Happy 40th to me~

Some folks would celebrate this milestone with a midlife crisis car.

I’m celebrating it with a midlife crisis 3D printer.

The best part is that I both know _absolutely nothing_ about 3D printing nor do I have any room in my condo (especially in my office) for this. But hey, midlife crisis gadgets aren’t supposed to be practical

Anyway, time to go watch some youtube videos on how to use this thing!

Set up the Bambu X1C, here’s the obligatory Benchy test print!

Already I’m getting texts from my mom with 3D printing requests from the kids: my niece wants a unicorn-shaped cookie cutter and my nephew wants a model of an electrical transmission tower

Today I learned that the desiccant packs that come with the AMS are _not_ supposed to be thrown away, rather, you’re only supposed to throw away the outer layer of plastic and then put the desiccant back into the AMS compartments (which I thought were just vents).

…oops

I printed a second Benchy today because I wanted to try a different kind of filament - this one used PLA-CF (carbon fibre) instead of PLA-Basic.

When I tried to print the Benchy model using the built-in menu, it wouldn’t let me select the PLA-CF from the AMS as an option (it showed up, but was greyed out). Instead I used the Bambu app on my phone to find a community Benchy model, and that one let me select PLA-CF in the options when I went to print (though it did give a warning that it might not be compatible with the AMS - but some googling indicated that this warning can be disregarded if the filament came from Bambu itself).

The print job took twice as long as the first time, I’m not sure if this is because of the filament change or if there is some difference in the model itself, but it came out a lot more detailed (particularly with the text on the bottom of the boat and the visibility of the layer lines). The only error I spotted was a vertical line at the back of the boat that shouldn’t be there.

I also have some PETG-CF and PAHT-CF filament, will give those a try in the coming days.

…the kids are gonna have quite a few Benchys in their stockings this year