Four Weeks With the Kobra X: Why I’m Sending It Back
The Kobra X is going back. I want to be very clear about what this post is and what it […]
Reviews & Radar
This is where new printers, tools, software, and products get a proper look. Reviews and Radar covers the hardware I am considering, the tools worth knowing about, and the launches worth paying attention to — written from the perspective of someone who prints every day rather than a lab running benchmarks. Some of these are machines I own and have tested. Others are products I am watching closely, evaluated honestly using independent reviews and real-world community data. Nothing here is sponsored and nothing is written to a brief. If something earns a recommendation it is because the evidence supports it. If it does not, that gets said too.
5-Axis 3D Printing: The Next Leap Forward (and Why It Reminds Me of CNC)
CAD/CAM machines went 5-axis decades ago. The manufacturing industry understood the advantages — better surface finish, stronger parts, elimination of
Bambu Lab A2L: The Full Specs, the Strategic Play, and What It Actually Means
The initial reaction post covered my first response to the A2L announcement — underwhelmed, no dual nozzle, vinyl cutter not
The Industry Is Quietly Moving Toward Tool Changers — And It Matters
The shift is quiet because it has not announced itself dramatically. There has been no single product launch, no single
Bambu Lab A2L: Bigger Bed, Vinyl Cutter, and the Dual Nozzle That Never Came
Today is June 1st. The A2L has been announced. I am underwhelmed. That is not the reaction I wanted to
Elegoo CANVAS: The $55 Multi-Colour System That Has Everyone Talking
Fifty-five dollars. That is the price Elegoo has put on multi-colour 3D printing capability for Centauri Carbon owners, and the
Bambu Lab A2L: “Extra Large” A-Series Teased for June 1st — and It Might Be Everything We Asked For
Earlier today Bambu Lab posted on Threads: “Scaling up your imagination with #A2L. See you June 1, 4 PM CEST.”
The Gap Between Review Units and Real Ownership
Professional printer reviews are useful. They are also, by their nature, incomplete. A reviewer who receives a machine, spends two
Bambu Lab Under Formal Investigation for Open Source Violations: This Just Got Very Serious
When we covered the original OrcaSlicer controversy and then the PR crisis that followed — the GamersNexus post, the $20,000
OrcaSlicer 2.4.0 Alpha Adds Kobra X Support — and That’s Not the Biggest News
OrcaSlicer dropped its 2.4.0 Alpha build on 25 May 2026 and the release notes make for genuinely interesting reading. The
InfiMech MX Pro: Eight Toolheads, Zero Purge, and the Machine I Didn’t Know I Needed
I wrote a post not long ago titled Are We Entering the AMS Arms Race? — a survey of every
Are We Entering an AMS Arms Race?
When Bambu Lab launched the X1 Carbon in 2022 with the AMS — the Automatic Material System — they did