- or at least they make any buttons at all.

My Printrbot (pictured above) has not had an easy life. Almost from the day it arrived as a kit, I've been ricing (in vain) to achieve lofty goals like queue based 24/7 printing. And in response it has spent more time than not being broken or mid-upgrade. Over this summer I decided to rip out a lot of the crazy stuff and try to get back to nice, reasonable working order. It's going well, but there's still a lot left to do.

I'm a (self-proclaimed) terrible 3D printer operator. It seems as though endless hours slip away as I tune and calibrate, only to arrive at prints that look about as mangled as the first ones. After three years of owning one of these dang things, I still feel like a novice. If I'm going to make this printing-a-lot-of-buttons thing work, the printer and I need to find some common ground. To that effect, there's a lot of incremental changes I want to implement:

• The printer goes to work with me
  
  • Takes up too much room at home, and my office is more conducive to keeping things tidy.
  • Done!
• New base and scaffolding
  • Just for aesthetics mainly.
  • Done!
• Add auto-leveling
  • Is a mess that needs a separate log post on its own.
  • Done!
• More lighting
  • I've learned that good visibility while working on these things is key.
  • I have aluminum and led strips, just need to wire it up.
• Calibrate for PET-G
  • It's the future, baby.
• Finish wiring external stepper drivers
  • Probably the largest task, may require custom PCBs
• Make all external wiring easy to detach
  • Being able to unplug the printer and physically move it is super underrated.
• Wire up loss-of-filament detector
  • Will pause prints for me.
• Rebuild electronics panel

The idea is for the printer to remain usable in between each task, so it can continue to support Clunke development.