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Dryer knob broke so I carefully engineered a temporary fix while we wait for the replacement part.
(pawb.social)
this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2026
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I'm not horrible with CAD, but I always forget how to print. Well, not so much "forget" as "can't be bothered to sort out the software".
I have a MakerBot Replicator Mini which I bought second-hand. It only works with an old version of MakerBot's proprietary software, which is only available for Windows. I've since switched to Linux on all of my machines, so I'd have to do a lot of fiddling to get it to work.
Maybe the software works on Wine, I haven't tried yet. I don't really want to run a Windows VM just for this, but it's much more likely to work. Getting the STLs into the MakerBot software would be pretty annoying.
If I was more enthusiastic about it, I might want to replace the brains of the printer with something more universally supported, so it just works on standard 3D printing software. But it's so low in my priorities list that I don't think I'll ever do that.
Maybe I should just look for a makers space where there are public 3D printers that you just pay per print. But I don't know if there are such places in my country at all, let alone my city.
I got myself a printer with a 370°C hot end so I can print all of the filaments, including stuff that gets used in areas like an engine bay or needs to be very robust mechanically. If I'm not gonna learn some basic CAD, I might as well sell it and not think about 3D printing.
If you're not already used to any CAD software, I really recommend FreeCAD. It used to be pretty horrible, but the recent releases (1.1 especially) make it genuinely excellent IMO, quite a lot more user-friendly, and fun to use. It's still got a learning curve to it like literally any professional/creative software, especially those as complex as CAD, but there's a strong community with plenty of tutorials and resources that you can learn from.
I have heard that it's much harder to learn if you're already used to other CAD software, with one Lemmy user telling me it's far worse than switching between any other two CAD solutions. But since you don't have that baggage, I think you can do alright.
FreeCAD is not user friendly. Even with tutorials it never seems to behave the same way twice.
FreeCAD is what I made an attempt at last year when 1.0 was released. There is a bunch of great tutorial videos and files out there, so there's definitely no lack of resources. It's more a "I need to be willing to dedicate time to learning it on a regular basis" problem. I learned some basics, printed one or two of my creations and then stopped for some reason. Now I gotta start at zero once again.
Linux and cad or slicer software don't get along, i found out. I mean i didn't try suuuper hard, but definitely not out of the box. With a grudge i reinstalled windows on my laptop to use it just for cad and printing. A horrible experience to beginn with, but everhthing worked. The next day, the laptop suddenly had no internet connection. It could find every wifi network, except my own. I reinstalled everything and it worked. Used my wifi to print, nice. Next day, same thing. No internet, my wifi was gone. I'm no computer wizard, but usually i'm pretty good at dinding solutions online and fix problems. This one is so ultra specific that when you look for something like: can't find wifi or whatever, everything else comes up. I had wifi, it worked... Twice. Anyway, i fucking hate windows
Slicers on linux work just fine. At least the ones I've tried. With CAD you have a bit limited options. FreeCAD is fine if you need a new knob for your appliance or something relatively simple. OpenSCAD can do pretty wild things but learning curve for it is pretty steep. And then there's browser based cads but they tend to have monthly subscription. Plus of course Blender, but I wouldn't count that as CAD-software and that if something needs time and effort to learn.