Tom was one of the fellow moderators with me on the G+ 3D printing community, and one of the very few people I would actually trust with advice regarding this stuff. He basically reached the same conclusions that I have about these, and I’m glad to see he’s still making content.
We ended up helping thousands of people with nothing but bad descriptions and worse pictures/videos for around 8 years. He was one of the people who were the most active, besides myself - the others being Whosawhatsis and Gina Haubage
That was enjoyable to watch. I like how he could respect it even if he couldn’t recommend it.
He used to be an Audio engineer at either Harman Kardon or Bose, if I remember correctly. After only about a year of youtube, he was able to hire a guy from our community (Nils) to help him with videos, and I think after 2 years or so, surpassed his salary as an audio engineer. Honestly, really helpful and awesome guy in person - though he tends to be short because whenever you see him in public, he’s usually shooting footage. Still, awesome guy and I’d say a pivotal mentor in the early days of 3D printing. He knows what he’s talking about…unlike…say…CHEP; who continues to swindle unsuspecting users into his bullshit “E-Leveler”…
The concept of the e-leveler is perfectly valid, I’ve used both a BLtouch and a dial indicator to basically do the same trimming setup multiple times, it’s just hilarious how visibly old school and bare bones he designed it to be and then he dares to ask $25 for one when you could literally cobble one together from parts for less than a dollar in five minutes.
It should have been a funny perk on like a PCB business card or ruler you’d get from him, and not product he actually tries to sell. Or at best, a kit costing barely more than the postage.
You can find a piece of paper in your house anywhere basically for free. They’re held to a pretty tight 0.08mm thickness, and given how little leveling actually plays a part in a successful print, it really is a swindle.
I run a 3D printer repair shop in Central Florida, and 99/100, a customers “leveling issue” is a hotend flow issue (broken idler arm, loose drive gear), or a machine assembly issue instead (loose/floaty bed, x gantry, x carriage, etc).
In most cases, I tram by eye - as there is no need to be 0.01mm accurate across a 230mm bed on a machine that cost $100.
Yeah, the e-leveler is a voron/klippy tap with extra steps.
What’s G+?
Google+ - it was Google’s attempt at a competing social network to Facebook. They pushed it hard, tried to force everyone to use their real names, attempted to tie YouTube channels to it, etc. Until it ultimately bombed and it was discovered that they had HUGE data leak issues. So they shuttered the whole thing some years back.
The community we ended up building ended up being something like 5000 active daily participants, with 430k who had ‘joined’ the community.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/watch?v=ikjOEaPY6Rk&t=106s
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
