With more filament brands phasing it out in favor of ASA as the better, safer alternative, the answer for most is probably "not recently."

We don't really use ABS much in the All3DP print lab anymore, and a poll we conducted about the best-selling materials across dozens of brands placed ABS nowhere on the list. Today, it's a hyper-niche holdout – a long way from its abundance in the early days of desktop 3D printing.

Despite being acquired twice in the past 14 months, the company is still innovating and releasing new products, specifically, four new cheerful colors of its signature Onyx GF, a chopped glass fiber-filled nylon exclusively for its FX-series industrial 3D printers. Designed for color-coded tooling, fixtures, and safety indicators, the material embeds color directly into the filament so there's no more painting or labeling. Onyx GF also comes in new white and grey. We're excited to see Markforged in the capable hands of Stratasys with that deal officially closing soon.

Snapmaker's U1 toolchanger has dropped back to its post-Kickstarter, pre-retail price of $849 as a part of the company's tenth anniversary celebration. That's good news.

But the great news for U1 users is that Snapmaker is fixing to bankroll community development for the printer, and has launched a $150,000 Innovation Fund. $50K is already set aside for the developers that shaped the printer's launch and early months, but $100K is still up for grabs. Over two rounds, 40 projects can win cash backing following an 80/20 split of expert judging and community voting.

Last weekend's poll suggested a staggering 85% of us are in team toolchanger. The technology is firmly taking root, and with the number of options available to buy today, it comes as little surprise.

But what is it about toolchangers that put one on your wishlist?

but indulge me a moment as two passions of mine have inexplicably collided: 3D printing and Rocket League.

While the just-launched season 23 of the game brings the expected roster of unlockable goodies including goal celebration animations, car decals and titles, there's also, for reasons unknown, a Benchy.

Available as a topper (read: hat) for your car, the model – now famously public domain – is an odd inclusion for a game about rocket-powered car soccer. Credit to Redditor Ok_Debate9268 for first flagging it on the r/3Dprinting subreddit.

A paper published in ScienceDirect's Additive Manufacturing Letters journal details the algorithmic benefits of wave-inspired path planning for flat, unsupported overhangs – similar to arc overhangs we've seen before, but cleaner.

As with arc, seeing it up close it looks nothing short of magic. The paper's author points to OrcaSlicer and PrusaSlicer forks with the feature enabled, so you can try it out (provided you're comfortable compiling the software yourself.)

FDM’s dirty little secret is Z-strength: layers that cool too quickly before the next layer arrives making prints delaminate like a stale croissant. Researchers at Germany's OTH Regensburg want to fix that with a laser-enhanced FDM printhead that preheats the surface just before fresh filament lands. Laser-assisted FDM has been studied for years and shown to improve layer bonding, so why is it still mostly trapped in the lab? Cost, safety, and reliability may all be culprits. Still, if this approach works commercially, FDM’s Z-strength problem might finally meet its Bond villain.