This episode is full of weird 3D printers, starting with a 3D printing simulation from Spee3D. Tom and Stefan further talk about a new dynamic build platform concept to reduce the support amount and a Japanese project that converts a 3D printer into a production line plus the Thermorph concept that allows automatically folding 3D prints using a smart combination of PLA and TPU. Then they discuss the morality of selling a community firmware as their own and that the popular Dragon Hotends that se...
Apr 30, 2021•1 hr 35 min•Ep. 45
In this episode, Tom and Stefan present their new logo and talk about a semi open-source approach to electric driving vehicles, Lulzbot's new “as low as $750” printer, Stratasys' last heated build chamber finally expiring and a slicer integration to finally print 90° overhangs without support. The main topic is about the question if we are genii since so many reach out to us as their last hope for support and why we often have to refuse direct assistance. Questions cover "why PLA doesn't get sof...
Mar 31, 2021•1 hr 33 min•Ep. 44
Freebooting everything! Tom's whole website got copied and translated to French by an Affiliate Portal. One of Stefan's videos was re-uploaded by an Instagram channel as well as shots from his videos were taken to advertise threaded inserts on Amazon. Both talk about their way to appeal and defend themselves against those cases and correct a couple of things from a recent episode. They further discuss the eco-friendliness of PLA and a recent news article where the German website Heise found a tr...
Feb 25, 2021•1 hr 35 min•Ep. 43
In this episode, Stefan talks about his VORON 0 build he started right after the last podcast episode on his hunt for a 10 minutes Benchy. The news cover a lot of recent 3D printers and printing technologies including the current Plybot Kickstarter, Formlabs finally releasing the Fuse 1, electrochemical metal 3D printing, and a 4th axis for the Prusa that tries to save on support structure. Both shortly discuss the things that recently happened around Gamestonks and also the Bernie Sanders meme....
Feb 07, 2021•1 hr 37 min•Ep. 42
First, Tom and Stefan talk about the recent Corona situation and how it's affecting them. They quickly change the topic and discuss their latest experience with the CR-30 belt printer they have for testing. The news topics cover yet another Kickstarter where Ulendo is claiming that we can print 2x faster with their cloud service. Then XOLO announced their first volumetric 3D printer and a new patent was granted for an interesting fluorescence switch SLA printing method. Tom talks about his recen...
Jan 11, 2021•1 hr 45 min•Ep. 41
After a bit of a break, Tom and Stefan are back talking about their responsibility as "influencers" and the new hype around Belt 3D Printers that are currently on Kickstarter. Belt 3D printing doesn't only require suitable hardware, but also software that supports this uncommon kinematic. Both talk about the importance of hardware and software upgrades and how they are necessary to improve the technology over time.
Dec 12, 2020•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 40
This week, Stefan and Tom have a guest on the podcast - Gine Häußge, main developer of OctoPrint! They talk about what it's like creating and maintaining open-source software, what her learnings mean for other projects like FreeCAD and what it's like to be a solo entrepreneur.
Oct 09, 2020•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 39
With Stefan's last day on parental leave, he and Tom get together once more to talk about the developments in the 3D printer scene. It seems like Belt printers are making a comeback, Fusion360 is again making drastic changes and E3D have somewhat quietly released their hybrid manufacturing toolhead for the toolchanger.
Sep 25, 2020•1 hr 31 min•Ep. 38
After another short break due to Stefan becoming a father, both talk about recent projects involving 3D scanners & sublimating 3D scanning spray. News cover KFC planning to print with lab meat in Russia, 3D printing gunpowder, a Standard for Open Hardware and Open Source Computer Vision Algorithms for print correction. Due to recent events, both rant about an allegedly "fully" 3D printed motorcycle, 3D printed houses, and how Kickstarters rarely are used anymore for what they should. Questio...
Aug 19, 2020•1 hr 34 min•Ep. 37
3D Printed "meat" is the hot topic right now! Stefan and Tom cover two approaches that aim to print texture into vegan "steak" and "salmon". Both look promising, but like with most 3D printed food, the hard challenges remain to be solved. Can a huge show like Formnext happen in the current pandemic? Apparently the answer is "yes", as TCT Asia has just finished. Staying with Asia, Creality is reporting record shipments for the month of march - but might be infringing on a patent with their latest...
Jul 14, 2020•1 hr 42 min•Ep. 36
After thinking about buying a lathe for ages, Stefan finally bought himself a new machining tool for the workshop. Tom shares his own experience with his Mini Lathe. Tom recently received a Prusa Mini and talks about his first impressions as well as some plans for it in his upcoming 3D Printing Beginners Series on YouTube. Both discuss the recent theft of fellow YouTuber Heliox' channel and a new "Ultra Fast" printing process that slightly resembles an old CRT television as well as locally pre-h...
Jun 04, 2020•1 hr 35 min•Ep. 35
Lots of interesting topics this time! Tesla is apparently using last-minute 3D printed parts in the first Model Ys they delivered; Adrian Bowyer is proposing a novel print removal system; and the US Army has been working on a non-homogeneous 3D printing filament. But Stefan and Tom haven't been idle, either and have been working on the Toolchanger and on finally getting an old CNC working. All that and more in this episode of The Meltzone Podcast! Notes and timestamps: 3:50 Getting married in sp...
May 03, 2020•1 hr 45 min•Ep. 34
It's The Meltzone Lockdown edition! Tom is running out of home improvement store goods while Stefan is holding himself over with VR and finally building his E3D Toolchanger. We're also talking about printing faceshields and other PPE and how getting organized is really important right now. Also, Makerbot is supposedly opening up their Method 3D printer to filaments from other manufacturers. In the questions, we cover filament diameter conversions, building a new printed CNC and Autodesk's patent...
Apr 09, 2020•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 33
On this content packed episode, Tom and Stefan talk about their recent live streaming efforts, VR, the newly added FFF slicer in Fusion360 and why Stefan thinks it's a challenge to add gears to his new plastics shredder. There are currently a lot of efforts being done to use 3D printing for medical equipment due to the current Corona pandemic. Both discuss the positive and negative sides of those and why there also can be a danger in printing medical supplies. There is a "new Thingiverse" but is...
Mar 25, 2020•1 hr 56 min•Ep. 32
Update: After the blanket travel ban from Europe, MRRF has officially been canceled / postponed. In this episode, we talk about Stefan's new Toolchanger, more use cases for LW-PLA and our (back then still relevant) plans for MRRF 2020!
Mar 13, 2020•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 31
Tom and Stefan talk about the upcoming events that they'll attend including Malta Maker Fair and MRRF2020. Both recently released a material testing video and discuss if resin prints are really isotropic and why lattice or porous structures performs the way they do. Tom got kicked from the Amazon.com affiliate program and explains how that happened. Stefan got a new Pellet Extruder and expresses his first experience with it. Both talk about the impact of the Chorona Virus on the China and the 3D...
Feb 22, 2020•1 hr 34 min•Ep. 30
Flashforge first cloned Makerbot - and now it looks like Makerbot are selling Flashforge's machines? That and a discussion on the (non) availability of the Elegoo Mars Pro, our take on Linus' "I've been thinking about retiring" stream and our pros and cons to using "servos" on 3D printers in this episode of The Meltzone!
Feb 07, 2020•1 hr 31 min•Ep. 29
Tom and Stefan are back from their holiday break and meet up in the "real" CNC Kitchen. They talk about current projects like Stefans work on Colorfabbs Light Weight PLA (LW-PLA). Both discuss the recent problems with the Hermera Extruder and how E3D is handling it. The topic of the week covers the differences between Teflon-lined hotends and full metal hotends, where the differences are and that the latter isn't always the best choice. Questions cover the differences between PETG and ABS as wel...
Jan 14, 2020•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 28
Is Prusa turning on the open-source community by requiring you to physically damaging the Mini's board to run custom firmware? That's our big topic of the week! Well, technically, topic of the bi-week? Stefan has been working on a surprisingly simple and universal variable infill algorithm while Tom has been trying to combine the advantages of filament and resin printing. In other new, Marlin 2.0 has finally come out of beta and the E3D "not a Hermes" has started shipping! We talk about our expe...
Dec 19, 2019•1 hr 28 min•Ep. 27
Tom and Stefan have been at Formnext 2019 the week before and talk about their impressions.The news cover the current state of Lulzbot and also that Generative Design for Fusion360 is currently available for free. Podimo, a German startup wants to be the Netflix of Podcasts. Both discuss if they like their business model and if the even want to be listen in the Podimo app. Tom got into RC flying, talks about his first experiences and both discuss 3D printed airplanes and also Colorfabbs new Ligh...
Nov 28, 2019•1 hr 34 min•Ep. 26
It's finally a normal episode with Stefan & Tom again! We talk about our experiences with travelling to shows and what we enjoy doing when our calendars are not stuffed with events. Tom uses an E3D Supervolcano for the first time and gets different findings to what Stefan has seen in other high-speed printing setups. Also, there's been a lot of stuff going wrong lately: Lulzbot seems to be going out of business, the UK is creating even more uncertainty by delaying Brexit and impacting UK man...
Oct 31, 2019•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 25
In this week's special episode from the East Coast RepRap Festival 2019, Tom talks to Keith (as a non-representative of Proto-Pasta) about their ERRF highlight, how the terrorist attack in Halle seems to have used 3D printing to fabricate firearm parts and what we should (or can) do about it. Also, Proto-Pasta's experiences in shipping a filament extruder all the way across the US and whether 3D printer manufacturers should be providing a functional machine to buyers!
Oct 24, 2019•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 24
On this special Podcast Episode Stefan visits a YouTube Creators Event in the UK and talk with his two fellow YouTube creator Tom Stanton and Ivan Miranda about cool gadgets they own and how they use their CNCs where 3D printing is not sufficient anymore.
Oct 14, 2019•33 min•Ep. 23
Stefan talks about his recent trip to the UK where he visited E3D and the XYZSummit, a YouTube creators even. YouTube did it's "thing" again by removing the verified status from most of their creators but shortly changed their mind again after lots of complaints from the community. LEGO has taken down lot's of community designs from MyMiniFactory and Thingiverse. Tom and Stefan discuss how far 3D printers have come from the Sells Mendel and at which point both got into the hobby. They both talk ...
Oct 09, 2019•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 22
Non-planar hype, the end of rigid.ink and the start of a new Smoothieboard
Sep 17, 2019•1 hr 40 min•Ep. 21
Stefan will soon be on a 3 week holiday trip to Japan and talks about his preparations in terms of camera equipment and Tom presents his latest 10-25mm f1.7 lens he recently bought. Both discuss if YouTube is a suitable platform for their podcast and if they should release their show as audio-only. Stefan made a discovery how STL files can become inaccurate if they are exported in the wrong coordinate system. Both talk in depth about the meaningfulness of topology optimization and lattice struct...
Aug 13, 2019•1 hr 32 min•Ep. 20
Why are white goods getting more and more unreliable? What are the dangers of cloud software? How are these two successful YouTubers steering the YouTube algorithm? We'll answer that in this episode of the Meltzone podcast! Also, news on non-planar slicing with a paper on "CurviSlicer", questions on filament-based metal 3D printing, a free Solidworks version for makers and advances slicer tuning options for FDM. Topic of the week: What are we actually using 3D printing for and are there even app...
Jul 31, 2019•1 hr 33 min•Ep. 19
After 5 weeks of no PodCast together, there are a lot of things to chat about. Tom and Stefan talk a bit about recent Prague Maker Fair and the awesome spirit of it. Tom gave topology optimization a try and Stefan talks about how he could use his new 3D scanner to measure the strains in it during testing. Stefan got back to some filament tests and talks about his experience with part cooling and layer adhesion. The guys show their admiration for David Shoreys current work on 3D printing on diffr...
Jul 17, 2019•1 hr 29 min•Ep. 18
After Maker Faire Prague, Prusa let Tom, 3D Printing Nerd and 3D Maker Noob have their studio for an hour to jam about recent 3D printing topics! In this episode, we talk about the demise of Maker Media, the creators of Make Magazine and licencors of Maker Faires - and what that means for the future of faires in general. In other news, a CR-10 caught fire and a Twitter user was caught advertising a 3D printer with photos stolen from several community members. And for the "big" topic, we fantasiz...
Jun 29, 2019•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 17
The big topic this week: Is Kickstarter still what it used to be? What are the risks involved in backing crowdfunding campaigns? Tom and Stefan discuss their experiences with past crowfunding projects and try to make sense of today's landscape on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. In other quick topics: Stefan's recap of hitting 100k subscribers on YouTube and his experiences of trying "Premieres", Apple's interesting new Pro lineup and a follow-up on keeping filament dry.
Jun 05, 2019•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 16
