Who I am

I am a lifelong tech enthusiast with an engineering background and a career in IT that now spans more than thirty years. Professionally I head up IT — the kind of role that keeps you close to systems thinking, problem-solving, and an appreciation for things that work reliably. Outside of that, 3D printing has been a consistent thread through my life for well over fifteen years. Not as a side interest. As a proper, ongoing, slightly obsessive hobby that has survived every phase of the technology’s development, from the chaotic early days to the surprisingly polished machines sitting on my desk today.

I got into 3D printing at a point when getting into it meant building the printer yourself. My first machine was a RepRap — assembled from a kit at a time when the community was small, the documentation was patchy, and a successful print was genuinely something to celebrate. It needed constant adjustment, the tolerances were loose, and the failure rate was high enough that patience was less a virtue and more a survival requirement. But it taught me how these machines actually work from the inside out: the mechanics, the thermal system, the relationship between settings and output. That foundational knowledge is still useful today, even though nothing about modern printing resembles that experience. I still have the RepRap. We will look at it properly in a future post.

Today I run a Bambu Lab A1 with AMS Lite as my daily machine, and the contrast with where I started is difficult to overstate. The A1 is fast, consistent, and reliable in a way that early FDM printers simply were not. It has shifted the focus from keeping the machine working to actually doing things with it — which is where the interesting part has always been.

Why I started 3DBite

For years I kept notes on my prints in a text file. Settings, outcomes, what worked, what did not, what I would change next time. It was useful as a personal reference but it grew unwieldy fast, and a flat text file is a poor format for anything involving images, tables, or the kind of structured comparison that makes print notes actually actionable.

I had owned the 3DBite.com domain for over ten years without doing anything with it. At some point the decision made itself: the text file needed to become a proper workshop log, and the domain was sitting there waiting. So 3DBite became what it is now — a record of real projects, real materials, real results, and real failures, written in a way that I hope is useful to people who are at a similar stage to where I have been at various points in this hobby.

When I first got serious about 3D printing, the information landscape was frustrating. Beginner guides covered the absolute basics. Advanced technical content assumed you were already deep in the weeds. The middle ground — practical, specific, grounded in actual print experience rather than datasheet theory — was hard to find. That gap is what 3DBite is trying to fill. Not a beginner’s introduction and not an engineering deep dive for its own sake. Just honest, useful information from someone who has been doing this long enough to know what actually matters.

What I print

The honest answer is: a wide range of things, for a wide range of reasons.

A significant portion of what comes off the printer is functional — things that solve a specific problem or replace something I would otherwise buy. A modular Nespresso pod dispenser that lives on the kitchen counter. Cable management clips. Brackets. Organisers. Parts that do a job and do it quietly, without anyone necessarily noticing they are 3D printed. These are the prints I find most satisfying because they have a clear purpose and a clear measure of success.

Another large category is gifts. There is something genuinely different about giving someone something that has been made specifically for them. Mario and Luigi figures for a godson who is obsessed with Super Mario. A festive lamppost for the hallway — and then a second one in black for my mother when she saw it and immediately asked for her own. A large-scale Rudolph with a light-up nose that took several days of print time and a lot of eSun PLA+ and earned every gram of it. These projects take longer and require more planning, but the reaction from the person receiving them is worth the effort in a way that a bought gift rarely is.

I also print for the technical interest of it. Articulated models. Print-in-place mechanisms. Multi-material builds that push what the A1 and AMS Lite can do. Occasionally something goes wrong in an interesting way and the failure itself becomes the useful content — like the translucent red nose on Rudolph that came out stringy and is still on the reprint list. Those honest accounts of what did not work are as useful as the success stories, sometimes more so.

I often modify models before printing. Changing support strategies, adjusting tolerances, tweaking geometry to improve strength or ease of assembly. The design process is as interesting to me as the print itself, and my engineering background means I tend to approach it methodically — understanding why a model is designed the way it is before deciding whether to change it.

Materials I work with

My daily filament is eSun PLA+. It is consistent, widely available, competitively priced, and covers the vast majority of what I print. I use it across virtually every colour in my rotation and it has earned its place as the default through repetition rather than marketing. When I need something more capable — better heat resistance, outdoor durability, flexibility — I move to the appropriate material for the job. PETG for functional indoor parts that need more toughness than PLA offers. ASA for anything going outside. TPU when flexibility or impact absorption is the requirement.

I have covered ABS and ASA in detail in the Materials section, and more in-depth material guides are in progress. The short version of my materials philosophy: use the simplest material that meets the requirements of the part. PLA+ solves most problems. Everything else is a considered step up for a specific reason, not a default upgrade.

The AMS Lite on the A1 has opened up multi-colour printing in a way that has changed what I reach for when choosing a project. Colour-changing prints, multi-material functional parts, decorative models with sharp colour separation — all of these are accessible on a machine that fits on a normal desk. It is one of the things that makes the current era of desktop printing so much more interesting than where I started.

My approach

Methodical. I track settings, make notes, and try to understand the cause of both successes and failures rather than just moving on. This is the engineering habit and it transfers directly to 3D printing — a discipline that rewards systematic thinking and punishes the approach of changing three settings at once and wondering why the result changed.

I am not chasing speed benchmarks or pushing machines to their limits for the sake of it. I am interested in consistent, repeatable results. A print that works reliably at 80% of maximum speed is more useful than one that theoretically works at 100% but fails one in five times. That preference for reliability over spectacle shapes everything I publish here — if I share a profile or a workflow, it is because I have run it enough times to trust it.

I am also honest about what does not work. The trouser supports on the Mario and Luigi figures that needed changing before the overhangs printed cleanly. The Rudolph nose that needs a reprint with better settings for translucent red. The settings that looked right on paper and were wrong in practice. These are not embarrassing admissions — they are the useful part of a real workshop log rather than a curated highlight reel.

What you can expect from 3DBite

Everything published here is something I have actually printed, tested, and formed a view on. There are no sponsored placements, no paid reviews, no content produced for engagement metrics rather than genuine usefulness. If I recommend a material, it is because it performed well in my hands. If I flag a limitation, it is because I hit it.

The site covers three main areas. Projects are real builds — what I made, why, how I made it, and what I would do differently. Guides are the technical content: materials, settings, techniques, and workflows explained clearly and practically. Materials is the growing reference section covering filament types, properties, and real-world behaviour rather than manufacturer spec sheets.

3DBite will keep growing. More projects, more material deep-dives, more guides on techniques that I think are underexplained elsewhere. The goal has not changed from the text file it replaced: a useful record of what actually happens when you print things, written for people who are past the basics but not necessarily trying to become engineers.

Get in touch

If you want to suggest a topic, share something you have printed, point out something I have got wrong, or just talk about 3D printing — reach out. The community around this hobby has always been one of its best features. People share what works, flag what does not, and help each other get better results. 3DBite is my contribution to that. I am glad you found it.