I was looking to build a smaller printer, and I liked Tiny-M’s overall size and design, but I also had some ideas for improvements. I wanted it to be more space-efficient, and I started tinkering in the CAD. When PrusaXL was revealed, I thought the open front was very practical and decided to use the same approach in my design. That’s how the concept of TinyXL was born: based on Tiny-M and inspired by PrusaXL.

NEMA14 36mm round steppers are becoming increasingly popular extruder stepper motors due to their small weight and high torque. I have tested LDO-36STH17-1004AHG, LDO-36STH20-1004AHG, and Moons’ 36mm 20mm steppers, and I will share my thoughts on them.

Voron 3D printers are great but building one can be challenging. The assembly manual is a great resource, and there are plenty of YouTube guides you can watch. I will share some of my own tips to help you with the build.

Phaetus recently announced Rapido hotend and it packs some of the advantages of E3D Revo in a more traditional package. Let’s break down the new features and compare it to other hotends.

E3D just introduced a new Revo hotend, and it took the attention of the whole 3D printing community. There’s clearly a lot of innovation going on with the Revo, and I’m going to try and break it down whether it’s worth the hype and your money.

Once you start tinkering with your 3D printer, it can turn from a tool to a hobby. If you get there, you should consider building a DIY open source printer. They are great for tinkering because you get access to the CAD files and you can modify any part on the printer.

A new extruder can significantly improve your print quality and speed. If you are still running a BMG extruder you should know there are better options out there.

Sapphire Plus comes with TMC2208 drivers but they are configured in standalone mode. It means they are locked in StealthChop mode and you have to physically adjust a potentiometer on the drivers to change motor current. However only with a little bit of soldering you can enable more advanced serial (aka UART) mode. I think this upgrade had very little attention because most people just upgrade the stock mainboard to something that’s UART capable out of the box. You don’t need a sophisticated board when you use Klipper so I would recommend this mod and keep the board.

TwoTrees Sapphire Plus (SP-5) comes with Marlin based firmware which I found quite inconvenient to use. My main complaint was that I had to recompile and reflash the firmware every time I changed my printer configuration. I decided to throw it away and switch to Klipper instead.

I’ve been looking at 3D printers for a while now and I finally decided it’s time to get one and see if they are as useful as one may think. In this post I’m going to explain the reasons why I decided that TwoTrees Sapphire Plus was the best choice for me.