The actual theme of this day was “your newest special interest”. At the time of writing, that would have been 3D printing, but that was quite a few weeks ago, and I have had other desired outcomes lead to deep rabbit hole spelunking.
That is a rather peculiar observation about me: I will start to want to do something, and thus be quite interested in doing it properly; for certain values of “properly” at least, and up to a point.
And/or learn something new, begin fumbling about, and going deeper and deeper into understanding the why of something.
But anyway. 3D printing. The trajectory from “finding cool designs that work well enough” on MakerWorld (which, tbf, is the best way to solve a problem – don’t do it yourself!) to “mess around in FreeCAD for a few hours to make a player card insert for Catan” was pretty fast. And, ofcourse, Gridfinity is excellent. More efficient storage (and some downsizing while I had everything out) made 4 Ikea Helmer drawer units fit into 2, with some room to breathe.
3D printing is it’s own rabbit hole. Apparently, beyond certain filaments being better suited to particular tasks, how filament is stored also matters. PETG really really likes water, for example; so a filament dryer can be quite useful. And the filament can be calibrated further, to have a bespoke profile. Also results are best if temperatures around the print head and bed are consistent, so an enclosure can be useful.
And, as I touched on above, the beauty of 3D printing is having a thought and making it manifest, cheaply and easily. And, because my principles do matter to me sometimes, I chose FreeCAD. Less turnkey than Autodesk Fusion, but also completely free.
And here is another rabbit trail. FreeCAD is more than a little particular to use, while being very powerful. Thus, there are some workflows that make less sense than others just because, and an order of operations that matters greatly. And why the hell is my sketch still unconstrained?
Having a whole model break because of one change is rather something too. So powerful, yet so brittle…