Idk if theres much interest to start another wishlist, but figured id try it out again and see if the community has any new ideas/requests for 3DPC.
Personally there isnt much im in the market for at this time, but i would likley buy a fan duct if they would offer it, as i seem to have issues printing them.
I like the thought, Love to hear everyone’s thoughts/ideas. At a min get to see some new stuff up and coming.
My wish list… altho it grows regularly.
-Creality Spider hot end, Replacement nozzles and Boots too.
-Broader selection of hot ends.
-Complete package hot end replacements like this > KOYOFEI Ender 5 Plus Full Hotend Kit, Original Fully Assembled Extruder MK8 Hot End Kit with Aluminum Heating Block 0.4mm Nozzle Teflon Tube for 3D Printer Ender-5 Plus : Amazon.ca: Industrial & Scientific
-3DPC to offer pre compiled firmwares better than stock.
-Broader selection of PLAs and PLA+
Actually i like that firmware idea and have 1 to add to it.
Filament profiles for common slicers and printers they sell for the filament they also sell.
I get that its a thing to tune your printer to your filaments, but i got suckered into the gravey train that is prusa, and kinda just default to use those profiles for most filaments. That being said, ive come across only a few filaments with profiles and do tend to lean on manufacturer suggestions unless im doing something like printing very fast.
I very much like this idea @Dr.Marvin Maybe we could go one step further and add them to the product page for each one? or would you just like it posted here in the forum?
I wish I could give you a coherent wish list but I really can’t.
You doing product review videos is really valuable me; as is hosting this site - I will look to you for getting my next printer. I’m definitely going to drop by the store in the next few days as I’ve never been there before and maybe that will give me ideas as to what I would like from you.
When I look at the previous replies, I would caution you against offering compiled firmware images and slicer profiles. First off, very few lower cost (less than $1k) printers are stock after the first few months and, not to be insulting to people on this list or on the Facebook groups I’m on, a great majority of them don’t understand what the changes will do to the resulting prints. A lot of them are of the order, “I was told to buy %%%%% and now the nozzle is scraping my printing surface. I don’t have a working printer and I it looks like I have a big bill to get things working again - can anybody help me?” I can see the support work for firmware images growing exponentially with this.
Similarly with providing filament profiles. I don’t think you can do one size fits all for the different printers out there AND I suspect that there will be differences in different production lots and filament colours which will add significantly to the workload of ensuring the profiles are correct.
Along with printers, I’m interested in accessories for my printers - the Sunlu filament heater I just purchased being a good example of that. Having a video to go along with it really sealed the deal. I’m not sure if that extrapolates to a very complete line of different hot ends and specific printer upgrades.
If you look at my online purchases to the store, you’ll see that I use you as a source of parts with quick delivery times when something wears out. I think you need to be incredibly focused on stocking just 3D printer parts as you’re competing with Digi-Key for electronic parts, McMaster-Carr for mechanicals and Open Builds when it comes to structural parts. If somebody is looking for a deal on multiples of specific parts and are willing to wait they’re going to go to AliExpress. What might be helpful is providing links to these sources for specific types of parts (people tend to trust a retailer when they point out companies that do things better than them and they understand the market).
Something that could be useful would be a .gcode repository for common testing models (Benchy, a temperature tower, calibration tests, etc.) so that people have a quick resource for these models that should be fairly non-specific when it comes to printers and may require some .gcode processing.
Sorry I have a lot of don’ts here and not a lot of dos.
I want nothing more than you to succeed and I want you to avoid falling into expensive holes that will anger/frustrate customers more than help them.
The firmware idea is a good one. If you can get someone to setup a CI/CD type pipeline it should be easy enough to automate with pre-adjusted configs and/or patches. I built something like this waaaaaay back in the day for linux kernel building (before there was such a thing as a CI/CD pipeline or at least before it had any sort of naming and best practices). Depending on how complex the adjustments needed are it might not be super had to implement.
Personally id keep it tied with product pages, and mention it perhaps here if you do go that way.
@mykepredko did have good points to consider regarding the firmware and profiles. In the end this hobby has a learning curve. Each printer is different, but it does give insite to what you guys reccomend/use.
I would deff go the safe route, general settings that would work @60mm/sec. Really a starting point you can always tune for the printer past that