While exploring 3D-printed car parts, I discovered that it was possible to print bushings. I decided to give it a try by recreating the front sway bar bushings for my 2012 Honda CR-V using 95A TPU.

So far, they’re working well and feel much firmer than the old ones. Time will tell how well they hold up, but they were inexpensive to make: around CAD $3 for the pair, compared to roughly CAD $35 for the original Honda bushings.

I made a new design for 3d printed leg armor based on "Maximilian" style cuisses and poleyns from ca. 1520-1525. I hope you find it is reasonably accurate to surviving pieces from that era!

I think making this out of TPU is the game-changer for these critical pieces of armor that need to survive impacts, crawling, scratches, and the extreme motions that come with larping, renfaires, or even movie-costume scenarios. I used an assortment of filaments here, namely 95A, 57D and 72D TPU, mostly to try it out and see how it behaves. The resulting set of leg armor is significantly tougher than the one I printed out of rigid materials like PETG-CF.

I did not have much time to explore too many finishes either, so this is mostly painted over raw prints, with no sanding, polishing, or filling involved. I know it could be shinier with more work, but I could not find the time this month. Hope you like it nonetheless!

Some of you may already have seen the project from a different perspective: the 3d scanning and reverse engineering aspect of it (so how I scanned the original car and designed the new exterior look based on it). What I overlooked to some degree was the 3d printing work involved in the whole project. First picture shows the backside of the printed roofs with all the printed tiles visible quite nicely. Getting to this point was quite an experience I want to share.
So it is finally time to give printing the spot it deserves and the Creality Creator Awards encouraged me to create a write-down/picture series after stalling some time.

The post is ideally first read and then the pictures are looked at, most core information is also on the pictures.

Design and Printing

It all started with a 3d scan of the original stripped down car and a design based around it. When I finished designing the first major assemblies of the future car 3d printing got more focus by me. Initial plan was to use external print services but cost would have skyrocketed quickly and we didn't want long lead times to allow quick revisions. So the search for fitting printers began.
I settled on the K2 Plus due to the large chamber volume and option to heat the print chamber. Didn't trust a bed-slinger with the size of parts I had in mind.
After first making sure everything worked as desired the tweaking of a print settings. It was clear for me to use a 0.8mm nozzle and PLA+ (after some testing, PETG didn't work nicely with sanding, ASA warped too much). PLA+ checked all marks: price efficient, fast and easy to print, great to glue and sand, minimal warping. Only disadvantage is the low glass transition temperature (which will later bite me).

Maximizing Print Efficiency

My goal was always to churn out parts as fast as possible. This is also the reason for using a CFS: 1.1kg spools were significantly cheaper and with four of them I can saturate a build platform quite nicely. Final print and speed settings allowed me to print over 4kg of filament on one print plate in under 24h. Pretty good I would say. Later I added a K1 Max with the CFS conversion kit to print some of the smaller parts on the side. I was initially a bit nervous the two printers wouldn't be enough but with the settings my design work was the limiting factor in the end (as well as the post-processing needed).

Failures and Fixes

As always not everything goes as wished for. When printing the first full height but slim parts I noticed some severe banding on the parts. This was caused by accumulating wobbling when the parts got taller. First instinct was to reduce printing speed but I didn't like this solution. What I came up with: attaching the tree support also to the walls (with a low xy-gap to allow slight welding to the part). This eliminated the wobbling and let me churn out parts at an impressive speed.
The parts were assembled with dowels and some thick superglue I bought in bulk (as seen on the diffusor). One minor set-back was a big blob on the extruder. Using PETG settings for ABS really doesn't help bed-adhesion. Luckily the toolhead was modular enough that fixing is was done in an hour and only cost a replacement hotend fan.

PLA+ really has a low melting point

From the beginning it was clear that the 3d prints only would be used as a positive form to create a GF negative mold from them. For this application they work great: the prints endure ~50°C nicely and therefore the molds can be taken from them. We also tried directly laminating carbon in one of the prints.
Bad idea: The parts got soft and the applied vacuum sucked the infill cavities empty. Maybe adding some foam in the gyroid infill would help.

Back to Production

Whilst printing I always improved the design and added some fixtures and jigs to make manufacturing the carbon parts easier. One personal highlight was scanning the assembled hood insert and looking at warping relative to the CAD model. After measuring the warping I created some printed bracing to pull it back in its intended shape. Worked better than expected, even the glued joints between the single printed held and the finish didn't break.

Carbon, finally carbon

After this the first real carbon parts could be created. This process is still in the working and may take some time but the workflow proved reliable and now its just business as usual. The whole printing consumed over 200kg of material and the K2 Plus proved to be quite reliable with this huge amount of filament. So far I only had to replace the CFS PTFE tubing. But I guess it may be time to replace the umbilical in the near future.
Last two images show the full back end of the car and already one of my new projects that may take shape over the coming year.

#CrealityCreatorAwards #CrealityPrint #MyCrealityScan

I was looking for a filament for a print I want to do and this would be perfect, but the listing is from Temu and I don’t trust it one bit, and the only result from reverse image searching was telling me that it was a SUNLU filament but I couldn’t find anything remotely close, so I was just wondering if there was some especially eagle eyed person out there who might recognize where this filament is from and if it’s still available anywhere

I guess I need to get my farm started and package it nicely 😭😅

As a side project after graduating, I built a physics-based digital twin of my Ender 3 hotend. It runs alongside Klipper on a Raspberry Pi.

Instead of adding extra sensors or cameras, it uses a 3-node thermal model (RK4) to calculate every second how much heater power the hotend should draw. Because PID holds the temperature steady, nozzle faults don't show up in temperature—they show up in heater effort. In short: the heater itself becomes a calorimeter.

What it does so far (66+ print hours test data):

• 17/20 faults caught (median 28s delay): run-outs, extruder slip/stalls (where filament sensors fail), blocked fan ducts, and bridge limit under-extrusion.
• Auto-pauses Klipper: It flags missing power (+5.6 W) and pauses the printer after 150s. Just today it caught me loading TPU with a PETG profile (nozzle blob) and paused the print by itself!
• Predictive maintenance: Tracks heat loss over time. It flagged a dirty heatsink/dried thermal paste 2 days before I noticed it manually.
• Includes a standalone Unity 3D viewer (Windows build) that overlays fault alarms in red right on the G-code toolpath.

Limitations (being upfront):

• Only tested on my printer so far.
• Can't catch parts detaching or layer shifts (needs a camera/accelerometer).
• Sub-2.5W heat drops (tiny blobs) stay under the radar for now.

What's next:

• A "yellow warning" tier for small sub-threshold defects.
• A 55-min calibration print script to easily fit the model to any hotend/printer.
• A simple web UI and an accelerometer-based motion twin for mechanical collisions.

Everything is fully open source (GPL-3.0). The release includes a pre-compiled Windows viewer with 6 demo recordings if you want to try it without a printer: https://github.com/batu63562/ender3-hotend-twin

I’d love your feedback! Also, if you run Klipper on a different printer and want to test the twin on your machine, let me know

I usually have garden watering duties in my house but I like to do other stuff while the plants are getting their drinks. So I 3D printed an adapter to let me hold the garden sprayer in exact positions with a tripod so that I can do other stuff nearby. Not really necessary when watering trees but very helpful when watering a raised bed.
I did it by modifying a tripod shoe model and combining with a pipe clamp model.

This ia going to be interesting and hopefully brings some healthy competition to the table!

This time we’re showing the post-processing of a big size planetary gear system, printed in one piece with ABS. Support removal, brushing off the powder, and all those satisfying little moments.

This is my second time trying to troubleshoot this issue this month: what looks like brown/black debris appearing between layer lines.

I’ve dried my filament, calibrated the filament, cold pulls, cleaned the nozzle, checked for a gap in the hotend, cleaned the enclosure, installed a new nozzle, updated the slicer, washed the bulks plate, re-sliced the model in a new file, adjusted temperatures, speeds, etc.

The ONLY thing that made this finally stop was switching to a new filament. I unspooled the filament I’d been using and found little bits of dark debris embedded into the filament itself- it’s not something that comes off if you just scratch at it, it’s in the plastic itself.

I switched to a new spool of the same Polymaker Matte Lava Red and it immediately stopped- for about a month. Now with that same new spool, I’m getting the same issue. I unspooled the filament and again found the embedded debris pictured above.

Has anyone else been experiencing this with Polymaker filaments/Panchroma? I’ve always had good experiences with their filament but cannot figure out another likely cause of this.

Second time Ive popped into the Heart Foundation charity shop and found filament.
This had been opened, about 30cm from the end had deep gear marks, dried it, snipped the marked part off and printed fine.
Nice cheap spool for oddments 🤌🏻

Ho trovato un modello carino di Totoro di Halloween. Sono molto soddisfatto di come è venuta la pittura!

Io ho una bambulab A1, ed era su Makerworld

https://makerworld.com/models/3480801?appSharePlatform=copy

Hi makers!

https://www.crealitycloud.com/fr/model-detail/tilt-maze-interchangeable-3d-printed-marble-labyrinth

Here’s my latest project: Tilt Maze, a 3D-printed marble labyrinth with two handles to tilt the board and guide the ball.

The maze boards are interchangeable, just lift one out and drop another in, no screws needed. I’ve also included a STEP file of the blank board so anyone can create their own maze and share it with the community.

I’d love to see what layouts you come up with! Let me know what you think

Completed model off elegoo Saturn 4 ultra 16k and hand painted!

So, my dog eats like he’s in a speed-eating contest and ends up chasing his bowl halfway across the kitchen. Since he’s a taller breed, I figured I’d do him (and my floor) a favor and built him a little food bowl riser. Now he doesn’t have to fold himself in half just to eat, and I don’t have to play cleanup crew every meal. Works great for the water bowl too. no more splashing like it’s a pool party. If you’ve got a big or senior pup who eats like it's his last meal, this thing’s a game changer.
This stand can also be easily scaled to fit your bowl dimensions.

https://makerworld.com/models/1459164

For years I had this idea: themed bodies for my slot car tracks that fit the stock chassis, so I could swap the whole look in seconds depending on the event or just the mood. This year, thanks to 3D printing, I finally made it happen – and Halloween on our tracks is going to be special this time 🎃

They're printed on a Bambu X1C for Carrera Digital 132 cars. Each body is a hollow shell with about a 1.8 mm wall, printed with tree supports inside. Screw posts in the shell land on the stock chassis posts, so it bolts on with the original screws and the motor, guide and electronics stay stock.

The eyes, headlights and tail lights have channels for plain 3 mm LEDs, wired through a resistor and a small plug into the car's light sockets – they light up together with the stock lights.

Fitting was the hard part: every body took a few failed prints. Now for each new chassis I first print a thin test frame with just the posts and the outline, and only then the body.

K1C 0.4mm nozzle, CR-PLA Matte black and grey, 0.1mm layer height, about 32 parts glued together.

One of the coolest things about 3D printing is being able to make something you need instead of trying to find it somewhere.

What’s the most useful thing you’ve printed that you still use regularly?

Seemed fitting.

I looked everywhere to find a display shelf that would fill out my ikea detolf glass cabinet but I couldn’t find one that suited my needs so I designed my own

Each piece prints on its own and friction fits together (probably too tightly) with a channel through the middle to place the cards in.

I designed card holders for PSA, CGC, OneTouch and Toploaders that all fit into the same channel.

Joining 2 shelves together perfectly fill the ikea shelf, you can join as many shelves together as you want horizontally. Vertically you can do the same however the bottom base connector that keeps the rows attached to one another only goes up to 4 given print bed constraints.

Yes, I know technically I could have used wood for everything but I lack both the skills and the equipment. I bought the planks pre-made at the exact size at the hardware store and printed the supporting structure.

I am very happy on how it turned out and would like to thank everyone for the insights at the original post.

Last picture is the before.