I know. As an old toolmaker that managed a few shop floors, inventory management is something I practice with a vengeance.

I agree with you about PLA, I have never dried a single gram of the stuff and I’ve got open spools being stored on a bathroom closet shelf for several years now. I’m more worried about the spools simply aging out than moisture.

PETG is more location dependent. If you live somewhere with higher humidity levels, you will need to be more careful about storage and use. My personal habit is that I take a spool of PETG out, run a quick test print and then decide if I need to dry it or not. It’s about a 50/50 thing. And for the practical things I make, a bit of stringing isn’t a big deal unless I decide the aesthetics really matter.

Marketing has really sold the idea that everyone needs multiple specialized driers, (that don’t really work nearly as well as a cheap food dehydrator for actual drying). And if you don’t spend all that money on those things from driers to special vacuum storage bags and desiccants, you simply can’t print anything.

I see a bit of under extrusion and retraction and wipe issues and possibly even coasting issues.

Remember Kiddies: Unless you are printing some of the fancy engineering filaments or you live in a rain forest, it’s not always “the filament is wet.” Let the filament tell you it needs to be dried. If your printer needs to have PLA and to a lessor extent PETG dried to within an inch of it’s life every time to get a good clean print, then your printer calibration probably sucks. Do some filament calibration tests and get your printer right first.

But that takes learning and effort.

Yeah, checking your e-steps is important for many printer brands and models as you found out. But if you want the best in calibration for your printer, use. If you follow the steps correctly and in order, you will get as close to perfect as you can get. And the reading in each step tells you the why.

OK, I’ve heard conflicting reports if it was moribund or active. Always an issue with one man shows.

Another answer to question that no one asked…

Is there any new work being done on SuperSlicer? Or is it orphaned yet.

It’s a subscription based software. And it appears that it doesn’t much care for my old Nitro 5 laptop and Fedora 42. With 16Gigs of memory and the old 1650 nVidia chipset in it. It really slammed the brakes on.

I’m using Fedora KDE 42 and I found that to run Orca well I had to switch to the flatpak of the nightly builds. It still crashes sometimes, but not very often.

Bambu Studio was stable, but I have ditched it for Orca. I also use Prusa Slicer to run my Klipperized Mk3s. Prusa Slicer has always been rock solid for me no matter the distro or OS.

Have you tried starting Orca from the command line? It should show the error of a lib you are probably missing.

You are pushing me into yet another hobby. I really want to try this! You are an evil dog!

As another fisher person, I’m interested in this. This could open a whole new world for wannabe lure makers. I can see myself dabbling in this since it appears cheap and easy enough to engage in.

Few consumer printers can print this material any better than PEEK. The Bambu H2D and Prusa’s HT90 can just do it. And $60 while cheaper than PEEK, still ain’t much of a bargin for the vast majority of hobbyists.

Yeah, they have taken some things proprietary with software and hardware. This was done in response to Chinese manufacturers, and yes Bambu in particular, taking the proprietary pathway and not giving new ideas back to the open source community.

Now, Bambu making proprietary products is well within their right. But that makes life harder for a true open source manufacturer to make enough money to stay in business. So it ain’t taking 20/10 vision to read the writing on the wall if Prusa intends to stay in business. So there is a real need to protect themselves.

If you are willing to spend the money, I would highly recommend a Prusa. The quality of service and support alone is worth the extra money. If the cost of a Prusa bothers you, I would point you at Qidi as a more budget friendly brand. If I was starting over and looking to buy my first printer, I would be looking at the Core One or the Qidi Plus 4. And Qidi is set to release their own AMS called the Qidi box for the Plus 4 here shortly.

Edit to add: There is nothing to fear from Klipper. MainSail is easy to pickup and use.

At that diameter, I would probably recommend a bottle cap thread. It’s a rounded profile that is easy to print.

Never, ever, ever do more effort than is required.

Under Quality – Layer Height – First Layer Height. Adjust the layer height as needed. Generally speaking, your first layer should be no less than half the nozzle diameter. So, a .40mm nozzle first layer height should be .20mm. Thought for larger beds, you may wish to increase the first layer height a bit to help with bed adhesion over a wide area.

My first inclination is to got to Quality – Walls and surfaces – Avoid Crossing walls and check that box. See what happens when you print your Benchy.

If you still have issues, go to you filament settings for the filament you are printing with, (the little pencil to the right of the filament box), make sure you have the Advanced slider on, click on the Settings Overrides tab and check the Length, Z-hop height, On surfaces, (select All Surfaces in the drop down box to the right), Retraction speed, (the default is fine), the De-retraction speed, (set to zero), Travel Distance threshold, Retract on layer change, Wipe while retracting, and wipe distance.

This is a start.

Having single pointed 3"-4 Buttress threads on a manual lathe for punch presses more than once and hand grinding the tool bit from 1/2" x 1" HSS, I still have some PTSD over that thread form. But hey, if you are looking to make breaching for a 16" Navel Rifle, it’s really the only game in town…

As a toolmaker, I have seen Buttress threads used in only 3 places. Large artillery breaching, punch press ball screws, and VERY high end, (read expensive), machinist clamps. I own a pair I picked up at an auction 30 years ago in a bucket of “junk”. I think they were made by another machinist for personal use.

Edit to add: Buttress threads are directional. They can be either left or right. The choice being totally dependent the direction of the force applied to the threads. The perpendicular edge is the strong part. And the direction must always be called out.

Number series machine screws get their designations from wire gage sizes that they were made from. Which traces back to several different British thread systems waaayyy back in the day. While there is no hard and fast rule, the number series screws are sometimes referred to as ‘Machine screws’ while fractional series fasteners are referred to as ‘Bolts’. No one knows why, and Whitworth is dead. (Toolmaker humor).

All actual diameters of screws are a bit under nominal for external and a bit over size nominal for internal. This is the clearance needed to make a screw and nut fit together. This all applies to metric thread fasteners also. Thread fit classes are a story for another day.