Update: After the blanket travel ban from Europe, MRRF has officially been canceled / postponed. In this episode, we talk about Stefan’s new Toolchanger, more use cases for LW-PLA and our (back then still relevant) plans for MRRF 2020!
Kicked from Amazon.com, Resin + Foamed PLA and Pellet Extruder
Tom and Stefan talk about the upcoming events that they’ll attend including Malta Maker Fair and MRRF2020. Both recently released a material testing video and discuss if resin prints are really isotropic and why lattice or porous structures performs the way they do. Tom got kicked from the Amazon.com affiliate program and explains how that happened. Stefan got a new Pellet Extruder and expresses his first experience with it. Both talk about the impact of the Chorona Virus on the China and the 3D printing industry. The Makerbot Classroom Sketch was unveiled recently – is it worth $1800? Questions cover copyright on Thingiverse uploads, ceramic hotend liners, dimensional issues of high prints an the Dragon Hotend.
Shaping the future
Flashforge first cloned Makerbot – and now it looks like Makerbot are selling Flashforge’s machines? That and a discussion on the (non) availability of the Elegoo Mars Pro, our take on Linus’ “I’ve been thinking about retiring” stream and our pros and cons to using “servos” on 3D printers in this episode of The Meltzone!
Light Weight PLA & Teflon Lined VS Full Metal Hotend
Tom and Stefan are back from their holiday break and meet up in the “real” CNC Kitchen. They talk about current projects like Stefans work on Colorfabbs Light Weight PLA (LW-PLA). Both discuss the recent problems with the Hermera Extruder and how E3D is handling it. The topic of the week covers the differences between Teflon-lined hotends and full metal hotends, where the differences are and that the latter isn’t always the best choice. Questions cover the differences between PETG and ABS as well as printer advice and it’s better to buy a machine or to build one from scratch. At last both talk about the harmful fumes of additive manufacturing and how to pre-vent them.
Damaging Prusa’s boards to flash firmware?
Is Prusa turning on the open-source community by requiring you to physically damaging the Mini’s board to run custom firmware? That’s our big topic of the week! Well, technically, topic of the bi-week? Stefan has been working on a surprisingly simple and universal variable infill algorithm while Tom has been trying to combine the advantages of filament and resin printing. In other new, Marlin 2.0 has finally come out of beta and the E3D “not a Hermes” has started shipping! We talk about our experiences with both of them. And we also got some good info from you all in the comments from the last episode – there’s lots of interest and some corrections on metal 3D printing.
Formnext, 3D printed RC planes and why we only review Chines printers
Tom and Stefan have been at Formnext 2019 the week before and talk about their impressions.The news cover the current state of Lulzbot and also that Generative Design for Fusion360 is currently available for free. Podimo, a German startup wants to be the Netflix of Podcasts. Both discuss if they like their business model and if the even want to be listen in the Podimo app. Tom got into RC flying, talks about his first experiences and both discuss 3D printed airplanes and also Colorfabbs new Light Weight PLA. Listener questions cover bulletproof 3D prints, home metal 3D printing and why Youtubers only review Chinese printers.
Everything’s on 🔥: Prusa / The UK / Lulzbot / Fusion360 / Resins / VPNs
It’s finally a normal episode with Stefan & Tom again! We talk about our experiences with travelling to shows and what we enjoy doing when our calendars are not stuffed with events. Tom uses an E3D Supervolcano for the first time and gets different findings to what Stefan has seen in other high-speed printing setups. Also, there’s been a lot of stuff going wrong lately: Lulzbot seems to be going out of business, the UK is creating even more uncertainty by delaying Brexit and impacting UK manufacturers like E3D, NordVPN is screwing up and an Original Prusa MK3 has caught on fire. Good times!
What should we do about “3D Printed Firearms”? (ERRF special)
In this week’s special episode from the East Coast RepRap Festival 2019, Tom talks to Keith (as a non-representative of Proto-Pasta) about their ERRF highlight, how the terrorist attack in Halle seems to have used 3D printing to fabricate firearm parts and what we should (or can) do about it. Also, Proto-Pasta’s experiences in shipping a filament extruder all the way across the US and whether 3D printer manufacturers should be providing a functional machine to buyers!
CNCs, a handy tool for makers (with Tom Stanton & Ivan Miranda) – The Meltzone Podcast Ep23
On this special Podcast Episode Stefan visits a YouTube Creators Event in the UK and talk with his two fellow YouTube creator Tom Stanton and Ivan Miranda about cool gadgets they own and how they use their CNCs where 3D printing is not sufficient anymore.
E3D Hermes Extruder & How far 3D printers have come over the years
Stefan talks about his recent trip to the UK where he visited E3D and the XYZSummit, a YouTube creators even. YouTube did it’s “thing” again by removing the verified status from most of their creators but shortly changed their mind again after lots of complaints from the community. LEGO has taken down lot’s of community designs from MyMiniFactory and Thingiverse. Tom and Stefan discuss how far 3D printers have come from the Sells Mendel and at which point both got into the hobby. They both talk about if a belt printer would be something for them to consider and what the advantages of a combined additive and substractive process might be.