Prusa Mini with endoscope nozzle cam and pip preview

Prusa Mini Nozzle Cam On The Cheap

May 2, 2025 by Heidi Ulrich 2 Comments

Let me throw in a curveball—watching your 3D print fail in real-time is so much more satisfying when you have a crisp, up-close view of the nozzle drama. That’s exactly what [Mellow Labs] delivers in his latest DIY video: transforming a generic HD endoscope camera into a purpose-built nozzle cam for the Prusa Mini. The hack blends absurd simplicity with delightful nerdy precision, and comes with a full walkthrough, a printable mount, and just enough bad advice to make it interesting. It’s a must-see for any maker who enjoys solder fumes with their spaghetti monsters.

What makes this build uniquely brilliant is the repurposing of a common USB endoscope camera—a tool normally reserved for inspecting pipes or internal combustion engines. Instead, it’s now spying on molten plastic. The camera gets ripped from its aluminium tomb, upgraded with custom-salvaged LEDs (harvested straight from a dismembered bulb), then wrapped in makeshift heat-shrink and mounted on a custom PETG bracket. [Mellow Labs] even micro-solders in a custom connector just so the camera can be detached post-print. The mount is parametric, thanks to a community contribution.

This is exactly the sort of hacking to love—clever, scrappy, informative, and full of personality. For the tinkerers among us who like their camera mounts hot and their resistor math hotter, this build is a weekend well spent.

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Improved And Open Source: Non-Planar Infill For FDM

April 23, 2025 by Heidi Ulrich 16 Comments

Strenghtening FDM prints has been discussed in detail over the last years. Solutions and results vary as each one’s desires differ. Now [TenTech] shares his latest improvements on his post-processing script that he first created around January. This script literally bends your G-code to its will – using non-planar, interlocking sine wave deformations in both infill and walls. It’s now open-source, and plugs right into your slicer of choice: PrusaSlicer, OrcaSlicer, or Bambu Studio. If you’re into pushing your print strength past the limits of layer adhesion, but his former solution wasn’t quite the fit for your printer, try this improvement.

Traditional Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) prints break along layer lines. What makes this script exciting is that it lets you introduce alternating sine wave paths between wall loops, removing clean break points and encouraging interlayer grip. Think of it as organic layer interlocking – without switching to resin or fiber reinforcement. You can tweak amplitude, frequency, and direction per feature. In fact, the deformation even fades between solid layers, allowing smoother transitions. Structural tinkering at its finest, not just a cosmetic gimmick.

This thing comes without needing a custom slicer. No firmware mods. Just Python, a little G-code, and a lot of curious minds. [TenTech] is still looking for real-world strength tests, so if you’ve got a test rig and some engineering curiosity, this is your call to arms.

The script can be found in his Github. View his full video here , get the script and let us know your mileage!

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Non-Planar Fuzzy Skin Textures Improved, Plus A Paint-On Interface

December 6, 2024 by Dan Maloney 4 Comments

If you’ve wanted to get in on the “fuzzy skin” action with 3D printing but held off because you didn’t want to fiddle with slicer post-processing, you need to check out the paint-on fuzzy skin generator detailed in the video below.

For those who haven’t had the pleasure, fuzzy skin is a texture that can be applied to the outer layers of a 3D print to add a little visual interest and make layer lines a little less obvious. Most slicers have it as an option, but limit the wiggling action of the print head needed to achieve it to the XY plane. Recently, [TenTech] released post-processing scripts for three popular slicers that enable non-planar fuzzy skin by wiggling the print head in the Z-axis, allowing you to texture upward-facing surfaces.

The first half of the video below goes through [TenTech]’s updates to that work that resulted in a single script that can be used with any of the slicers. That’s a pretty neat trick by itself, but not content to rest on his laurels, he decided to make applying a fuzzy skin texture to any aspect of a print easier through a WYSIWYG tool. All you have to do is open the slicer’s multi-material view and paint the areas of the print you want fuzzed. The demo print in the video is a hand grip with fuzzy skin applied to the surfaces that the fingers and palm will touch, along with a little bit on the top for good measure. The print looks fantastic with the texture, and we can see all sorts of possibilities for something like this.

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Open Source, Forced Innovation, And Making Good Products

November 23, 2024 by Elliot Williams 46 Comments

The open-source hardware business landscape is no doubt a tough one, but is it actually tougher than for closed-source hardware? That question has been on our minds since the announcement that the latest 3D printer design from former open-source hardware stalwarts Prusa Research seems like it’s not going to come with design files.

Ironically, the new Core One is exactly the printer that enthusiasts have been begging Prusa to make for the last five years or more. Since seeing hacker printers like the Voron and even crazy machines like The 100 whip out prints at incredible speed, the decade-old fundamental design of Prusa’s i3 series looks like a slow and dated, if reliable, workhorse. “Bed slinger” has become a bit of a pejorative for this printer architecture in some parts of the 3DP community. So it’s sweet to see Prusa come out with the printer that everyone wants them to make, only it comes with the bitter pill of their first truly closed-source design.

Is the act of not sharing the design files going to save them? Is it even going to matter? We would argue that it’s entirely irrelevant. We don’t have a Core One in our hands, but we can’t imagine that there is anything super secret going on inside that couldn’t be reverse engineered by any other 3DP company within a week or so. If anything, they’re playing catch up with other similar designs. So why not play to one of their greatest strengths – the engaged crowd of hackers who would most benefit from having the design files?

Of course, Prusa’s decision to not release the design files doesn’t mean that they’re turning their backs on the community. They are also going to offer an upgrade package to turn your current i3 MK4 printer into the new Core One, which is about as hacker-friendly a move as is possible. They still offer kit versions of the printers at a discount, and they continue to support their open-source slicer software.

But this one aspect, the move away from radical openness, still strikes us as bittersweet. We don’t have access to their books, of course, but we can’t imagine that not providing the design files gains them much, and it will certainly damage them a little in the eyes of their most devoted fans. We hope the Core One does well, but we also hope that people don’t draw the wrong lesson from this – that it does well because it went closed source. If we could run the experiment both ways, we’d put our money on it doing even better if they released the design files.

With Core ONE, Prusa’s Open Source Hardware Dream Quietly Dies

November 20, 2024 by Tom Nardi 151 Comments

Yesterday, Prusa Research officially unveiled their next printer, the Core ONE. Going over the features and capabilities of this new machine, it’s clear that Prusa has kept a close eye on the rapidly changing desktop 3D printer market and designed a machine to better position themselves within a field of increasingly capable machines from other manufacturers.

While some saw the incremental upgrades of the i3 MK4 as being too conservative, the Core ONE ticks all the boxes of what today’s consumer is looking for — namely high-speed CoreXY movement with a fully enclosed chamber — while still offering the build quality, upgradability, and support that the company has built its reputation on. Put simply it’s one of the most exciting products they’ve introduced in a long time, and exactly the kind of machine that many Prusa fans have been waiting for.

Unfortunately, there’s one feature that’s ominously absent from the Core ONE announcement post. It’s easy to overlook, and indeed, most consumers probably won’t even know it’s missing. But for those of us who are concerned with such matters, it’s an unspoken confirmation that an era has finally come to an end.

With the Core ONE, Prusa Research is no longer in the business of making open source 3D printer hardware, but that doesn’t mean that the printer isn’t hackable. It’s complicated, so read on.

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Prusa Picks Up The Pace With New MK4S Printer

August 12, 2024 by Tom Nardi 28 Comments

One of the things you’re paying for when you buy a 3D printer from Prusa Research is, essentially, your next 3D printer. That’s because Prusa’s machines are designed to be upgraded and modified as time goes on. An upgrade kit is always released to allow each older printer to be converted into its successor, and while there’s occasionally been some debate about whether or not it’s the most cost-effective choice, at least it is a choice you have as an owner.

If you’ve got a Prusa MK4, you’ll soon get to make that decision for yourself. Announced earlier today, the new MK4S brings some notable changes to last year’s printer. The $99 upgrade is scheduled to be available by the end of the month for existing owners, but if you’ve been on the fence about joining Team Orange and Black, you can purchase the MK4S right now in both kit and assembled forms for the same price ($799 and $1,099 respectively) as the previous MK4.

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FOSDEM Saved, With 3D Printing

February 9, 2024 by Jenny List 23 Comments

If you were to consider what the most important component of a hacker event might be, the chances are you’d pick something that’s part of the program, the ambiance, or the culture. But as the organizers of FOSDEM in Brussels found out, what’s really the most important part of such an event is the toilet paper.

If you can’t keep the supplies coming, you’re in trouble, and since they only had one key for the dispensers across the whole event, they were heading for a sticky situation. But this is a hacker event, and our community is resourceful. The folks on the FreeCAD booth created a model of the key which they shared via the Ondsel collaboration tools, while those on the Prusa booth fired up their Prusa XL and ran off a set of keys to keep the event well supplied.

Perhaps for many of us, the act of running off a 3D model and printing it is such a mundane task as to be unremarkable — and indeed the speed at which they were able to do it points to it being a straightforward task for them. But the sight of a bunch of hardware hackers saving the event by doing what they do best is still one to warm the cockles of our hearts. We’re fairly certain it’s not the first time we’ve seen a bit of clandestine venue hacking save an event, but perhaps for the sake of those involved, we’d better not go into it.