Practical 3D printing, one project at a time

What I am printing right now

The desk has shifted focus over the last few weeks. The A2L has settled into proper daily use rather than sitting there as a novelty, and it is currently carrying anything that needs the bigger bed. The dual BMCU setup on the A1 is still an ongoing project, but eight colours in a single job is now reliably reachable rather than a lucky outcome, which was the whole point of the exercise.

The interesting new thread this week is TPU. I have started actually testing the iron-on t-shirt transfer method I wrote up recently: print a design in TPU onto baking paper, iron it onto a shirt, no heat transfer vinyl or screen printing gear required. The write-up is getting more attention than almost anything else on the site this month, so if you missed it, it is worth a read: How to Use Your 3D Printer to Make Custom T-Shirt Designs. First cotton test shirt is through its wash cycle as I write this, results soon.

The plane radar project is also done, and it has turned into one of my favourite things on the desk. The ESP32 Plane Radar combines a tiny microcontroller and a round display with live ADS-B aircraft data, and having it sitting there quietly tracking whatever is flying overhead never gets old. It went together cleanly, the parts cost next to nothing, and I liked it enough to print and build a few more, one for the desk and a couple as gifts.

On the radar this week: The LightMake L4 landed with some big claims about solving the multi-colour waste problem using four independent print heads, and ColorSmith, the HueForge creator’s new colour-reduction tool, is worth a look if you have ever found HueForge’s palette step fiddly.

Head to the Projects section for the full build logs, settings, and honest notes on what worked and what did not.