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Pricing adjustment for the monthly Pro plan

· 2 min read

We will be making some pricing adjustments on the monthly Pro plan as of July 8th, 2020.

  • The monthly Pro plan for the first printer will be adjusted from $5.5 per month to $6 per month.

  • For each additional printer, the monthly Pro plan will be adjusted from $2.75 per month to $3 per month.

  • Nothing else changes.

Why these changes?

Give The Detective the Focused Feedback Because It Is More Helpful!

· 3 min read

We have made some important changes to how you can help The Detective get better at her job:

  1. We launched a new feature called the "Focused Feedback". As the name implies, you tell The Detective if she got things right in a more "focused" way - snapshot by snapshot, rather than time-lapse by time-lapse.
  2. Every time you finish a Focused Feedback, you will earn 2 Detective Hours!
  3. You can, and should still give feedback at the overall time-lapse level. However, you will no longer earn Detective Hours from doing so. Instead, you are highly encouraged to give the Focused Feedback to earn Detective Hours.
  4. Similarly, you can still upload your own time-lapses to help The Detective learn but you will no longer earn Detective Hours from doing so. Of course you can also give the Focused Feedback on the time-lapses you upload (will be implemented in a couple weeks).

Why did we make these changes?

A Step-by-step Guide to Set Up Port-forwarding for OctoPrint Remote Access

· 7 min read

Port-forwarding is a technique that gives you access to your OctoPrint from anywhere on the internet, not just when you are on your home network. This guide will walk you through the process step-by-step to show you how to set it up.

Important note: Port-forwarding may be a potential security risk for your home network. Please avoid it unless you know what risks you are taking by setting up port-forwarding. You may want to check other options for accessing OctoPrint from the internet.

Data Driven Best 3D Printer 2020

· 7 min read

Here at The Spaghetti Detective we are in the unique position where we have watched a lot of 3D prints on a wide variety of different 3D printers. A question we get asked frequently is “what is the best 3D printer?” While generally we try to stay agnostic to the type of printer, and catch print failures on any setup, for this series we wanted to try to provide an unbiased, data driven 3D printer review.

By publishing these statistics we hope to give everyone a better insight into the current state of the 3D printing industry and a look at some statistics of the best 3D printers at scale. The statistics generated below are aggregated from a sample size of over 1,000 unique 3D printers, over 100,000 unique print attempts, and over 10,000,000 hours of 3D print monitoring. If there are other metrics you’d like to see computed on some of the best 3D printers let us know in the comments below and we’ll try to include them in future 3D printer reviews.

Best 3D Printer Criteria #1: Popularity

How to clean up a PLA / PETG blob from a failed 3D print

· 6 min read

So you went to sleep with your 3D printer running. Excitedly, you wake up and run to go take a look at your beautiful new creation. To your dismay, something has gone horribly wrong. You’ve had a failed 3D print. It didn’t just create a fresh plate of filament spaghetti, but it has fully encased the hot end of your extruder in a PLA / PETG blob.

We’ve been there -- the racing heart, the panic, the fear your 3D printer will never run again. While it is possible you’ve damaged the 3D printer, it’s more likely you can get everything back to normal working order by following these steps. The most important part in 3D print clean up is to stay cool and don’t rush. Damage is more often caused by frustration and impatience when trying to pull off the cold hardened PLA / PETG blob with force than by the print failure itself.

10 Million Hours That Demonstrate Maker's Heroic Fights Against COVID-19

· 4 min read

In just a couple of days, the number of hours that The Detective has watched will cross the 10-Million mark.

This incredible milestone, first and foremost, is a clear demonstration of the heroic actions taken by the makers around the world to fight against COVID-19. In the past two months, TSD users have been printing Personal Protection Equipments (PPEs) days and nights. The daily print hours on TSD has more than doubled.

This milestone is also the direct result of TSD's contribution to this collective fight against COVID-19. Yes it costs us significant amount to serve those hours, but as a member of the 3D printing community, we want to help out since we are lucky enough to be doing just fine during the time of this pandemic.

To celebrate this incredible milestone, as well as to give our users some dopamine while we are all stuck home, we will give away some goodies and prizes.

The Spaghetti Detective on Jetson Nano - A complete installation guide

· 5 min read
danger

This guide is out of date. The steps to install The Spaghetti Detective private server on a Jetson Nano have been greatly simplified and as the result, this guide no longer works. Please head to the updated guide.*

Reddit user MidnightLink took the time to write and post an awesome guide on Reddit. Re-posting it here with his permission. Thank you MidnightLink!

Hey all! The other day I decided I wanted to run a dedicated TSD server at my home as I have 4 printers that I want to monitor, and no real want to send out a bunch of info to an unknown server. Looking into the options, and not wanting to have my PC on 24/7, I picked up a Jetson Nano and started working on getting it ready.

The instructions on the official GitHub for doing this are very lacking, and a lot of the commands don't work properly. (docker-compose for example is a MASSIVE pain as it's not native to ARM64, and there are a decent amount of missing dependencies) so here is the complete guide on how to set up your own Spaghetti Detective server on a Jetson Nano!

3D printed cotton face mask? Read on...

· 2 min read

This is a guest post by Steve Wynveen. Steve Wynveen is a mechanical engineer that is a technician at heart.

Background

As you are probably well aware, there is a shortage of PPE for hospital and other medical field staff. Froedert & Medical College of Wisconsin have posted plans for people to sew 100% cotton face masks. Several other patterns for sewists exist as well.

The Froedert ask for public help:

https://www.froedtert.com/stories/new-unused-personal-protective-equipment-other-supplies-gratefully-accepted

The Froedert mask plan:

https://www.froedtert.com/sites/default/files/files/2020-03/MaskInstructions_V2.pdf

3D Printing makers acting to help the world fight against COVID-19

· 4 min read

3D printing hobbyists in The Spaghetti Detective community banded together to print PPEs for healthcare workers in their local community to help them fight COVID-19.

3D printing and virus are two things that usually don't intersect. But now when the world is upended by the coronavirus crisis, they do - in a way that not many people would expect.

The Spaghetti Detective is a 3D printing platform with tens of thousands of active 3D printing hobbyists.

When the coronavirus is attacking, they act together to save the world.

How? By designing and 3D printing thousands and thousands of face shields and masks and donate them to hospitals and healthcare workers who are in separate need of protective equipments; or by 3D printing things like door opener for touchless operation; or by simply showing gratitude to people who are fighting on the front lines.

Update on 04/05/2020: Since the start of the pandemic, TSD users have more than doubled the hours they print every day. This graph tells it all:

If you have a 3D printer, put it to good use by joining tens of thousands of us in the fight against coronavirus. If everyone one of us prints 10 face shields or masks a day, we will have an unmatched capacity of producing millions of protective gears in a very short amount of time.

Join us in this banded effort!