I’ll third it, I used Solidworks before, freecad was fairly easy to adapt to before the 1.0 release, workflow is even nicer now, trying to convince my dad to move to freecad over paying for a sw subscription now that he’s retired.

I’ve seen mention that stuff like the odbc connection manager have parts dating back to 3.1

I’m not sure how bambu studio does it (use prusa/superslicer) but chiming in because I was trying to figure this out last year doing a large ish batch of keychains for a friend and was fighting a bit with it, probably is a way of doing it all in freecad but the image was my biggest issue.

I ended up doing things in blender to subtract the image and the slicer itself, did a text object, positioned it where I wanted, merged the objects and marked the text as a negative volume (think that’s the term, might be subtract) so it was subtracted when I sliced it, might help in your case?

I was wondering if it was some sort of alignment/clamp for something like pipes or rods, or maybe some sort of bushing/bearing holders (think linear rods). Your tuning looks great btw, look pretty nice even in the worst case lighting conditions, adhesion not an issue doing this way? My dad asked me to print some stuff he designed for his beekeeping tools, has a bearing surface that’s awkward to print accurately, I’m probably going to revisit that with this as inspiration, other than the helper ears I see on the build plate anything else you did?

To ask questions, for the application does dimensional accuracy actually matter? AFAIK rebar isn’t exactly the tightest wrt tolerances (I know flat products, not long products, but knowing what hotroll coils look like I’m assuming it’s similar), could probably have gotten away with a different orientation and could probably have avoided supports (I find arches print nicely). Having said that though, thinking strength might be another reason to print the way you did, face down and you have shear & torsion in between layers, thinking that’s still a concern if you printed it standing, but yeah, just thoughts.

Edit: also spy kapton tape, did you find the bubble insulation made much of a difference? I’m putting what’s basically heat barrier fabric on the interior as a first try, I grabbed some rock wool and bubble insulation but it’s thick enough that I’m mildly concerned with it interfering with the gantry, having everything off for some refurb and wow I forgot just how close everything is, they really didn’t waste space eh?

Softening and that, maybe? But it really depends on the filament brand too, as far as I’m aware, acetone doesn’t readily dissolve in acetone which is what’s meant by not doing much

Petg is pretty resistant, why PETs used for bottles.

Personal experience cleaning up clogged nozzles by immersing them, yeah acetone barely touched the petg

Petg inside the enclosed though can definitely have a short service life, the original x axis idler on my mk3s gave up the ghost after a month or so of pretty consistent printing of abs in the summer, had expected it so i the first thing I did in abs was a set of prusa spares which lasted until I did a bear mod last year.
There’s obviously variation in filament though so YMMV, petg is still a solid material to use if you don’t have an enclosure (though I’m always recommending then if only for gasses and fine particles while printing)

I’ve found it varies from manufacturer to manufacturer as well as colour, some of the petg I’ve got has been chilling in my cabinet in the garage for at least 1 summer and it prints fine, just some stringing, other spools they’re a mess right out the bag. Still worth drying filament, but more so stuff like nylon which is extremely hygroscopic.

Haven’t looked into it but do shops offer lube analysis services? Yeah you could send out your own sample to a lab, having it as a shop service would be way more accessible to people.

Though, in my experience, getting people to commit can be a pain, lots of “yeah I know we have a long p-f interval and it’s super noticeable before it functionally fails, but it’s not that much effort so I’m doing needless maintenance anyhow just in case”, which end of the day you do you.

Mmmm, yeah that sucks, that first block I mentioned was an older style that wasn’t fixed in place and I must have twisted it accidentally after a nozzle change, super slow leak just enveloped the thing, didn’t help there either!

i was thinking along those lines for equipment monitoring stuff, klipper works with Prometheus & grafana (have metrics from my printers), was thinking about looking at using the extra accelerometers I have to do something like vibration monitoring.

I could see using a second sbc for extra sensors as well for support, thinking about printers that don’t run klipper, so long as you can correlate data it should still be useful. Honestly kinda thinking something similar to PLC data, was fantastic for fault finding and failure investigations, also useful for process control + condition based maintenance, there’s a heck of a lot that could be done with it.

Edit: You have me thinking about this now, what would be really cool is an ability to anonymously federate data tied to events, I recall some enterprise software I used like 5-6 years ago could do this with condition indicators, I have 2 machines, I won’t see every failure mode, but if we had 1000 machines you can get much more accurate information about things like MTBF. Heck I’d even just be happy with some community FMEAs, really just thinking of taking a technical approach to my printer maintenance and usage.

What type of filament? Acetone doesn’t do much to things like pla or petg, stuff that works aren’t things you generally want around the house, industrial solvents and stuff. The jar of acetone can soften it up some but you’ll need to soak for some time, I’ve used MEK too, but that’s in the “don’t keep that at home” category, it’s really flammable and should use ppe (I mean should use ppe for a lot of the stuff we use, 99% IPA is harsh on your skin, I use nitriles because it irritates my hands something fierce.)

Cold pull as others recommended, nozzles are consumables, def should keep some around. Cleaning filament works pretty well in my experience if you have a partial clog.

I’ve been there though, first block I didn’t use a sock and the set screws got encased in degraded petg, I ended up scrapping it and putting it on the shelf as a learning moment, def recommend a sock if you don’t have, it’s saved me a lot of grief.