898: Every Developer Needs a 3D Printer  ## Metadata - Author: [[Syntax - Tasty Web Development Treats]] - Full Title: 898: Every Developer Needs a 3D Printer - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/5b24297a-1709-450b-bd48-c5627e0afaf4 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Kids Inspired by 3D Printing** - Scott Tolinski got his 3D printer and his kids immediately started sketching ideas to print. - They were extremely excited and printed toys and useful items within the first 12 hours. Transcript: Wes Bos I think that every developer should have a 3D printer. I have held off on it for so long and I've had mine for only a month and a half. And I have gone full tilt. I absolutely love it. I have so much to say about it. So much that I think I convinced Scott to also get one, right? Scott Tolinski Yes. In fact, mine arrived yesterday and it arrived at like 7 o'clock. And, you know, I've definitely purchased it under the guise of like, my kids will learn so many lessons from this, right? I want them to, and especially, you know, they're going to be excited by like printing toys or whatever. But like, I told them, you know, the point of this is for you guys to think about stuff that you would want. Stuff that, you know, you might want to like, even create to sell someday or even like, invent some things come up with some crazy ideas. And they both went to their rooms that night and started just sketching. It was crazy. They were so excited about it. So when it arrived, the first thing they did was just like, ooh, and ah over even like taking off the plastic of it. I've never seen them so enthralled by something. So I just arrived yesterday. I printed a couple of squishy turtles that were like built in on the machine for them. And then like a scraper that came onto it. Now I'm printing some baskets. So I'm on my fourth print and it just got here less than like 12 hours ago. So, oh ([Time 0:00:04](https://share.snipd.com/snip/74e2ba67-5826-4507-9816-7ed3f253488d)) - **Use Printables for Fixing & Organizing** - Use 3D printing to fix broken items and organize tools with custom holders and dividers. - Download existing designs or create your own to personalize your storage and repair needs. Transcript: Wes Bos And I've sort of broken it down into a few of the different areas that I find it to be helpful in. Because when I posted that, I got a lot of people are like, do you have any ideas for for things to do and it's it's not like I sit around looking for things to print scrolling through the List and whatnot it's that there are things in my life and these are the categories right first one is fixing things I have so many little things that can get broken and what do you do when Something breaks? So for example, we needed this massive baby gate for our house. It's like 15 feet long, right? So I found one on Facebook marketplace and I went to go pick it up. And the lady says, all right, here it is. Oh, by the way, the latch is broken. I was like, oh, you should have told me that, you know? So I'm looking at it there. She's like, you could probably glue it. And, you know, when you glue stuff and it just breaks immediately, it's never going to be the same. So I was kind of looking at it being like, okay, I'll give you a, I offered her like 20 bucks for it. I was like, you didn't tell me this was broken. She's like, all right, fine, 20 bucks. So she took it home. I took it home and I was like, all right, well, took this piece out. Then I was able to find a similar piece for the same gate. And then I took that and I extended the model. Boom, boom, boom. Printed it a couple of times to get a perfect fit. Slapped it in. Boom. The whole gate is fixed. Right. And to me, I'm big on saving things and not having to throw things out. So being able to fix things by printing a small little part, huge bonus to me. Next one we have here is organizing things. This is also huge as well, like hooks, dividers, sorters, rails. So I have these little DeWalt organizers for all of my screws and i i built some like wood things or i slide them in and out um and that's good but i want them on drawer slides so i can slide It out and open it without having to take the whole thing out and there's people that have designed these little things that can hook them right into Rails, right? Or tons of little hooks. I'm printing this whole thing called multiboard where for the gym, so I can hang up all of our different attachments on it. And there's just this, it's like open source software. There's millions of different hooks that people have already designed. And you can just, you can make your own or you can just download an existing one. ([Time 0:05:53](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0379aae5-18d8-4b34-8977-6589275e1815)) - **Printing Beats Buying Often** - Printing custom items can be cheaper, faster, and better fitting than buying from Amazon. - Personal 3D prints often outweigh off-the-shelf products in cost and usability. Transcript: Wes Bos Thing I'll say about this is it's almost always cheaper, faster, and better than buying something off of Amazon I've been finding because you can get it obviously and get it faster it's Dirt cheap to print this stuff and it often is the exact size or the exact fit that you need and not something that is is sort of close enough to to what you want so that's also been a massive Improvement uh for type of thing. ([Time 0:14:34](https://share.snipd.com/snip/72e2e5bb-de1e-47e1-a13e-c1d334dce74c)) - **Pick Hassle-Free Bamboo Printer** - Choose the Bamboo Lab X1C printer for reliable, fuss-free 3D printing with advanced features. - Avoid complicated printers unless you want a troubleshooting hobby; this model just works well. Transcript: Wes Bos Let's talk about the actual printers. We're going to be talking about like filament printers, meaning that you get these rolls of 1.75 millimeter plastic. There's also resin printers, which is a totally different ballgame. We're not going to dip into that. There are lots of different printers out there. Right now, at the time of recording, some of the best ones are from Bamboo Labs. And they are a Chinese company that is aggressively taking over the space because the space is traditionally very much open source and build your own printer and like very community Oriented and it's a relatively large company sort of coming in they sponsor every single youtuber out there by the way neither scott or i got our bamboos for for free i have no contact With them if you're wondering. But they do. They literally will give anybody with a pulse a free printer if they'll make a video about it. Yeah. Well, I thought about it, but I was like, I hate having to do these brand deals where you got to make a video and whatever. It's too much of a pain in the butt. Scott Tolinski And even if they're like, they sent this to me for free but my opinions are not you know beholden to that it's always like okay sure you know yeah sure they aren't yeah they sent you a but Wes Bos You're also an expensive printer for free yeah yeah which i i'm not above so i i will still do it yeah if you like to send me one yeah just i could take two so uh bamboo get at us yeah i'll wear Scott Tolinski The hat um which one did you get i got the the bamboo lab x1c i got it and like a couple days after maybe like one day after i bought it uh my friend uh former guest on the show tofer was like hey Did you get it before the tariff price increase? And I was like, what? And I got it like, what, like maybe 24 hours before they bumped the price by several hundred dollars. Wes Bos I was just going to ask that. Yeah. Yeah. Scott Tolinski I got really lucky on that one. Holy cow. I had no idea. That's great. Wes Bos I also got the X1C because 3D printers are very fussy. And Bamboo has come out with this X1C. They have a couple other models as well where they take a lot of the fussiness out of it. So previously, you've had to level beds on a lot of the models. And some of them need a heated chamber. And then there's a heated bottom. And there's just a lot that can go wrong. Think about how awful a color printer is and why literally nobody has a color printer anymore because they're so awful to work with. That's 2D. If you've ever opened up just a regular printer, there's a lot going on there. Imagine you also have to do something that is 0.2 millimeter precision, but in every axis and things are heated and it's different materials like this gummy stuff that can clog it up. And there's a lot that can go wrong. There's so many different variables. And if you don't like that type of thing, you don't like the sort of hobby of trying to fix things and whatnot. I do like that type of thing, but I honestly don't need to fuss with something else because I have a lot to fuss with in my life right now. Plug it in, and while it is quite a bit more than a lot of their competitors, it's like the Apple of the 3D printer worlds where it mostly just works. I got to say. And it's really good. Scott Tolinski That was the thing I was the most impressed about, about the entire experience getting up and running. I've set up so many different tech things. I got to say, there was so few roadblocks and getting this thing going. It's like, yeah, I was just shocked at every single thing I was supposed to unscrew had an arrow pointing to it. Every single thing I was supposed to do in step by step was perfectly outlined with no things missing. You just did it. Yeah. You know, you set it up, you plugged in the stuff here and there. I clicked print and the first thing I printed came out perfect. It's just like, all right. This is amazing. And the app is great. The ecosystem is great. ([Time 0:15:32](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4501eb42-95d4-45da-9988-0a174c0efff5)) - **Choose Filament by Purpose** - Start with PLA filament for easy, affordable 3D printing with a pleasant smell. - Use PETG for stronger, weather-resistant prints and ABS for durable projects but beware of fumes. Transcript: Scott Tolinski Filament is the types of materials that you are melting down and extruding, of which there's several different varieties. Wes mentioned ABS a second ago. PLA being kind of the most common, most basic one. In fact, just about all the little things that I've done so far have all been PLA. But there are other types of filament that can get into different use cases. And what's interesting is that like this, this printer specifically can even print like kind of more interesting filaments like... Wes Bos Exotics. Yeah. Scott Tolinski Yeah. Exotics like carbon fiber infused filaments or glass infused filaments, those types of things. It's crazy. It's a wild, wild world. Wes Bos So if you're just getting started, you're going to probably start with PLA. And PLA is made from, it's generally made from corn. It's the same stuff that they make. You know, you go to like a hipster coffee shop and you get the like biodegradable cup. Yeah. That's what PLA is made out of. And it has a very low melting temperature. It is very easy to work with. It doesn't have a lot of errors. And it's relatively cheap. So that's kind of why PLA is like the sort of intro one. And that's most of what I have with this type of stuff. PLA, they say it's like made from corn. It has a slightly sweet smell when it's printing, which is kind of nice. Like it smells good when it's printing, which is wild. If you think about burning plastic smelling good, everyone says it's like biodegradable. I don't buy that. People have like put PLA out in their garden for five years and it's, it's totally strong. Scott Tolinski No, I think it is biodegradable over like the course of a hundred plus years or something. Yeah. Wes Bos Or via like a commercial composting with a high heat. So PLA is probably the most popular. PETG is like the second in command. PETG is a little bit more, this is what I printed this in. It's a little bit stronger, a little bit more weather resistant. So if you're doing something that's going to be sitting in the sun or maybe outside, or you just need like a little bit more strength, PETG might be the better bet. PLA is a little bit more flexible and PETG is a little bit more rigid. So it depends on like, what do you need the strength for? You know, do you need something to be a little bit flexible in that? Scott Tolinski Or do you need something to be very rigid i've heard that asa is good for outdoor like and things that will be getting a lot of sun use yes you used any of that or i thought about i haven't even Wes Bos Done any any asa yet i don't we'll we'll see i haven't dipped into too many outdoor things just yet. But the other thing about it is I don't necessarily care if, if it doesn't last like 30 years, because I could just, you could just print another one with like a lot of the stuff, like the Baby gate. I just printed it in PLA and I was like, I'll see how, how this holds up. And it's been, the kids are slamming it all the time. You know, it's literally the, I'll post a photo of it. So PETG, you can also get clear PETG, which is kind of cool. TPU is like a flexible one. So some of the prints I've done needed like a gasket in them. So one thing I did is I printed a little box for my nephew with his name on it. And for it to be waterproof and like sealed really nicely, I put a TPU gasket in it. And then I also printed a riser for my X1C. And in order to seal the glass on top, I had to print a gasket out of that. People, you could print Crocs with TPU, which is kind of wild. It's kind of expensive, so you probably don't want to, but you can. And then you have ABS, which is, ABS is what you're like, you're plumbing, your sewer pipe is made out of. And ABS is extremely strong. It's extremely cheap, but it has very bad fumes. ([Time 0:31:36](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a7c26ca0-885a-44bf-82b4-de5395539769)) - **Find 3D Models Easily Online** - Explore 3D model repositories like Maker World, Printables, and Thingiverse to find many pre-made designs. - Use Yeggi to search multiple model sites at once for niche or specific objects. Transcript: Wes Bos Again, there's a lot of drama around them because they're doing a bunch of scraping and whatnot. But it's a pretty good spot to find models. Printables, Thangs, Thingverse. There's lots of different model marketplaces up there and you pretty much have to like search them all. And I use a search engine called Yegi, Y-E And this will search all of the different models because the people who are the best at designing this stuff are often uploading to different Like printable printable seems to be the one where like the smartest people are you you kind of want to search them all when you're looking for something especially for something extremely Niche like a bracket for a baby gator or something weird like that but it's surprisingly you'll be surprised at how many things are already out there. Yeah, I was shocked, honestly. Scott Tolinski That was the most impressive thing when I started looking. Wes Bos The one thing about Maker World is that they give people, you get these things called boosts every now and then, and then they give people points for how many downloads and boosts they Have. So it's almost like another social network where people are vying for your boosts. Because you can then, if you have a very model that goes extremely popular, you can make quite a bit of points for them. And then you can turn them into filament or you can buy another printer with them. So people spend a lot of time like mocking up the landing pages and doing examples. And like, it's just this whole, whole thing, which, which I appreciate. I think the thing I appreciate the most is the comments from people, you know, I printed this and it didn't work or I had to size it up a little bit, or it was a little bit tight. ([Time 0:46:17](https://share.snipd.com/snip/dba840ef-0c4a-4cd0-bdae-6bc6bbbed392)) - **Learn 3D Modeling with Fusion 360** - Use Fusion 360 as a free and powerful tool for 3D modeling suitable for beginners and advanced users. - Watch targeted tutorials or TikTok videos to learn modeling techniques quickly and effectively. Transcript: Scott Tolinski Yeah. Wes Bos I have modeled, I think, about 10 things so far. And the first time that I did it, I was so extremely frustrated with these apps and I didn't know, you know, like when you're using an app and you don't know what you're doing, you're just Trying to click on something and you're like, how do I just click on that thing? You know? And I had to, I had to sort of like peel it back and watch a whole bunch of tutorials on like the fundamentals behind it. So this is idea that you sketch out what you want in 2d first, and then you can extrude things. And then you can also have like relations between things. So if you want to scale it up or down, what happens when you resize one of these items? There's different planes. So for example, this syntax logo right here, the syntax yellow is on top of some black. What would happen if I increased the height of the black? Should the yellow go up or should it stay where it is? There's all these different constraints. And it really gives me a new appreciation for just design in general. I find myself just walking around looking at every single product in the world, being like, how did they model that? And you start to see everything in the world just broken down into rectangles and circles. Yes. A combination of all basic shapes. It's all just rectangles and circles. And then you chisel away and merge things and join and extrude. But I feel like I'm like pretty comfortable with it. I'm not at a point where I'm like an engineer. I'm going to build a car. But for the basic stuff that I'm doing, whereas I just need to build this thing, it really doesn't take all that much if you're a relatively competent developer who is used to taking on A new thing and learning something. So in terms of apps, I tried three of them. So I first tried Fusion, which is from Autodesk. Then I tried Shaper 3D. And then I tried Onshape. So Onshape is browser-based, which I was really excited about. But I found it to be a little laggy in rendering and switching between, like if you have multiple models open in their like tabs, I found it to be a little laggy, which kind of killed me because It's the web, you know? So Shaper 3D is by far the most user-friendly, especially for somebody doing it brand new. I gave it to my daughter and they have an Apple Pencil and she was like extruding stuff and making a teacup. But it's really expensive. It's like 40 bucks a month or something. So I ended up going back to Fusion. And I was wrong about it at first. I was really frustrated. I thought it was garbage. But Fusion is what most of the industry uses, not just 3D printer, but anyone who's building real products, they're likely using Fusion. And once you understand how everything works, there's bazillions of tutorials out there every single time i need to know how to do something i just search it there's always some like Six minute youtube video that i can learn how to do it so and it's it's free for makers so you're not going to be paying for it as well you can have 10 models at once. And then you can just turn your older models off to read only. Scott Tolinski And you can just keep making more and more. Nice. Is there any particular YouTube channel that you found to be the best for this? Or just you're looking things on a NASNIC basis? Not really. Wes Bos I literally just type in exactly what I want. And then I will find that. I also found it really helpful to just search on TikTok and watch people build something from scratch. Because it's not like I don't know what I'm looking for in a lot of the cases. So watching some, it's like coding tutorials as well. I don't necessarily know what to search for. But if you just like watch something, someone build something from start to finish, you find out, oh, I didn't realize that tool. Oh, okay. I see what you did there. Oh, you have to do a sketch on like a, you got to add another plane on top of that thing instead of sketching it from the Z-axis flat. I don't know. It's really fun. Like I really enjoy it. I feel like I'm getting pretty good at it after maybe a month of doing it. And like, I'm not even, this is just in the evenings. I poke around it. I had it for a couple hours here and there. So it's been pretty good. ([Time 0:48:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bbe2936b-8e67-43a5-beb3-df168c59e178)) - **Fusion Models Are Easier to Edit** - Fusion 360's design history acts like a state machine allowing easy edits anywhere in the timeline. - Editing mesh STL files is harder compared to parametric model files, which preserve editable features. Transcript: Wes Bos So most of the models you find online are STLs, which are like a mesh. And when you edit in Fusion, it's not a mesh. It understands what your sketch is and what you've extruded. And it's actually really cool because I realized Fusion is just a giant state machine. You can spend like an hour building something. And then I realized, shoot, I made that thing too small. So you can go back to the very first step, change something. And in most cases, it will ripple the changes. It will replay the entire timeline of changes on top of that change. And you can always scrub back and forth in your entire timeline and change stuff at any point in time, which is like a state machine or like a time travel debugger. And I thought that was really nifty as well. But what was I saying? Existing models, STLs, they're meshes, and they're a little bit harder to edit, which is kind of frustrating. It's kind of like the compiled code. So sometimes authors will upload their original like Fusion files, which is really nice. But other times you just have to, there are some tools in Fusion for converting meshes back to Fusion files. But in my experience, it's been kind of tricky. ([Time 0:53:02](https://share.snipd.com/snip/263e9378-02b9-4e2f-9774-d52de1805b4d)) - **Code Custom 3D Parametric Models** - Use code-based tools like OpenSCAD or ManifoldCAD to generate parametric 3D models for variable customization. - Websites like Bento allow quick creation of custom boxes with adjustable dimensions online. Transcript: Scott Tolinski Yeah, so let's talk about code in AI. I mean, we're programmers and we can automate things or do things with code. Have you dove too much in using code in this space? Because I don't even know what's out there, honestly. Wes Bos Yeah, coding them. This is kind of an interesting world as well because not only can models be generated by clicking around in like Fusion, but you can also generate them with code. And there's this whole idea of like parametric models, meaning that you can have like a base model, like let's say, for example, a hook, and you can build a parametric where literally Every aspect of that hook is like a variable. Or if you have like a grid and you want to be able to say, I want it to be eight inches by 11 inches and four by three grid there's just there's bento boxes and all of this kind of cool stuff so These like flexible models or generated models are really interesting to me and I'm just like well like what are people using so it seems that there's something called OpenSCAD and It's its own language that is used. It's similar to JavaScript and it's its own language that you can use to basically model out in code. It's been way easier just to visually look at and click on the pieces that I want. But for some things that need to be 100% generated based on all of these different variables, it's a really interesting place. And then there's also Manifold CAD, which is built in JavaScript and has its own rendering engine. And I have a link to the example of manifold CAD here. You can basically have access over every single piece of it and you can you can generate things and export them to STL files and go ahead and print them. More into that especially for things like like drawer integration and whatnot i'd like to build something where you can push buttons on a website and immediately see it um there's this Like bento website bento 3d.design i don't know that what this is built on but it allows you to build a little box with a lid yeah to, Topher shared this with us. Yes, this is what Topher gave us. And it's so cool. You can customize every little thing. So if you ever need a box for something, you know, like I have this, one thing that we 3D printed for the kids was cardboard tools. So it's a cutter, a perforator, and a screwdriver. And then you 3D print all these little screws. And you can use it to attach pieces of cardboard together. So you can make armor, you can make forts, you can make anything that you can imagine with a whole bunch of cardboard. And I made all these, I printed all these 3D cardboard tools. And I was like, well, I need a box to like keep them in, you know? So I just measured the tools. And then I went on this Bento website and generated a box that will exactly fit them. Scott Tolinski Wow. Man, this thing rules. Wes Bos Yeah. Yeah. It's a pretty wild world. And like, I realized that like just so many little rabbit hole aspects of 3D. This is not even touching game design. This is not even touching. It's kind of touching product design. But then there's the coding aspect to it. But then there's Blender as well, which is a whole other world as well, where people are building. Blender has the ability to have variables in it and you can see it in real time. And then there's AI. There's a whole bunch of kind of neat stuff in AI for this. There's some people working on like a chat, like a cursor for 3D. I haven't tested any of them yet because they all seem to be coming soon or very early. Mechagent.com is the one that seems to be coming soon. I don't know if this is real or not, but they seem to be like they have a little chat panel where you tell it, make the bumps a little bit bigger. Yeah. So I imagine that that will come with time. And then there's also like MCP servers for Blender and for Fusion that people are sort of working on. ([Time 0:54:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b2ef13fc-27fc-4890-8457-eeb54156b2a5)) - **Custom AMS Riser for Printer** - Wes Bos printed a large AMS riser to improve his Bamboo X1C printer's functionality. - He customized the print with different colors and organized his 3D printing tools in its drawers. Transcript: Wes Bos I'm going to, I'm going to pick the AMS riser for the Bamboo X1C. So this is literally something that you 3D print. It takes like three kilograms of filament. So this is an absolutely monster print. And it's already been chopped up for you and everything. You just download it and you can print all the different pieces. You pick your colors. And what it does is it sits in between your printer and the AMS and gives you some drawers and then gives you the ability to take the glass off if you need to stick your hand in there or if you Need to cool it off a little bit. And then all of the build plates as well just slide in because there's all these like little tools that you have with 3D printing, and it's nice to have somewhere to put them all. So this just gives you an idea of some of the high-quality things that people are uploading to the 3D printer. This is not just like a crappy dragon. This is some actual really nice things. Fairly high precision as well. I printed mine in... I was hoping to get my like cobalt 2 blue but the the amazon photo was much darker than i actually got um but i decided to roll with it and then the one drawer i ran out of yellow so i had i had To like plug in some green and i think i'm going to keep it like that. It kind of fits my personality of not being perfect. A little fun. ([Time 1:01:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/29f946ec-fa11-475c-87f8-25a6cfa3d194))