Can you print a flipper bat that would withstand the abuse? Seems like even nylon would break at the layer seams.

I made a quick and dirty seat from the picture. I have no idea of scale or thickness, but you should be able to adjust it in your slicer. PM me and I'll send it to you to try. I assume you'll want to print it in nylon for durability. It gets a lot of abuse.

And for resin printers/washers, ventilation is required. The chemical smells must be ventilated or they will damage you over time.

I'd recommend a prusa mini for a starter instead of a ender3. Yes, it's literally double the price ($380 vs $190), but the number of improvements over the ender3 are substantial and a better starting point for the 3d printing experience.

I pooh-poohed it initially (how could it be as good as the MK3/3S/3S+?), but decided to get one to check it out. It's very nice. It has features I wish the MK3S+ had, like the color screen with images of what you're printing and more stats at print time, USB instead of SD card storage, and wifi printing (yet to be enabled in firmware). It seems to print at about 95% or better the quality of the MK3S+. It's not *quite* as good, but unless you have one of each to do a print on both, you're not going to notice the difference.

The two main things I don't like are the spool handling and the external power brick. That said, I would have no problem recommending it - it's easily the best value in its price class. Getting an Ender3 and modding the crap out of it makes no sense to me because in the end you still just have a nice Ender3. Way back, I sold my Ender3 rather than go that route. The Prusa mini is next level for the entry level class. I actually bought another one after trying the first. I'm up to 6 printers and 8 extruders (2 of the printers are dual extruder) now with this addition, and some weeks I'm still maxed out on throughput.

Are you using PETG, ABS, or Nylon?

Will that be durable enough?

Tinkercad is dead simple and free. Start there. Blender is much more powerful, but more difficult. That's the next step.

This is not true now that the Prusa Mini+ is available (https://www.prusa3d.com/original-prusa-mini/) for only $349. Among my 3D printers, I have multiples of both the mini and the i3MK3S+ and the mini is very very good for $379 for the kit (get the optional $30 filament sensor). I've had enders, too, but I'd much rather have a Prusa mini stock than a modded out Ender 3 to overcome its weaknesses because a stock Prusa mini is a really nice printer with great bells and whistles for a cheap price (and that goes for the chinese cheap knockoffs that have thermal runaway issues, not interested in burning my house down because I left a print unattended). The mini kit is only a few parts and about 20 minutes - barely even a kit and nothing like the hours-long assembly if an i3MK3S+.

I have one sitting in the box that I intend to get set up, but having some place to put the printer with up to 5 filament spools behind it is the problem. I don't have the space. I may have to go vertical.

Pretty much my feeling after moving from an Ender 3 to the MK3 a couple years ago. I didn't have problems printing with the Ender 3, but it was just such a hassle to use and SO LOUD. Now that the mini gives most of the MK3S+ features and performance for half the price (all you're missing is about 20% of the build area and some niceties with the power supply and filament handling) there's really no excuse to hassle with an Ender 3 and mod it out if you're buying a printer right now. I also have a couple $3500 Raise3D E2s I now use mostly for PETG to manage the air pollution that material puts off while printing and I constantly complain (mostly to myself, no one's listening) about features it's missing that the Prusa MK3S has.

PRUSA makes nice printers, for sure.

If you're running a lot of PETG on a non-enclosed PRUSA, for your lungs' sake you want to at least have some kind of HEPA filtration near the printer to try to minimize the dust/gas that's thrown off when the filament is heated up if you're running it indoors. It's a LOT more than you realize. It's completely coated the inside of my E2 printers over time with a white haze, which is why I only run PLA on the PRUSAs. PETG is automatically in the enclosed printers with built in filtration.

It's pretty deceptive because it doesn't really smell that bad (well, ABS does, but...) and you don't SEE a cloud or anything, but on the PETG it is really surprising how much chemical haze builds up on the viewing window and sides of the enclosure. I only do PETG now in the enclosed units and I have a HEPA filter running by the other side of the room where the PRUSAs are that only run PLA. Ideally I'd like to have all of it enclosed with ventilation to the outside, but this will have to do for now.

ABS is hands-down bad. I think PETG is in the ballpark of PLA in smell (not much smell), but in airborne micro particles, I think it's worse than PLA. The haze if I print PLA in the enclosed units is pretty much nonexistent, but a print of PETG of just 4-6 hours and it's all over the inside of the enclosure. That visual is what locked me in to deciding PETG was only for the two enclosed units with HEPA filtration, and getting a better HEPA room air filter even for the PLA units.

If anyone is eyeballing a PRUSA i3MK3s+, the MK4 is coming this year, so might want to hold off if you don't need it right away. It will almost certainly be more than the MK3S+ kit, so probably looking at $849/$899 for a kit.

Yeah, it's a kit. The current MK3S+ kit is $749, factory assembled is $999. I'm assuming the MK4 kit will be in the $849 range for the kit and $1099 assembled.

Ah, I see now. No, the MK4 will be a pretty substantial upgrade from the MK3, so they *might* offer a kit, but I would think that it will probably be a new line. Having used the mini for a while now, I'm looking forward to a larger color screen instead of the one the MK3s have now. Dual extruder would be great, but that might be asking too much.

Raise3D E2 manages the dual extruders fine. Granted, it's $3500, and that machine has a lot of problems, but dual extruders that work for duplication is the reason I now have two of them even though I have a love-hate relationship with other aspects of the machine and company.

If anyone can get dual extruders done well for the masses, it's PRUSA.

Rather than lighting from the back through slots, I would make a horizontal channel for the LED strip that runs along the bottom of the letters with the LEDs pointing toward the top of the letters so you don't lose any of the light through slots. It should make an even light, and the leds source will not be visible.

Not necessarily. Why not make a base for the letters to rest on that is also clear? The up-shooting LEDs should illuminate all the clear and the base would be hidden behind the part it snaps into.

Yeah, seems like consumer resin or an external service with way better printers like Shapeways.