• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • My Social Media
  • About
    • About Mark Draughn
    • Testimonials
    • Other Authors
      • About Gary Olson
      • About Ken Gibson
      • About Joel Rosenberg
    • Disclosures
    • Terms and Conditions

Windypundit

Classical liberalism, criminal laws, the war on drugs, economics, free speech, technology, photography, sex work, cats, and whatever else comes to mind.

Joining The Cult

February 6, 2025 By Mark Draughn Leave a Comment

Standard "Benchy" 3D printed model in green PLA against a white background. Benchy is a small stylized cartoon-like boat.

I’ve been curious about 3D printing for years. It’s cool technology that looks like fun to play with. The problem was that I didn’t have many ideas about what sorts of things to make with a printer. I’d feel pretty silly if I spent hundreds of dollars on a printer and then didn’t use it for anything after the first week. For that reason, I could never justify the cost enough to actually buy one.

Then a few months ago a friend showed my wife and I some cool things he was doing with his 3D printer. On the way home, we got to talking, and it turns out my wife also had been thinking about getting a 3D printer, but she wasn’t sure she could justify it either. We decided that if both of us were interested, maybe that was justification enough, so we ordered a 3D printer as a Christmas present to ourselves.

It finally arrived a few days ago, and of course I just had to print a “benchy.” That’s a stylized cartoon-like 3D boat commonly used to evaluate 3D print quality. Although small and quick to print, it has a number of features that present a range of challenges to printing systems, and there’s a guide to check the measurements of the resulting printed object.

Now let’s just hope we find something else to print, or that’s a very expensive toy boat.

Note: For those of you who want to know, we bought a BambuLab P1S because Bambu printers have a reputation as being easy to use out-of-the-box without a lot of tinkering. (I don’t mind tinkering, but it tends to become a time-sucking trap, and we wanted to spend our time printing things.) We also needed an enclosed printer because we have cats, and we didn’t want them trying to play with the moving print head. We also got Bambu’s AMS system to automatically switch between 4 spools of printing filament. The benchy model pictured above is printed with Bambu PLA Basic green filament.

Related

Share This Post

Filed Under: Maker

Reader Interactions

Leave a ReplyCancel reply

Primary Sidebar

Search

Recent Posts

  • Talking to my fellow libertarians about DOGE
  • Late night thoughts on the current crisis
  • Joining The Cult
  • Trump’s dumb attempt to define sex
  • Some advice for my transgender readers in the new year
  • Decoding Economics: Happiness and Taste
  • Decoding Economics: The Real Economy
  • Of Guns and Groomers

Where else to find me

  • Twitter
  • Post
  • Mastodon

Follow

  • Twitter
  • Mastodon

Bloggy Goodness

  • Agitator
  • DrugWar Rant
  • Duly Noted
  • Dynamist
  • Hit & Run
  • Honest Courtesan
  • Nobody's Business
  • Popehat
  • Ravings of a Feral Genius

Blawgs

  • a Public Defender
  • appellatesquawk
  • Blonde Justice
  • Chasing Truth. Catching Hell.
  • Crime & Federalism
  • Crime and Consequences Blog
  • Criminal Defense
  • CrimLaw
  • D.A. Confidential
  • Defending Dandelions
  • Defending People
  • DUI Blog
  • ECIL Crime
  • Gamso For the Defense
  • Graham Lawyer Blog
  • Hercules and the Umpire
  • Indefensible
  • Koehler Law Blog
  • Legal Satyricon
  • New York Personal Injury Law Blog
  • Norm Pattis
  • not for the monosyllabic
  • Not Guilty
  • Probable Cause
  • Seeking Justice
  • Simple Justice
  • Tempe Criminal Defense
  • The Clements Firm
  • The Trial Warrior Blog
  • The Volokh Conspiracy
  • Underdog Blog
  • Unwashed Advocate
  • West Virginia Criminal Law Blog

Bloggers

  • Booker Rising
  • Eric Zorn
  • ExCop-LawStudent
  • InstaPundit
  • Last One Speaks
  • Leslie's Omnibus
  • Marathon Pundit
  • Miss Manners
  • Preaching to the Choir
  • Roger Ebert's Journal
  • Speakeasy Blog
  • SWOP Chicago

Geek Stuff

  • Charlie's Diary
  • Google Blogoscoped
  • Schneier on Security
  • The Altruist
  • The Ancient Gaming Noob
  • The Daily WTF
  • xkcd

Resources

  • CIA World Factbook
  • Current Impact Risks
  • EFF: Bloggers
  • Institute for Justice
  • Jennifer Abel
  • StrategyPage
  • W3 EDGE, Optimization Products for WordPress
  • W3 EDGE, Optimization Products for WordPress
  • W3 EDGE, Optimization Products for WordPress
  • Wikipedia
  • WolframAlpha

Gone But Not Forgotten

  • Peter McWilliams

Copyright © 2025 Mark Draughn · Magazine Pro On Genesis Framework · WordPress

Go to mobile version