Field Notes
Diagnosing print failures other guides get wrong — pressure advance, heat creep, wet filament, and more.
Your Filament Is Wet — and You Don't Know It
Stringing, blobs, weak layers, popping sounds from the hotend — you've adjusted retraction, swapped the nozzle, and re-leveled the bed. The …
Aug 11, 2026 · 5 min read
Your Printer Isn't Slow — Your Hotend Is Starving
Why high-speed printing looks worse after all your calibrations — and the one number you need to fix it. Learn how volumetric flow rate limi…
Aug 11, 2026 · 5 min read
One of These Isn't Ringing
Ran input shaping and the wavy wall's still there? It might not be ringing. Here's how to tell ringing apart from VFA, Z-banding, and salmon…
Aug 11, 2026 · 4 min read
Heat Creep: the clog that's not a clog
Your extruder starts clicking four hours into a long print, the nozzle pulls clean, and you spend the next week drying filament that wasn't …
Aug 11, 2026 · 4 min read
Pressure Advance: The Setting Your Slicer Can't Set For You
Pressure Advance compensates for the physics of pressurized molten plastic in your hotend. Here's why it's per-filament, per-temperature, an…
Aug 11, 2026 · 5 min read
Dialing In Your Lighting: Brightness, Color, and Motion
Getting the pucks on the wall is the easy part. Getting them dialed in — the right brightness for a 2am hallway trip, the right color temper…
Mar 31, 2026 · 1 min read
Converting Your Home to a Smart Home
I moved into a new house and immediately had two spots that made me nervous at night — a staircase and a long hallway, both completely dark.…
Mar 31, 2026 · 1 min read
Blog - Industrial Mentality
Most home printing operations start with a YouTube tutorial and a spool of PLA. Mine started in environments where a failed part doesn't jus…
Mar 20, 2026
Why How Things Are Made Matters More Than the Price Tag
We’re often told—directly or indirectly—that higher price means higher quality. If something costs more, it must be better, right? Not alwa…
Jan 31, 2026 · 3 min read
Replacing Assumptions and Hype With Intention in Additive Manufacturing
Additive manufacturing is often framed in extremes. On one side, it’s dismissed as novelty—plastic trinkets, weak parts, and solutions in se…
Jan 7, 2026 · 3 min read
Welcome to my Journey
My 2025 Journey: From Burnout to Building DuffAM Metal Additive Manufacturing for Space by Trade, Engaging Polymer Additive (3D Printing) by…
Dec 2, 2025 · 4 min read
What is my take on AM?
You see a need, they see a way to sell you what you don't need There are various ways to approach this, but fundamentally, I view AM as...
Dec 18, 2024 · 2 min read