3D Printable Lenticular Indicators

September 9, 2026 by Zoe Skyforest 18 Comments

You can 3D print all kinds of things, from Yoda heads to little models of Pikachu. Eventually, though, most of us get to a point where we want to print something a little more interesting. The lenticular prints developed by MIT CSAIL are very much that. (h/t Core77).

The ShiftLens concept is simple enough—there’s a lens layer printed in transparent material. Beneath that, lives a patterned layer in alternating colors, corresponding with the linear lenses of the layer above. Then, there’s an actuation mechanism that can shift the lens layer relative to the pattern layer. This creates a changing color effect as the mechanism is shifted. The actuation mechanism can be a knob, switch, or roller—anything that moves the layers relative to each other. On its own, it’s a bit of a curio—but there are some fun demos. In particular, using the lenticular printing on a bottle to form an indicator for when the container is closed properly. There isn’t a publicly available design tool for these prints yet, though the team developed one for Rhino that they used internally for the project.

It’s a pretty interesting application of 3D printing, and one that we fully expect a bunch of YouTubers to replicate within the month. We’ve featured some other great print hacks lately, too, like a slicer that lets you print horizontal overhangs without support. Video after the break.

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Are Desktop PC-ABS Prints Outperformed By Industrial FDM? Not Really

September 8, 2026 by Donald Papp 17 Comments

[Igor] of [My Tech Fun] set out to discover what differences, if any, can be found between parts printed in PC-ABS filament on an industrial 3D printer, and those from prosumer-grade machines and filament. His video is full of his usual attention to detail as he compares a test suite of parts printed at home in Polymaker PC-ABS with those from a Stratasys Fortus 450mc using proprietary PC-ABS filament.

PC-ABS is a filament that strives to deliver the benefits of both polycarbonate and ABS. It’s durable and has fantastic impact resistance, but it costs a bit more than either PC or ABS and requires a heated chamber.

[Igor] has previously compared industrial ABS with comsumer ABS, but what made him curious about PC-ABS in particular was the large difference in print temperatures between Polymaker PC-ABS, and Stratasys’s own proprietary PC-ABS.

[Igor] prints Polymaker filament at 280º C in a 60-65º C chamber, whereas the Stratasys filament prints at 325º C with a chamber temperature of 95º C. That’s quite a difference. The industrial printer has over double the print time, to boot. Would test objects printed from the industrial filament, on an industrial machine, be noticeably different from those printed at home?

To find out, [Igor] orders a test suite of parts from a company with a Stratasys Fortus 450mc (who was also kind enough to take a short video of the machine in action) and prints his own on both a Prusa Core One L, and a Bambu Labs H2D. He then proceeds to compare them in a variety of ways while testing them to destruction.

What’s the bottom line? The industrial prints have better dimensional accuracy, but the home prints have the edge in appearance. When it comes to performance the differences are mostly minor, and not always in the industrial system’s favor. Broadly speaking, PC-ABS from the home workshop compares very favorably from an expensive industrial system and proprietary filament, at a fraction of the price. See it for yourself in the video, embedded just below.

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Corners Lifting On 3D Prints? Guide Gives Prevention Tips

September 3, 2026 by Donald Papp 17 Comments

Large prints have a risk of warping, by which we mean corners can lift off the print bed as the object sort of curls inward on itself. It’s not always due to poor filament quality or an unclean build plate. Sound like something you’ve dealt with? Check out this handy roundup to understand why it happens, and learn ways to prevent it.

A big flat area with sharp corners is susceptible to warping. Breaking the footprint into a grid pattern helps distribute stresses instead of concentrating them at the corners.

The reason some objects have trouble while others don’t is physics. Deposited plastic shrinks ever so slightly as it cools, and some shapes — like wide, flat surfaces with sharp corners — are worse for this than others. This sort of problem is what the guide addresses with a number of techniques.

Some are simple, like turning on brims which increases an object’s footprint. This increased surface area offers more adhesion, but also increases heat transfer from the print bed into the model, slowing the cooling process. Thinner walls and an altered infill pattern is another option. Other techniques are more complex.

The most effective methods involve modifying the model itself to reduce or eliminate stress points. One such method is to break the model’s footprint into multiple zones with a shallow grid. Instead of one big flat bottom, the object has multiple smaller ones. Because big flat areas are more susceptible to warping than small ones, turning the bottom into a grid pattern helps spread those stresses out and prevent lifting.

If you design your own models, you’ll find several design tips worth keeping in mind. It’s always smart to practice good DFM (Design For Manufacturability) which means taking 3D printer strengths and weaknesses into account when designing an object. In this case, it can help prevent print failures. Good DFM can also make parts much, much stronger just by designing in the right features.

Has FDM 3D Printing Hit Its Peak?

September 2, 2026 by Jenny List 35 Comments

Over the time Hackaday has been in existence, the art of 3D printing has evolved from a relatively crude hit-and-miss affair to something approaching what we all imagined back then. You can’t yet walk up to a Star Trek replicator and ask for a part, but a modern state of the art consumer or prosumer grade printer will deliver consistent high-resolution parts, and in a surprisingly short time. [The Next Layer] asks whether consumer FDM printers have now reached the point at which they’re about as good as they’re going to get, and whether other technologies hold the future.

It’s a fair point to make that the resolution of a consumer FDM printer may be close to its mechanical limit. Techniques such as input shaping and the adoption of better CoreXY mechanisms mean that prints which once might have relied on SLA can be done in FDM. Healthy competition in the marketplace has delivered high quality colour printing, with tool-changing printers being no longer solely the preserve of the professional. He uses the example of a mobile phone to make the point that new machines have less of a wow factor to deliver, as increments have become less grand.

It’s a persuasive argument, and looking at the printers around us we can see it in action. The difference in ability between a 2020-ish and a 2026 FDM printer are far smaller than those between the same time periods in the last decade. Compare a MakerBot Cupcake and an Ultimaker II, or the Ultimaker and a Prusa Mini, and each is light years ahead of the last. But the best the Mini can do is surprisingly not as far behind as you’d expect to that of their latest, or of the equivalent from Bambu Labs.

Does this means that nothing new is coming in 3D printing? Of course not. UV printing is coming through and will deliver incredible results, as will SLS printing. It’s interesting he devotes little time to SLA printing, perhaps because it’s not as easy a process as FDM. He makes the point that we’ve never had it so good, as the high-end FDM features will appear in modestly priced machines, and we have those other technologies to look forward to.

It’s an interesting discussion, and you can see it below the break.

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PETG: The PLA Filament Alternative That Just Works

September 1, 2026 by Maya Posch 49 Comments

A typical response to the previous article on why PLA filament is so darn brittle. This has led some people to not use PLA filament at all, while others promote using PLA only for prototyping and throw-away parts, especially in light of PLA being compostable under the right conditions. For many mechanical parts, people turn to PETG.

Much like the PET polymer used for everything from food containers to drink bottles, PETG is durable, more resistant to degradation through mechanisms like hydrolysis and its filament form doesn’t need to be coddled like PLA does. PETG, on the other hand, tends to come from crude oil and shrugs at industrial composting conditions.

In terms of durability, degradation mechanisms and recyclability, is PETG the basic FDM filament which we should all just be using?

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Anatomy Of An SLA Resin Printing Disaster

August 25, 2026 by Maya Posch 16 Comments

When I got back into SLA resin printing recently, I knew that I’d inevitably have to deal with the agony of failed prints and of course resin spills. This moment eventually came, and I felt motivated to treat mistakes as teaching moments on aspects like how to properly prepare an SLA build plate in terms of angles and supports or how to deal with failed print aftermaths.

Before moving on to the disaster, I’d like to first start with a look at the resin print of the previous article, which contained a number of fairly small parts. These I had oriented and supported almost fully using the automatic methods provided by the ChituBox slicer software, and worked about 90% as I had hoped, while leaving plenty of room for improvement as well.

Overall, preparing an SLA build plate in the slicer isn’t quite the same as for an FDM printer, mostly due to one phrase that strikes fear in the heart of anyone who has ever done resin printing: “peeling forces”.

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A Hot End And Material Database For 3D Printing

August 18, 2026 by Zoe Skyforest 17 Comments

When it comes to 3D printing in the FDM world, you can go a long way just relying on standard settings that ship with your 3D printer and/or slicer. If you want to push the limits, though, it pays to better understand the hardware and materials you’re working with to know what you can get away with. To that end, [Robert Samples] put together the MeltCalc database to help.

The purpose of MeltCalc is simple—it collates data on hot ends and materials regarding factors like maximum flow rate, print speeds, and heater requirements. If you’re wondering whether a given hot end can flow a given filament at a given rate, for example, this tool is a great place to start. It features 64 different hot ends and 36 polymers typically used in the 3D printing world, and can spit out maximum flow rates and print speed estimations even accounting for fancy tech like Core Heating Technology (CHT) nozzles. It’s all based on thermodynamic modelling which [Robert] put together based on his experience as a chemist who works with polymers. His aim was to provide a tool with realistic flow rates for hot ends, so that end users don’t have to just rely on often-optimistic marketing numbers.

For those eager to dive deeper into the code and modelling, the project source is available on Github. We’ve featured all kinds of other useful hacks in this space lately, too, like our recent look at how to achieve wave overhangs. If you’ve got your own nifty 3D printing tools in the works, don’t hesitate to notify the tipsline.