We all know materials like Nylon and TPU typically print better after a run through a filament dryer, but when it comes to PLA and PETG, things get a little less certain. Some swear by a pre-print bake for flawless results, while others think it’s a waste of electricity. I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. Drying diehards (dryhards?) are probably doing it more than they need to, while those who think it's an overblown 3D printing trope are missing out on the benefits.
Where do you draw the line?
Tripo’s upgrades, Nano Banana 2 integration, and in-platform editing tools, let you tweak, fix, and export 3MF files without ever leaving the app.
Tough, durable, and chemically resistant, this new glass-fiber reinforced TPU is a technical composite for demanding environmental and mechanical conditions, say Rosa3D. At a Shore hardness of 75D, it bends, but it'll take a lot to break.
Newcomer Duroxen has taken to Kickstarter to get its eponymous desktop CNC lathe off the ground and into your workshop. But what is a lathe even, and what does that sub-$1,000 pledge get you?
The Pro4's upgraded heating unit may finally deliver the solid temperature consistency your moisture-sensitive filaments have been asking for.
It's the real deal, launching last week after a short debut at Rapid + TCT. The Canvas filament changer unit – along with all the components needed for the upgrade – costs $55 from Elegoo's webstore. If you order one now, though, you’re in for a wait. Lead times have ballooned; first-batch orders ship this month, but an order placed today won’t leave Elegoo's warehouse until late August. Oof.
You use your machines for hyper-specific household fixes and functional engineering: 52% of you said as much in a poll late last year. Last weekend, we sorted the "Browsers" from the "Creators" and found a surprisingly close split: 57% of you upload the models you design, while 43% strictly download and print.
This weekend, we’re looking at that 43%. If your public profile is still sitting at zero uploads, I want to know what’s stopping you. Is it a lack of time, or are your designs just too niche to be worth sharing?
As part of Anthropic’s Claude for Creative Work launch, Autodesk Fusion is now available through Claude, turning natural language prompts into real design actions, bridging concept and manufacturable output.
Siraya Tech's one-part 3D print coating has started to roll out for a larger audience, landing in Europe, Japan, and coming soon to other regions too. The coating comes in two types for a clear or matte effect that's said to give "injection-mold" like finish to 3D printed parts.
By coordinating 100 lasers across a massive 3,050 mm build plate, this ultra-large-format system for titanium, aluminum, steel and more, eliminates the need for welding rocket thrusters or structural aerospace parts.
We spent three months print-testing the new rePETG Loopfill to see if recycled waste can deliver the strength, clarity, and printability we expect from PETG.
A quiet expansion of licensing options on Thingiverse caught our eye recently, revealing one of the first moves to reposition the site as a space for engineers to post, collaborate on, and eventually even manufacture and monetize their projects.
The wait is over but, important to note, what's now available is more than previously shown, with faster calibration tech and massive material savings at nozzle priming. It also sold out near-immediately, so you may be in for a wait before you can get one.
The open-source hardware-minded CERN-OHL-v2 licenses are now an option there – we'll be covering that in a dedicated story soon (it's a pretty interesting development).
Looking into the regular licenses offered across repositories though, we see an awful lot of dense, difficult to parse and nearly identical options. How many of you are actually affected by them, though? So let's ask the question – are you uploading models for others to use, or simply browsing and downloading files to print?
– a new Prusa subscription expands usage limits. Starting at $8.99 a month for the "Basic" tier, you get 20 GB of file storage plus HD camera streaming and longer slicing time using the EasyPrint cloud printing tool. A "Premium" tier adds even more of all three at $29.99. There are discounts for annual subscriptions.
Paid users will get access to the Prusa Connect Farm mode when it launches soon, too. Regular Prusa Connect can handle multiple printers already, but only in isolation. Farm mode treats them as nodes in a network for job assignment and other more productive usage.
This compact laser-powered system promises industrial-grade results for small shops, delivering metal parts from a scrappy little company with big ambitions.
Even plant-based PLA often marketed as "green" requires industrial composting facilities to truly decompose. This new material breaks down in ordinary landfills in under five years.
Possibly. Buried in the release notes for the latest PrusaSlicer 2.9.5 beta is a frank note explaining recent delays – it suggests the long-awaited major update is just a matter of weeks away (though curiously, "maybe more than four").
Seven years after the launch of PrusaSlicer 2.0, version 3.0 is expected to bring a massive overhaul to the tool, freshening up the UI, expanding your workflow with tabbed projects and updating the engine under the hood.
A new Kickstarter project aims to shatter 3D printing speed limits by coordinating two printheads on a single object. We dive into the clever software making it possible—and why that massive speed claim comes with a catch.
DyeMansion’s upcoming compact Powershot aims to eliminate the manual labor bottleneck with automated PolyShot surfacing for smaller workshops adopting systems like the HP MJF 1200.