One key legacy project for me is 3D printing. I spent my hard earned kongbucks on a Soliddoodle 3 when they first came out, over 5 years ago. Long before, this attempt at documentation of my projects.
The SD3 got lots of complaints from the community, but mine has always worked. Yes, I’m too lazy to alter the firmware to fix the slight discrepancy between inside dimensions and the 3D model, but when properly calibrated it is hard to measure how off it is. My SD3 even has the original acrylic “jigsaw” extruder, which is claimed to get brittle and disintegrate. Here is the printing of a spare graciously shared on thing a verse by its creator. I try not to crash the print head which I assume is the cause of all those shattered acrylic print heads, but having a spare on hand will allow me to sleep at night.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:111213
I do not think any project shop is complete without a 3D printer, so I keep this one in working condition even if the company has ceased operations. It is 100% self supported with the handful of dedicated individuals keeping documentation and forums sites online to help troubleshooting. I would be lost without them. If it prints there is no need to get a new fancy one even if you can get 3 monoprice units for the same amount of KongBucks. now.
If you have not considered printing software. I highly recommend Simplify 3D. I got to use a friend’s copy and it was so good I spend my own hard earned kongbucks on a copy of my own. They got my kongbucks, and I still recommend them coming from an open source free software world. It made the difference between being able to just print what I needed without any fighting, and fighting to print things by trial and error.
