Apple was stupid easy to cancel a subscription for something I haven’t been using and I replaced it with a subscription at Apple for something I needed, so I’ll call that customer service done right.

Trying to cancel a subscription with a VPN company. They have replaced customer service with an AI chatbot. This has doubled my resolve to cancel and never do business with them again.

After 12 years, finally cut the cord on Adobe. Took a long time (far too long) to find a replacement for Lightroom, but Photomator finally hit 80ish% of the feature set (good enough for my needs) and I took the leap. If Adobe hadn’t got greedy and upped the monthly charge, I’d still be a customer.

Your puny walls can’t contain me!!!

Used up some garbage silk filament to make a tray to hold spools of garbage silk filament. This is AFTER I dried it for hours and hours. This new slicer "fuzzy skin" is amazing!

Finally made an improvement to the @bambulab.bsky.social A1 that it should have shipped with: a Y adapter for one of the filament input ports. Now I can use the AMS OR manual feed with zero changeover. Good for printing one color prints with all the nonstandard spools. *cough* Printed Solid *cough*

Had to order some replacement parts for my @bambulabglobal.bsky.social original AMS. Added some build plates I’ve been wanting to get that sweet sweet free shipping. I think I’m in love with the SuperTack PLA/PETG Cool Plate.

I wonder if @prusa3d.com would consider selling the Core One as a two piece kit (frame and motors as one kit, electronics and hotend as another) so they could be ordered separately to avoid tariffs on orders over a maximum value. 🤔

Got tired of having way too many bambu build plates always in the way so I finally broke down and printed a holder for them. Really impressed for how well this design turned out. (and how much filament it used. Each side piece is 250grams!)

Trying to decide what to do with my first 3D printer, a Prusa Mk3S. Bought it in April 2020 during the pandemic to have in home hobby for the next year or two. Bought some newer printers and the speed increase is stark enough to never power this on.

Finally got all the little magnets in the AMS filament sensor back in place. Was surprised to see one of the PTFE tubes had worn out. Ordered a new set of tubes and decided to get a new spool plate and some rollers for the @bambulabglobal.bsky.social AMS to fix the broken one. (it’s an original!)

Whoever designed the filament sensor on the @bambulabglobal.bsky.social AMS filament sensor deserves to lose their engineering license. One of the little magnets flipped and it’s near impossible to get this thing reassembled.

Amolen Developing Four-Way Parallel Extrusion Filament Following Tri-Color PLA Success #3dprinting #additivemanufacturing

3D printing something to give as a gift.

Well, I was planning on switching over to and standardizing most of my filament usage to Bambu, but no thanks to the economy killing tariffs, that won’t be happening. Already missing those $13/spool refill holiday prices.

One more stupid pet trick Gemma 3 can do locally… image analysis:

Playing with LM Studio (run AI text models locally) using the new Gemma 3 LLM model:

Lukewarm take at best but Bambu does not need to be doing kickstarters at this point

Some days are just like that 🤣😅😭

A thread of the things I’ve learned about my MacMini M4 Pro: 1) Apple waited way too long for 16 gig RAM. I thought 8 gig was enough on a Mac. I was wrong, 16 gig should have been the minimum since the M1. I’m NOT bothered that the RAM is soldered on.

Looks like Creality turned on their photocopier and xeroxed the BambuLab A1 with AMS, with no cost savings whatsoever. Not impressed with this printer or it’s price. www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJ4c...

M4 Mac Mini Pro runs noticeably warmer than the M2 Mac Mini. Not sure if it’s less aluminum in the case for heat dissipation, or intentionally not running the fan (it’s louder than the M2 fan) but either way, the case isn’t cool to the touch on day-to-day normal usage.

The more I think about it, the more disappointed I am that Apple "saw" AI coming... local AI coming for privacy, yet shipped the M1/M2/M3 with 8/256 instead of 16/512 all so they could save $12/unit. They will work fine for cloud AI, but it's becoming obvious you should not trust cloud AI.

Apple Intelligence on M1/M2/M3 Macs with only 8GB of ram will be the early death of them due to page file swapping to get the AI models loaded. Excessive writes will kill the internal SSD! Hopefully Apple with switch to the DeepSeek 1.8B model to drastically reduce RAM usage.

Decided to upgrade my M2 Mac Mini to an M4 Mac Mini Pro today to continue working with local AI. Order online and picked up at the store an hour later. The migration assistant made moving to the new Mac effortless! What a difference 24GB vs 8GB RAM makes! Went from 15min/image to 30 sec/image.

Seeing the smoke really highlights what 3D printing is doing to our indoor air quality.

I’ve been thingking alot (overthinking perhaps) how to move forward with local AI testing/using. I want to do it on a Mac, but Apple’s gouging for RAM prices exceeds the value of their CPUs.

Experimented with running a local DeepSeek AI instance to rewrite paragraphs of fiction I’d previously written. It was brilliant at adding detail and vivid imagery to each rewritten sentence, but dropped the ball on the plot and context. So I’d say it’s half handy as a writing tool.

Odd... everything I say anytime facebook is open on my phone leaks into a ad sales database.

Okay, I know you guys have a lot of questions at the moment about Deepseek and AI in general so thought I'd jump on here and do a quick Q&A. Hopefully this clarifies some things

Dear heaven I wish I had a 3D printer. I just found a bunch of amazing printed Star Trek medical props that I want so bad. www.printables.com/model/797948...

Watching DeepSeek AI try to write a haiku is my new favorite thing:

My (unsolicited) thoughts on Bambu. It affects me not at all (I use BambuSlicer) but I’m still concerned because… this is DRM version 0.1 And when they get away with this you can almost start a countdown clock to them implementing a firmware change where the AMS only works with Bambu RFID filament.

I am loving the mac app Draw Things. write up a quick text prompt, tell it to generate 8 or 12 picture variants, post the best looking photo to social media. All done locally. Super easy for fun silly pictures.

Starting 2025 hoping that we see more innovation in multi-material 3D printing systems evolve. It seems everybody was busy copying the Bambu AMS, and then stopped. 4 colors, one print head, wait for Bambu to innovate then clone again.

QUESTION: Does anyone have suggestions for a small affordable production level superglue application system. Tiny squeeze bottles/tubes aren’t working for me anymore.

How about 3d printing some banana fridge magnets? My new design - for your fruity kitchen. Stack them on your fridge, your bulletin board, and so much more! Grab the files today over on @thangs3d.bsky.social today! than.gs/m/1226575 #3dprinting

It's finally done! I love this spinning tree design created by Sulena 3D Design on MakerWorld. makerworld.com/en/models/84... I used Silk PLA from Overture for the three and star. amzn.to/4fre5QS (Affiliate Link)

Things I hope to see removed or dramatically improved i the @bambulab.bsky.social H2D: 1) plate detection. Either remove it or make it useful. Don’t tell me I have the wrong plate, slice the file with all plate settings for the first layer so the file can be used with any plate detected.

From Reddit:

Used up a spool of GST and then a 2022 spool of iiiDMax red PLA for a project. Colors matched just fine. Ordered a spare roll of "just in case" iiiDMax red PLA last month that I have to use because I underestimated total amount the project needs and… THE COLOR IS DIFFERENT 🤬

Spent all day on one of my printers #3Dprinting these 26 pieces out of some old Filament One Glint filament. This stuff WOULD NOT STICK to any build surface. FInally had to use gluestick and reapply between each print. Had as much if not more waste then usable parts before it was done. *sigh*

Sharing more photos of the letter tower—this time printed with a shiny filament! ✨ I love how the finish catches the light and adds an extra pop to the design. Free download here: https://www.printables.com/model/1095253 #3DPrinting #LetterTower #ShinyFilament #Photos

This might not be just another month long hobby that gets pushed aside by the next one. There is so much I want to print! #3dprinting #boomersmakingbaddecisions

Finally using the filament runout fuction of the Bambu AMS for the first time to finish off some spools and free up some storage space.

It’s Filament Friday! Kids, you can be anything you want to be in life, but don’t become a filament addict. Storing it uses up too much space in your closets, under beds, and everywhere else. This is my Open Spools collection of filament. (Every bag & bin has dessicant that has to be dried *sigh*)