There was a stretch of time I was looking at videos of budget gaming PC builds and they'd be like "How to build a gaming PC for $150" and a lot of them went like "Buy a used Optiplex for $120, max out its RAM for $30, then use this GTX 2080 I got from nvidia for free because I have two billion subscribers."
Me: Should I buy a prebuilt 3D printer?
Reddit 3D printing sub: Oh, heck no. I put mine together for $18.22 plus some spare parts from seven printers I got of craigslist for $1 from some widow. Only took me three weekends to do it, plus a couple hundred hours to update the firmware to match the parts and troubleshoot it.
Me: Uh, so does it print better than the one I could just buy?
Reddit: Well, I'm still tuning it for all my filaments. I've been through about 40kg, and I've got a trashcan full of benchys though. The last few have been pretty good.
Building a 3d printer is really its own hobby. You don't build a 3d printer because you want to print stuff, you build one because you want something to tinker with
Yeah those communities are wild. Before I bought my own printer I thought 3D printing is mostly fixing your printer and buying better parts and bed leveling and tuning etc.
Wasn't looking forward to it so I bought an off-the-shelf printer with minimal assembly from a "boring" Chinese brand - couldn't be happier with it, it just prints without any hassle and I have no urge to switch firmwares or tinker with the printer itself instead of with the printed stuff. To each their own I guess.
(Still plugged in a raspberry pi for octoprint and did some initial calibration for the filament of course ...)
There is no world in which that machine is under a million dollars.
Hear me out: what if you made it entirely from parts created by a larger CNC machine?
Self replicating CNC Machines. That's not even a guy operating it, it's 3 smaller CNC machines in a trench coat and hat
A trench coat made by a slightly bigger CNC machine.
It would be very very impressive if your CNC machine can produce and assemble electric motors, wiring and circuit boards from raw materials. But then it would not be a CNC machine anymore.
These machines are absolutely under a million dollars. You can even buy used ones right now for pennies on the dollar because a shitload of American metal shops just went out of business.
You see, there is this unwritten agreement between the creator and the viewer that they like stuff explained to them, but they don't actually replicate anything shown in the video. At best, they half-arsedly order some materials and then never get to it.
I feel personally attacked by this comment.
I know i could totally do it, i just dont want to!
Some of us watch those videos to actually do stuff. I built a FPV racing drone from parts off BangGood with zero experience thanks to those YouTube DIY videos.
Just ran into this like a week ago with a wood working video. "How to flatten a board without a planer!". The whole premise was that planers are expensive, so here a little trick for hobbyist........ The next scene was them using a router table jig that's like 5x more expensive then any planer.
I think they're just trying to show off...or trying to monetize to pay for the damn thing, lol
Just FYI, you can get a hand planer for pretty cheap. I see them at the thrift store all the time for like $1.
I've got plenty of hand planers, but hand planing isnt something you'd want to do for a large piece if you don't have a lot of time on your hands.
Plus the larger ones that you'd typically want to use for flattening a large board can run you more than an actual planer.
That machine costs well over $381k. We had a much smaller 3 axis lathe installed in the machine shop I worked in during my early 20's and it was $3M. That was 25 years ago, so it probably costs infinity dollars now, given recent inflation. Hell, you probably can't even buy them now, just lease them on a subscription for eleventy bajillion dollars per year.
Or, maybe you can still buy it. It still runs! Maybe it only costs $100,000 now!
...but there's very specific high-impact parts that are no longer made and the since-abandoned software only works on Win95 with a proper license and some kind of bizarrely proprietary serial port connection...
Point of order, that particular machine costs at least ten times the amount quoted.
I'm the weirdo that has a full cnc machine shop at home. I was a cnc machinist for 20 years, though. Brain fog from covid killed my ability to do it, though. I do miss it, because that is something I truly love doing.
Don't push your limits!
If anyone needs an extra reminder for why covid is so terrible, here you go. That shit can fuck you up long term and the odds are not appealing.
Thanks.
I'm pretty sure it fucked my head up too. I'm certainly mentally slower now than I was before I had covid.
I forget words consistently, and it's harder to structure my sentences. It sucks.
Don't care. I will watch every second of every build project Adam Savage does in his shop.
The wacky thing about Adam Savage's shop is that he doesn't have a multimillion dollar CNC machine, but he has every single ordinary tool made by man. The dude has a run of the mill engine lathe and 4,000 pounds of jigs and tooling for it, plus more hardware than the average Fastenal.
The real value in his shop is all the various materials he has squirreled away after decades.
Adam savage is a godsend, his build tend to use the tool that's either inexpensive or it can be replicated with another tools. His philosophy is always "hiding the crime" so the imperfections is always either out of view or is part of the charm. Perfect role model for a maker just starting out.
His machines aren't that insane. He has a machine lathe and a mill, but neither is CNC.
Watch Stuff Made Here. He has CNC mills and routers, powder 3D printers, a freaking 5 axis water jet, and more.
When repairing my car I snapped a bolt in an awkward place. This really sucked.
Worse, so many of the "guy in a garage" youtubers were like "Yeah luckily I already have the engine block out..."
Or "Grab your handy dandy lathe..."
"Super easy you guys, just get your welding torch..."
Welder isn't too crazy of a tool. It's usually more like, get your 3d printer AND your welder AND your CNC AND your drill press AND your table saw plus a million other hyper specific gadgets.
Who doesn't have an edm cutting machine and a metal sintering 3d printer in the cupboard under the stairs?
I'm sure you can get both in a bundle on wish for 14.99
I remember when it had the opposite problem. "Today, we're going to make a working fusion reactor out of an old HP laptop I found in my garage", and everything is specific to that particular HP laptop.
I miss when youtube had actual diy videos requiring tools most people had just laying around
How to DIY X first just go to your 400 sq foot shed
No way that thing only costs that much, right? I would think double.
Funny maymay though
I have the same problem with most DIY-videos as I don't own a glue gun.
I really appreciate it when they give the quicker option for using equipment, or a slower option if you don't have like a hacksaw or drill press. I think DiyPerks does that?
Or I just watch the YouTube channel 'Primitive Technology' .... of some young guy that goes into a jungle with nothing and starts building things with his bare hands.
I know it's a set up situation and made for entertainment but I'm indigenous Canadian and my dad was a hunter trapper who was born in the wilderness in northern Ontario. In his prime in his 20s, I have lots of relatives who told me that dad would leave the community with a little pack, a knife and an axe in the autumn and come back after Christmas with a supply of furs to sell. Then head off and come back two or three times in the winter to deliver more furs. Then come back in the spring to live in town before going out again in the fall.
"Now I used this 40 thousand dollar rig to save time, but I have no reason to believe you couldn't do this on a table saw"
So there's where Empyrion got the design of their builders from.
Meanwhile, Mark Rober accidentally making a guided missile:
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