I’m reflecting on the 3D printer and how it’s been working for me, and overall I’m very happy. For something I build from plans but with a lot of my own design, it’s working very well.

Some notes so far:

• I used a caliper to measure my cubes. They are, in fact, exactly 20mm on every face. They did not shrink. That’s great news.
• slic3r is a great program. In addition to letting you preview layers, it has scaling features. Using those I scaled the 20mm cube by 200% today and thus printed a perfect 40mm cube (confirmed by the calipers).
• The blue tape is an excellent bed for PLA prints
• There are a lot of available things to print on the internet, but now it’s time to learn blender and make some of my own. There are things I want to print that no-one else has designed yet, so now it’s my turn. 🙂

Today I’m printing a lens gear for the Canon DLSR. I doubt it will fit in the underwater housing (or interlock with the control wheel if it does, but it’s a start and I can then work with designs to create my own focus and/or zoom gears down the road.