First 3D printer (in pieces, then in a heap, then printing)
My first kit 3D printer, age thirteen. The entry point into hardware. It taught me the lesson every later hardware project has reinforced: software bugs are polite; mechanical bugs throw filament at the wall and let the room smell like burning plastic.
What it actually was
- A box of parts that became, after a long weekend, a working Cartesian printer.
- No auto-bed-levelling, no closed-loop anything, no easy slicer. You levelled with a piece of paper and felt clever when it worked.
- A separate, host-side slicer that produced gcode the printer's firmware did not always agree with.
What it taught me
That hardware is not software with extra steps. It is its own discipline. A loose belt looks like a calibration problem; a calibration problem looks like a firmware bug; a firmware bug looks like the printer being haunted. You learn to check the cheap explanations first, in order, every time. It is a useful habit to export back to software work.
Also: the existence of the spaghetti print as a folk concept, and the relief of having a fire extinguisher within reach.
