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The past two weeks went by faster than a sprint finish! Time for a pit stop: plenty of progress has been made, though the ultimate goal — a 3D-printed frame with bamboo tubes — is still on the horizon. First up: a design sprint where I drew all the lugs. The first print? A flop. But honestly, that failure was the best teacher. It pushed me to try a new approach: milling the tubes so they slot neatly into the lugs. That way, the bamboo’s outer diameter lines up nicely with the 3D-printed parts. Will it be strong enough? We’ll find out soon. ...

Your browser does not support the video tag. Note to self: if a print pops loose… just slap on a brim and try a different orientation. Easy fix, lesson learned. ✅ Next, I cooked up a set of rigs for the very first lug. These are my secret weapons for filing the bamboo tubes down to the perfect diameter. The big rig clamps right into the vise (yep, totally over-engineered… but that’s how I roll 💪). The smaller ones slide over the tube with a 1 mm tolerance so I can mark the exact circle I need to file. And the hole at the bottom? That’s the final boss. If the tube slips through, I know I’ve shaved off just enough material. ...

🚀 Carbon-Fiber Filaments: The Turbo Upgrade for 3D Printing Sprinkle chopped carbon fibers into your usual plastics, and suddenly you’ve got superhero materials: stiffer, lighter, and way less prone to warping. But beware—CF filaments are not all equal. Some happily run on hobby printers, others demand a machine that’s basically a small furnace. Here’s the cheat sheet: the most common carbon-fiber filaments, with specs, perks, pitfalls, and best use cases. ...

Today wasn’t exactly a productivity powerhouse. Probably not the most exciting devlog entry either, but consistency matters — so here we are. The morning was spent measuring stuff for another project (details skipped for now). After that, I rushed to the office to get back to this project. Just for fun — and aesthetics — I’ve started painting one of the parts. First step: filler + sanding. One round down, many more to go until things are nice and smooth. I’m still undecided if painting is the way to go, since it adds a ton of extra work when building a frame. But hey, it’s worth a shot. One lug in particular has a pretty gnarly overhang, and filling it makes the layers way less visible. Next up: I want to reprint the last model so I have a second sample to work on. Today’s goal is making small tweaks and preparing for that. ...

A Surprising Start New day at the office, new surprise. Even though I had already spotted it on the Live Feed, it was still a bit of a shock to see the printer in the morning: the print had shifted halfway through. Frustrating, since an error like this means hours of work down the drain. What Is Model Shifting? Model shifting in 3D printing happens when the layers no longer line up, leaving a visible step or offset in the object. Common causes include: ...

Loading 3D model… 📏 Measure ↺ ⛶ Please enable JavaScript to view the 3D model.

Today I made a huge step forward in printing carbon-reinforced polyamide (PA12CF). Contrary to what you often read online, it turns out that a little extra cooling is actually recommended. Not a major adjustment in the print settings, but the effect is impressive: print quality has visibly improved. An unexpected win. Why PA12CF? Carbon-reinforced polyamide, often called PA12CF, is a high-performance 3D printing material. It combines the toughness and heat resistance of nylon (PA12) with the stiffness of chopped carbon fibers. The result is: ...

Over the past weeks I’ve been working on a way to not only write my devlog in Obsidian, but also turn it directly into a publishable website using Hugo. The result: I can now write, build, and publish without ever leaving my favorite environment. And honestly, it feels incredibly smooth. Installing Hugo Before I could start, I had to install Hugo locally. Fortunately, that’s quite easy: Download Hugo from the official site: https://gohugo.io Extract the file and place hugo.exe in a folder that’s in your PATH (for example C:\Hugo\bin). Verify the installation with: hugo version If you see a version number, you’re good to go. ...

This day was dedicated to getting the printer production-ready, with the target of producing a high-quality 3D Benchy test model. The start wasn’t ideal: extrusion problems caused by filament jams slowed things down and turned the morning into a troubleshooting session. Surface Modeling Research While the printer was running test prints, I used the downtime to dig deeper into surface modeling techniques. Autodesk Inventor has surface tools, but they’re nowhere near as advanced as platforms like Alias or Rhinoceros. Instead of hitting a wall, I began looking up tutorials for those programs, hoping to adapt their workflow ideas into Inventor. Even if not all techniques carry over, the design logic behind them is valuable. ...

This day brought a mix of progress and setbacks. I made my first real attempt at designing a seat lug using surface modeling. While I did manage to create a shape, the result wasn’t good enough to meet my expectations. It was a valuable learning step, but I’ll need to refine my skills further before getting a usable design. Printer Setup and Material Challenges On the practical side, I prepared the printer for more consistent output. One issue came from the PA12CF spool: it’s slightly too wide for the CFS system to handle properly. As a workaround, I unwound a couple of meters from the spool. That helped a little, but it’s not a perfect fix. To really tackle print quality, I decided to invest in a new heater, which I ordered from Amazon. The goal is to stabilize the room temperature at around 70 °C — the recommended level for properly annealing these prints. ...