every single one took about five or six hours, every single grid. And I had 24 of the grids, something like that. So it it took quite a bit of time. And, basically, every morning, I would run downstairs, grab the old one off, hit print again, and then I would I have it in my office, so I don't have it on when I'm recording because it's a little bit loud. Mhmm. But I'll try to, like, set something up first thing in the morning. I'll try to set something up just when I'm finishing work, and then I'll try to set something up overnight as

well. I have mine in the basement storage area. I I'd like to build a little workshop table for it. Right now, it's on a Oh, yeah. Plyometric box that I had not been using that I Node a long time ago. I built this, like, really sturdy, great plyometric box, and our kids are always like, what is this wooden box here for in the storage room? Oh, guys. Let me tell you. When you get to be my age, you cannot, do a bunch of jumping on boxes, at least with my knees. So

yes. Let's rattle through, a couple things I printed really quickly. So I talked about the multi board, which is really nice. Check out the multi board ecosystem.

My whole mini fridge, I redid with pop can dispensers. So it's like a bodega where they they roll forward, and that was absolutely great. Because I could never fit the pop cans perfectly in in there. And, like, that kinda thing really bothers me Wes I I wanna fit as many as I possibly can. So I I printed 11 dispensers for, like, beer and soda cans. The baby bibb dryer, I designed and printed that.

The rack, I'll I'll try to add some photos over top of here, but my audio interface my kids come in and turn the knobs on my audio interface, and they did it. I lost about half an hour's worth of recording. We had a big talk with them. This is half of a parenting issue and and half of a an access issue.

But, I finally was like, I'm just gonna I'm gonna make something. So I I made this little thing that goes it's a one u server rack cover, and then I slid a piece of glass into the front.

And it's just it's very fun to design, and it looks great. And now the kids can't get access to turning the knobs when I'm not in here.

It's perfect. It it JS a it's a great solution too. I I hear that. Yeah. Garbage bag dispenser. This one is huge for me. So we buy these, like, Kirkland garbage bags, and I found a model that you can hang under the sink in, like, the most unused piece space in our entire kitchen, which is, like, beside the sink underneath kinda like underneath, and I just screwed it in, and then you can just rip a bag out. And every single time I use them, that was Node, rather than just having, like, a random box of garbage bags under the sink taking up space.

Coffee filter holder, pretty much, like, every little aspect of my life where I'm like, that's slightly annoying.

I bet I can solve that with three d printing. Yeah. And in that regard, have you been

finding a lot of these things off the shelf on websites, or have you been designing most of them or half of them? Like, what percentage are you having to get into, modeling for these?

Probably, like, 80% of the stuff is already done. And for the rest of them, I've been trying to, like, not even look for some things because I I wanna get better and faster at modeling.

So anytime there JS something that is relatively simple, I will not even look and try to just model it myself so that when it comes time to something that is significantly harder, my skills will be there.

So for example, this morning, I was in the gym, and I I don't have a good spot to put my AirPods.

And I was like I was like putting them on the bench, but then when I go on the bench, I have to move them. And I was like, you know what I gotta build? A tiny little cup for my AirPods that has magnets in it. So one thing you can do is you can you can model something with a void that is the size of a magnet, and you can when you slice the print Wes basically, you take the three d Node. You bring it into your slicer. Bamboo Studio is is the one that I use, and you can tell it to pause at a certain point. And you basically put a pause when it hits the the layer where the void is, pop a little magnet in, and then tell it to continue.

So that's what I'm gonna do maybe tonight. I'm gonna model up a little AirPods holder that has a magnet in it, and then I'll be able to slap it on my rack and be able to to put my AirPods in it. So just, like, little things like that. Like, that probably exists already, but I'm it's specifically not looking for it because I wanna get better at it. Rec City. What kind of, little magnets

are you using? Is there a standard magnet

little magnet size that they they tend to go for? I don't know. There's there's, like, three or four different Okay. So there's not warp. Sizes there. No. But they're all you could get yourself a pair of of these. These are just calipers.

Mhmm. And you just whatever you need to put in there, you just kinda measure it up, and then you can model it relatively quickly.

So and you can buy them you can buy them on Amazon or AliExpress or whatever. And for most cases, those are are pretty good.

But if you want, like, very good Sanity, go to, like, a, like, a reputable supplier that sells sells magnets.

I wanted to to to ask about the environment. You said you keep yours in your office. So you don't have it in your your workshop. Because I've been to your little workshop, and it's it's pretty dope. Why why not keep it in the workshop?

Yeah. So my workshop is actually built in a cantina, which is, we live in, like, a very Italian neighborhood, pnpm, everybody has a back porch. And underneath their back porch is, like, this concrete room. You hang your salamis, and you put your wine in there. And it's awesome, but it it gets cold in the winter.

And while the the bamboo has a heated chamber, like, it's a box that closes the door, I wasn't sure that I wanted to do that because I I wasn't sure if it it would work well. So I just put it in my office. I set it up now. I do have a couple other storage rooms I could put it in, but I kinda just like being able to look over and see how it's working. Especially when I'm changing filament colors, you can just look over at what you got in there and and set it up.

So, yeah, I've kinda like having it in my office. I was a little worried about fumes Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because you're you're obviously printing plastic. We'll talk about the types of plastic in just a second. But it's not been an issue for me except when I'm printing, ABS.

So, yeah, I like it in there. And I I I it's on top of my mini fridge. I put a whole bunch of the filament boxes that I got. I have them hanging on the wall.

And while I thought I would move it, I think I'm just gonna gonna keep it in my office because it's kind of a cool

it's a cool thing to have in your office as well. Yeah. So okay. That's a good, transition to filament. Filament is the, the types of materials that you are melting down and extruding, of which there are several different varieties. Wes mentioned ABS a second ago.

PLA being the kind of the the most common, most basic one. In fact, just about all the the the little things that I've done so far have all been PLA, but there are other types of filament that can get into different use cases.

And what's interesting is that, like, this this printer specifically can even print, like, kind of, more interesting filaments like Exotics.

Yeah. Yeah. Exotics, like, carbon fiber infused filaments or glass infused filaments, those types of things. It's crazy. It it's a wild, wild world.

So if you're just getting started, you're gonna probably start with with PLA.

And PLA is made from it's generally made from corn.

It's the same stuff that they make you know, you go to, like, a hipster coffee shop and you get the, like, biodegradable cup? Yeah. That's what PLA is is made out of. And it has a very low melting temperature. It is very easy to work with. It doesn't have a lot of errors, and it's it's relatively cheap. So that's kinda why PLA is, like, the the sort of intro one, and that's most of of what I have with this type of stuff.

PLA, they say it's it's it's, like, made from corn. It has a a slightly sweet smell when it's printing, which is kind of nice. Like, it smells good when it's printing, which is wild if you think about burning plastic smelling good. Everyone says it's, like, biodegradable.

I don't buy that. People have, like, put PLA out in their garden for five years, and it's it's really strong. No. I think it is biodegradable over, like, the course of a hundred plus years or something. Yeah. Or via, like, a commercial composting Yeah. With a high heat. So PLA is is probably the most popular. Pnpm g is, like, the second in command. PET g is a little bit more a little this is what I printed this in.

It's a little bit stronger, a little bit more weather resistant. So if you're doing something that's gonna be sitting in the sun or maybe outside or you just need, like, a little bit more strength, PET g might be the better bet. PLA is a little bit more flexible, and and PET g is a little bit more rigid. So it depends on, like, what what do you need the strength for? You know? Do you need something to be, a little bit flexible Node in that, or do you need something to be very rigid?

I've heard that ASA is good for outdoor, like and things that will be getting a lot of sun use. Yes. Have you used any of that or thought about that? I haven't even done any any ASA

yet.

I don't know. We'll we'll see. I haven't haven't dipped into too many outdoor things just yet. But the other thing about it is I don't necessarily care if if it doesn't last, like, thirty years because I could just you could just print another one with, like, a lot of the stuff. Like, the baby gate, I just printed it in PLA, and I was like, I'll see how how this holds up. And it's been the kids are slamming it all the time. You know? It's it's literally the I'll I'll post a photo of it. So PETG, you can also get clear PETG, which is kind of cool.

TPU is like a flexible one. So some of the prints I've done needed, like, a gasket in them. So one thing I did is I printed a little box for my nephew with his name on it. And for it to be waterproof, and, like, sealed really nicely, I put a a TPU gasket in it. And then I also printed a riser for my x one c. And in order to seal the glass on top, I had to print a gasket out of that. People you could print crocs with TPU, which is kinda wild.

It's kind of expensive, so you probably don't want to, but you you can. And then you have ABS, which is ABS is what you're like your plumbing, your sewer pipe is made out of.

And ABS is extremely strong. It's extremely cheap, but it's has very bad fumes.

It's both smelly, and I don't think it's good for you to breathe in, so it's not a very popular choice.

I do have a couple rolls of it, and, I had to keep the window open when I was was printing with it. I a couple tool mounts. So I've got a Ryobi eighteen gauge nailer, and I've never been able to hang it up because it's such a weird shape. And I found a hook that somebody made for exactly that model of of nailer, and I just printed the thing up, and I also printed a whole bunch of battery holders for all my tool batteries.

And, I did that in in ABS so it would be as strong as possible because I'm always hitting it and throwing stuff up on it.

And then, like, out of all of those different types, there's, like, basic.

There's matte. The matte versions look the Wes, in my opinions.

The opposite of matte is silk.

And I printed this one in in silk, and you can see a lot of the layer lines. Yeah. So the more shiny it is, the more it shows the little imperfections.

And then the more matte it is, in my opinion, the better it looks. So I've been trying to go with either just the basic PLA or going matte with with a lot of these. And then there's there's rainbow. There's galaxy. There's, stone looking ones. There's all kinds of really fun ones you can buy.

Yeah. I think, that's, my wife, Courtney, I think that's one of her problems with it is, like, she hasn't seen anything that looks like it wasn't made out of a three d printer, which I'm sure most of the things do.

So it's gonna be finding what that that right combination of things are to get it looking perfect.

The bamboo makes the everything look, like, amazing. Like, I the first couple things I printed, I posted on Twitter, and so many people were like, that looks I'm I'm just used to these, like, garbage stringy layer lines, and it looks very, very good, especially so when you when you print them, you have these different plates.

And the you can get these plates that are micro etched.

Mhmm. And this so I'm showing right now, I'm showing a rainbow star one.

This one is has, like, a rainbow glitter.

There's a carbon fiber one, this kind of, like, cool thing.

There's there's flat.

And when you print it on that, the patterns of these plates are are mirrored on your thing. So Oh, okay. That's one you can get really cool this is, like, the basic background Wes it's kind of just a pebbled look. It looks really nice.

I didn't I didn't realize that. That's interesting.

Yeah. There's it's a it's a wild world going into all the different all the different upgrades and whatnot.

Yeah. I've been watching so much three d printing YouTube. I know all of the top 10 upgrades you need to make to your x one c right now. Oh, yeah? Yeah.

So good.

So on when you buy a spool of of bamboo filament, it comes with a little RFID tag in it. And when you put it into the AMS on top of the printer, it scans that RFID tag, and it it automatically tells you in the software what colors you have in.

And if you buy filament that is not from bamboo, like, I have a a spool from Sunlu here, you have to manually go in and and do that yourself.

People are working right now on they figured out how to cryptographically decode all of those tags. And then there's also several other projects out there right now which are trying to replicate the Scott of the same experience Wes you just you'd tap a filament spool against some sort of RFID reader, and it will send that data over to your your printer over MQTT.

So I bought a Proxmark three, which is for reading and writing RFID tags, and, I'm gonna be getting into that. But what I've what I've been doing is I'm just taking the RFID tags off of the bamboo ones, and I'm putting them on the equivalent of third party spools.

And it it works it works great. No problems. I've been the bamboo filament is a little bit expensive, but it's it's very good. But I've also bought lots of of cheap filament, and that stuff has been I've had almost no issues, except I had one clog from the marble PLA.

And I think it's because I don't know. There was a little speck of something in that PLA that got caught in the extruder, and I had to I had to do a process where I pulled out the filament and, I I found it. It was like a little speck of something that was clogging it up. Interesting. So in in your experience, you have gone cheaper. And when you go cheaper, where are you getting that filament from? In Canada, at least. The bamboo filament, if you buy four or more, is $19 or $20 a roll, which is 14 and a half bucks US, for a refill.

And it's great because you can reuse these spools, and you just slap it on there. It comes with it. So it's honestly not that bad of a deal if you're buying the refills, and they just stay in the system, and it just works. You know? But the thing is that there's so many cool colors that bamboo doesn't have, so I've been been trying to find them from all over the place. So I have found really good success on on Amazon in Canada.

I've found one really good deal. I think it was a misprint.

I found six kilograms for 66 Canadian, which turns out to be 11 CAD to USD is $7.88 Canadian, which is really, really cheap. So I bought 12 in just, like, matte white because I've I print so much, like, tester stuff, and I was like, I just need, like, a really cheap filament. And it's been been absolutely awesome.

So Amazon's really good. Amazon warehouse returns.

When people return stuff to Amazon, they often put it back for sale for 40% less.

So if you check, there's a website Deno forager.com.

Just search for Filament. You can often find really good deals on there.

I just ordered some, like, 30 kilograms off of Timu, which I might be a scam. I don't know. But, like, it it shipped, and it shipped via FedEx. And the FedEx is telling me that it is the same weight as as I would expect.

But, like, I think every now and then, these sellers on on Tmoo and whatnot will put stuff really cheap so they can they can drum up a bunch of reviews.

So I I found it, and I was like, holy This is really, really cheap.

So I ordered, like, every color that they possibly had, and now the price has gone back up. So we'll see if I get a box of rocks or Scott. But it was, like, something like $8 a kilogram, which is less than half of what I normally can buy it on I love your adventurous spirit here in these types of things. I don't think I would if I were to see that, I would be like, that's a scam. I'm not doing it. I was just like, well, like, why not? You know? Like, there's there's there's zero risk.

The people are always like, oh, you're they're gonna steal your credit card. They're not gonna steal your credit card number. Like, it's No. They might steal your money, but they're probably not gonna steal your credit card. Do, then you just you get it back. You you file a chargeback or you you contact them and say that I didn't get what I wanted.

Yeah. Zero zero risk, I think.

We'll see. I spent a couple hundred bucks on, maybe a box of rocks, but but stay tuned.

I found a bunch on on Facebook Marketplace as well because, like, a lot of people get into three d printing. They print a couple snakes, and, then they're like, oh, I don't know what else to do. So they they sell it all, and and that's often a good spot to find a whole bunch of, filament. You do have to be careful because the the filament absorbs water. It just from the humidity in the air. So I have all of my filament in these boxes, which are Vercel boxes.

In the lids of these boxes, I printed these little desiccant holders.

And you put you know, like, you buy a pair of shoes, and it's like, do not eat.

You can put desiccant beads in there, and then that goes, in the lid of the the box, and that keeps the humidity low in there. But if you have a roll of filament sitting out apparently, if you have it sitting out for too long in a humid environment, which in the summering in Ontario, it is extremely humid here,

it starts to absorb water, and then that can affect the the quality of your prints quite a bit. Yeah. And that that I'm that's one of the reason I'm thinking I'm sure there's still moisture in the air in Colorado here, but it's so dry, that, like Probably not. I'm lucky I'm gonna have to worry less about that. What kind of bins are those? Like, you said they were,

cereal Bos. Yeah. In the in the three d in the three d printing world, there's, like, this is, like, the bin. This is what everybody does. And the all they call it is the the Vercel bin with the hex on top.

And that you can buy them on Amazon, and there's a thousand different sellers of them. People have built rollers that you can roll it on. I built these little, humidity sensor holders for each of mine, and then there's these little label holders. I gotta put the labels in it yet. But,

You're you're gonna have individual

humidity sensors on every single one of those? Yeah. I do. I'll, I'll throw up a a photo of it right Node. But I have I think I have a wall of 22 bins right now, and every single one has its has its own humidity sensor in it, just so you can kinda keep an eye on on what everything is like. That's always the joke about three d printing JS people just buy a three d printer to buy to three d print buy three d printer stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. To buy stuff. It's it's it's a hobby, You know? And and people love getting really into the hobby, which I am I'm big on that. I, I feel you.

Models. Let's talk about where to get them. Makerworld is the model from Bamboo, like, the kind of, like, GitHub of models. Again, there's a lot of drama around them because they were they're doing a bunch of, like, scraping and and whatnot, but it's pretty good spot to find models. Printables, Tangs, Thingiverse, there's lots of different model marketplaces up there, and you pretty much have to, like, search them all. And I use a search engine called Yegi, y e g g I, and this will search all of the different models. Because the people who are the best at designing this stuff are often uploading to different like, printable seems to be the one where, like, the smartest people are.

You you kinda wanna search them all when you're looking for something, especially for something extremely niche, like a bracket for a baby gator or something weird like that. But it's surprisingly you you'll be surprised at how many things are already out there. Yeah. I was shocked, honestly. That was the most impressive thing when I started looking. The one thing about Maker World is that they give people you get this thing called boosts every now and then, and then they give people points for how many downloads and boosts they have. So it's it's almost like another social network where people are vying for your boosts because you can then if you have a very, a model that goes extremely popular, you can you can make quite a bit of points for them, and then you can you can turn them into filament or you can buy another printer with them.

So people spend a lot of time, like, mocking up the landing pages and doing examples, and, like, it's just this whole whole thing, which which I appreciate. I think the thing I appreciate the most is the comments from people. You know? I printed this, and it didn't work. Or I had to size it up a little bit, or it was a little bit tight.

So it's it's great to have such a big community around these things.

Yeah. Yeah. Very impressive. I wanna talk about modeling and designing your own. So how how deep are you getting into three d modeling? Because I I actually did do three d modeling, but it was in college, and I haven't, really done a whole lot of it since. So I'm, you know, a little rusty in this regards. I I know the basics, but I'm definitely rusty.

Yeah. I

have modeled, I think, about 10 things so far.

And the first time that I did it, I was so extremely frustrated with these apps, and I didn't know you know, like, when you're using an app and you don't know what you're doing, you're just trying to click on something, and you're like, how do I just click on that thing? You know? Yeah. And I had to I had to sort of, like, peel it back and watch a whole bunch of tour tutorials on, like, the fundamentals behind it. So this is idea that you sketch out what you want in two d first, and then you can extrude things.

And then you can also have, like, relations between things. So if you wanna scale it up or down, what happens when you resize one of these items? There's different planes. So, for example, this this Syntax logo right here, the Syntax yellow is on top of some some black. Like, what would happen if I increase the height of the black? Should the should the yellow go up, or should it stay where it is? You know? Like, there's all these different constraints, and it really gives me a new appreciation for just design in general. I find myself just walking around looking at every single product in the world, being like, how did they model that? And you start to see everything in the world just broken down into rectangles and circles. Yes. A combination of Node basic shapes. Yes. Just rectangles and circles, and then you chisel away and and merge things.

Extrude.

But I've I've I feel like I'm I'm, like, pretty comfortable with it. I'm I'm not at a point where I'm, like, an engineer. I'm gonna build a car.

But for the basic stuff that I'm doing, whereas I just need to build this thing, it really doesn't take all that much if you're a relatively competent developer who is used to taking on a new thing and learning something.

So I in terms of apps, I tried three of them. So I I first tried Fusion, which is from Autodesk.

Then I tried Shapr3D, and then I tried Onshape. So Onshape is browser based, which I was really excited about, but I found it to be a little laggy in rendering and switching between like, if you have multiple models open in their, like, tabs, I found it to be a little laggy, which kinda killed me because it's it's the web. You know? So, Shapr3D is by far the most user friendly, especially for somebody doing it brand new. I gave it to my daughter, and they have an Apple Pencil. And she was, like, extruding stuff and making a teacup, but it's really expensive. It's, like, $40 a month or something. So I ended up going back to Fusion, and I was wrong about it at first. I was really frustrated. I thought it was garbage. But, like, Fusion is what most of the industry uses, not just three d printer, but anyone who's building, like, real products.

They're likely using Fusion.

And once you understand how everything works, there's bazillions of tutorials out there. Every single time I need to know how to do something, I just search it. There's always some, like, six minute YouTube video that I can learn how to do it. So and it's it's free for makers, so you're not gonna be paying for it as well. You can you can have 10 models at once, and then you can just turn your older models off to read only. And you could just keep making more and more.

Nice. Is there any particular YouTube channel that you found to be the best

for this or just you're looking things on a NASDAQ basis? I just I literally just type in exactly what I want. Mhmm. And then I will find that. I also found it really helpful to just search on TikTok and watch people build something from scratch because it's not like I, like, I don't know what I'm looking for in a lot of the cases.

So watching some it's it's like coding tutorials as well. I don't necessarily know what to search for.

But if you just, like, watch something someone build something from start to finish, you find out, oh, I didn't realize that tool. Oh, okay. I see what you did there. Oh, you have to do a sketch on, like, a you gotta add another plane on top of that thing instead of sketching it from the z axis flat. I don't know. It's it's really fun. Like, I I really enjoy it, and I'm I feel like I'm getting pretty good at it after maybe a month of of doing it. And, like, I'm not even this is this is just in the evenings. I poke around it. I had it for a couple hours here and there.

So it's it's been pretty good.

Yeah. I love to hear all that. Modifying existing models. So most of the models you find online are STLs, which are like a mesh.

And when you edit in Fusion, it's not it's not a mesh. It's it it understands, like, what your sketch is and and what you've extruded. And it's actually really cool because I realized it's fusion is just a giant state machine.

You can spend, like, an hour building something, and then, like, I realized, Scott.

I made that thing too small. So you can go back to the very first step, change something, and in most cases, it will ripple the changes. It will replay the your entire timeline of changes on top of that change, And you can always scrub back and forth in your entire timeline and change stuff at any point in time, which is like like a state machine or like a like a time travel debugger.

And I thought that was was really nifty as well. But what was I saying? Existing models, STLs, they're meshes, and they're a little bit harder to edit, which is kinda frustrated. It's kinda like the compile compiled code.

So sometimes authors will upload their original, like, fusion files, which is really nice.

But other times, you just have to there are some tools in fusion for converting meshes back to to Fusion files, but in my experience, it's been kind of tricky, and I haven't gotten really good at that just yet.

Yeah. So let's talk about code in AI. I mean, we're we're programmers, and we can, you know, automate things or do things with code. Have you go too much in using code in this space? Because, I don't even know what's out there, honestly.

Yeah. Coding them. This is kind of an interesting world as well because not only can models be generated by clicking around in, like, fusion, but you can also generate them with code.

And there's this whole idea of, like, parametric models, meaning that you you can have, like, a a base Node, like, let's say, for example, a hook. And and you can build a parametric where literally every aspect of that hook is like a variable.

Mhmm. Or if you have, like, a grid and you wanna be able to say, I want it to be eight inches by 11 inches and and four by three grid. And there's just there's, like, bento boxes and all of this kind of cool stuff. So these, like, flexible models or generated models, are really interesting to me. And I'm just like, like, what are people using? So it seems that there's something called OpenSCAD, and it's its own language that is used. It's similar to JavaScript, and it's its own language that you can use to basically model out in code.

It's been way easier just to visually look at and click on the pieces that I want, but for some things that need to be a % generated based on all of these different variables, it's a really interesting place.

And then there's also Manifold CAD, which is built in JavaScript and is on has its own, like, rendering engine.

Wow. And it's I I have a a link to the example of of Manifold CAD here.

You can basically have access over every single piece of it, and you can you can generate things and and then export them to STL files and go ahead and print them. So I would like to get a little bit more into that, especially for things like like drawer integration and whatnot. I'd like to build something where you can push buttons on a website and immediately see it.

There's this, like, Bento website, bento3d.design.

Mhmm. I don't know that what this is built on, but it it allows you to build a little box with a lid.

And you can literally shared this with us. Yes. This is what Topher gave us, and it's it's so cool. You can customize every little thing. So if you ever need a box for something, you Node, like, I have this, one thing that we three d printed for the kids was cardboard tools.

So it's a cutter, a perforator, and a screwdriver, and then you three d print all these little, screws.

And you can use it to attach pieces of cardboard together. So you can make armor. You can make forts. You can make anything that you can imagine with a whole bunch of cardboard.

And I made all these I printed all these three d, cardboard tools, and I was like, well, I need a box to, like, keep them in. You know? So I just measured the tools, and then I went on this Bento website and generated a box that will exactly fit them.

Wow. Man, this thing rules.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a it's a pretty pretty wild world. And, like, I realized that, like, there's just so many little, like, rabbit hole aspects of three d that like like, this is not even touching game design. This is not even touching it's kinda touching product design, but then there's, like, the coding aspect to it.

But then there's, like, Blender as well, which is a whole another world as well where people are building like, Blender has the ability to have, like, variables in it. You can see it in real time.

And then then there's AI.

There's a whole bunch of kinda neat stuff in in AI for this. There's some people working on, like, a chat like, a cursor for three d.

I haven't tested any of them yet because they all seem to be coming soon or very early.

Mechagent.com is the one that seems to be coming soon. I don't know if this is real or not, but Yeah. They seem to be like, they have a little chat panel Wes you tell it, make the bumps a little bit bigger.

Yeah.

So I imagine that that will come with time.

And then there's also, like, MCP servers for Blender and for Fusion that people are sort of working on, but, again, very early days for this type of thing. But I would imagine we'll start to see, like, a Copilot for three d start to to pop up relatively soon. And then there's these Hunyun three d, which is a a model from Tencent, and you can upload just photos to it, and it will kick out a three d model out the other end. It's not very good. Yeah. But it's still impressive. I like I three I took my a photo of every angle of myself, and then I I three d printed it, and it it didn't really look like me. I I think you can much better just use, like, a newer iPhone that has the, like, lidar or something in it and just, like, actually scan your face. You'd probably get a better And they do make scanners out there,

ranging from really impressive expensive ones to really,

cheap and unimpressive ones. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. Like, the Xbox Kinect is is a three d scanner. Right? And I don't think the resolution is very high, but depends on what you're trying to scan. Like, if you're trying to scan something really tiny like an action figure figure, or you're just trying to scan, like, a headlight for a car Yeah. Maybe maybe that would would work as well. But world. That's Holy cow. It's it's a cool world. We've talked about it for an hour. I could I could talk about it for for a thousand more. There's so many things we didn't touch upon. But Yeah. Give me a year in a month, and I'll be in the same, universe. I I I've printed now four things, so I'm, Like, maybe we'll do it, like, a a follow-up as well because, again, I'm I'm only, like, a month and a half in. I feel like I'm in a spot where I can confidently talk about most of the things, and I feel like I've hit a lot of the issues.

But those people that have been at this for ten years, you know, they they know absolutely everything.

Word. Cool.

Well, thank you so much for this. I I, really personally appreciate it because I'm gonna I got a lot to go on here. I I've, been my mind is open. I I'm in the Node. So, I would love to check-in in a little bit. Now let's get into the part of the show where we talk about sick picks, shameless plugs, things that we are liking, enjoying right now.

And yeah, I I don't I don't know if you wanna if you got something ready to go or if you wanna think about it for a sec. Yeah. I'm gonna I'm gonna sick pick the

AMS riser, for the the Bamboo x one c. Hey. So this is literally something that you three d print.

It takes, like, three kilograms of filament. So this is a absolutely monster ESLint, and it print it's already been chopped up for you and everything. You just you just download it, and you can print all the different pieces. You pick your colors. And what it does is it sits in between your printer and the the AMS and gives you some drawers and then gives you the ability to take the glass off if you need to stick your hand in there or if you need to cool it off a little bit. And then all of the the build plates as well just slide in because there's all these, like, little tools that you have with three d printing, and it's nice to have somewhere to to put them all. So this just gives you an idea of, like, some of the high quality things that that people are uploading to the three d printer.

This is not just like a a crappy dragon. This is some actual really nice things, like, fairly high precision as well. I printed mine in I was hoping to get my, like, cobalt two blue.

Mhmm. But the the Amazon photo was much darker than I actually got, but I decided to roll with it. And then the one drawer, I ran out of yellow.

So I had I I had to, like, plug in some green, and I think I'm gonna keep it like that. It kinda fits my personality of not being perfect.

Yeah.

Oh, man. That that yeah. That's neat. I I have seen some other people make similar things, so that looks, dope to me. I I'm going to sick pick a an eye mask. Since my concussion, I've been having a hard time sleeping.

And one of the things that's been helping me lately is this cheap, like, Node silk eye mask, which has got, like, an adjustable thing. I yeah. I always thought eye masks were for, like, I don't know, grannies and a or, like, guy wearing a he's calling a candle and he's in, like, a nightgown kinda deal. You know, he's walking around. But I gotta say the eye mask works. I, there are some times where our room is certainly not as dark as I'd like it to be. Our, like, blinds are not blackout blinds. There's lights everywhere. It does not get that dark. So, hey, I found that the darkness has been helping me. And, honestly, I thought wearing an eye mask to sleep would be invasive or annoying, but I haven't really noticed it. So not bad. Awesome. That seems that's good. My my kids all wear eye masks when they're trying to fall asleep as well. So it's No way. I should try it. Yeah. Courtney Courtney's been wearing one now for, like, half a year, and I think she's been seeing great results from it. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah.

But we're gonna shamelessly plug the syntax YouTube. We've been doing the CSS battles over there that have been a lot of fun. We recently did a a JavaScript, clash of code, which was hilarious, because a certain someone likes to use way too complex solutions for a challenge that you're supposed to be completing as fast as possible. So it it is a a lot of fun. There's a lot of laughs. The whole thing is just just a blast. It it is just great. So so check it out on on the Syntax YouTube.

Yeah.

Cool. Alright. Thanks, everybody, for tuning in, and let us know your thoughts on three d printing. We'd love to hear us. Tweet us, Scott, whatever way you wanna get in touch.

Peace.