3D Printing Zone

The week of 19 to 25 October 2026 in 3D printing, for makers and small businesses, plus two stories from earlier in October we had not yet covered. Bambu Lab teased a nine-tool printer, Elegoo put a date on its first scanner, Formlabs launched a resin printer from US$699, Anycubic signed an exclusive deal with Thingiverse, Carbon passed one million printed bike saddles, a California county sued filament maker Polymaker over its marketing, and CASA approved 3D-printed cabin ducts for firefighting helicopters.

Stories this episode:

• Bambu Lab H3C: what the 23 October teaser shows, and what is still rumour before the 3 November reveal• Elegoo M1 Ultra scanner on sale 29 October, Bambu's S1 due in November, and why printer brands want to sell scanners• Formlabs Form Studio 1: US$699 resin printing, specs, shipping date and the Australian price• Anycubic and Thingiverse: two million models, STL-to-3MF multicolour conversions from 17 November• Carbon passes one million DLS-printed bike saddles across 11 brands• San Diego County v Polymaker: when marketing makes filament a "firearm precursor part"• Plane Support wins CASA approval to print cabin ducts for McDermott Aviation's Bell 214B helicopters

You'll come away understanding what a tool changer is and why it cuts multicolour waste, how blue-laser and infrared scanners differ, what MSLA resin printing involves, why 3MF matters for multicolour models, and how a printed part gets approved to fly in Australia.

Need something printed? Upload your STL, 3MF, OBJ or STEP file at www.3dprinting.zone for an instant price, shipped Australia-wide.

Sources: Tom's Hardware; 3DBite; All3DP; Elegoo and Anycubic releases via PR Newswire; 3DPrint.com; Formlabs; Core Electronics; 3D Printing Industry (CONTEXT market data); TCT Magazine; TechSpot; 3DPrinting.com; Reserve Bank of Australia (A$1 = US$0.70, 23 October 2026).

In 2022 a two-year-old Shenzhen start-up founded by ex-DJI drone engineers put a printer on Kickstarter and raised about seven million US dollars in a month. Four years later Bambu Lab ships more entry-level 3D printers (under US$2,500) than anyone on earth, its model site MakerWorld claims ten million monthly users, and a Texas jury has just ordered it to pay Stratasys 27.6 million US dollars for patent infringement. This episode tells the story: what the X1 actually changed, how the price of a "just works" multicolour printer fell from 1,200 to 300 US dollars, and what the industry gave up along the way.

You'll come away understanding what CoreXY, lidar and an AMS are and why they mattered; how Bambu went from a Kickstarter to a 37 percent share of entry-level shipments; how MakerWorld's points system rewired the free-model economy; the August 2023 "ghost print" cloud outage, the A1 heatbed recall, the January 2025 firmware lock-down, the 2026 open-source licensing fight with Prusa and the Software Freedom Conservancy, and the Stratasys verdict; and what all this means for a hobbyist buying a printer, or a business ordering a print, in Australia in late 2026.

Fair, sourced and honest about both the engineering and the controversies.

Need something printed? Upload your STL, 3MF, OBJ or STEP file at www.3dprinting.zone for an instant price, shipped Australia-wide.

Sources: Kickstarter; Bambu Lab blog and recall pages; US CPSC; Tom's Hardware; Hackaday; 3DPrint.com; 3D Printing Industry; VoxelMatters; Fabbaloo; TCT Magazine; CONTEXT market data; Prusa Research blog; CNC Kitchen; Jeff Geerling; The Register; Australian reseller pricing (3D Printer Superstore, 3D BRO), October 2026.

Walk into any filament shop, online or otherwise, and plain PLA is surrounded by cousins: silk, matte, glow-in-the-dark, wood, marble, carbon fibre, sparkle, rainbow, colour-changing, and the mysterious "PLA Plus". They are all PLA underneath, yet a silk vase and a matte figurine print, feel and break quite differently. This episode goes finish by finish and explains what the additive actually is, what it does to the print, and what it quietly costs you in strength, nozzle wear or dollars.

You'll come away understanding why silk filament is glossy but can lose most of its layer strength; why matte PLA is heavier than plain PLA and hides layer lines; what strontium aluminate is and why glow filament needs a hardened steel nozzle; how dual-colour silk changes colour as you turn it; what the "plus" in PLA Plus really buys; and the one thing none of these finishes change, which is how PLA behaves in a hot car or in the Australian sun.

Ideal for anyone choosing a finish for a gift, a sign, a cosplay piece or a display model, and for makers wondering why their shiny print snapped along a layer line.

Need something printed? Upload your STL, 3MF, OBJ or STEP file at www.3dprinting.zone for an instant price, shipped Australia-wide.

Sources: Bambu Lab technical data sheets (PLA Basic, Matte, Silk+, Glow, PLA-CF); Polymaker wiki and PolyTerra data sheet; CNC Kitchen nozzle-wear and PLA Plus tests; My Tech Fun silk PLA tests; Prusa Knowledge Base; colorFabb and Formfutura product pages; Australian retailer listings (Jaycar, 3D Central, X3D, OzFDM, 3D Printer Superstore), October 2026.

The week of 26 September to 4 October 2026 in 3D printing, for makers and small businesses. California signed a law that will one day require printers to recognise and refuse gun files, Bambu Lab launched a matte PETG at the same price as its glossy one, Prusa put a 400-degree hotend on the Core One, Creality announced a laptop-free blue-laser scanner, E3D turned its high-flow nozzle patents into a licensing badge, a three-year-old 3D-printed planter business got bought by a private-equity-backed décor brand, and the first rocket thrusters printed in orbit came home for testing. Plus two Australian research stories.

Stories this episode:

• California's AB 2047 "Firearm Printing Prevention Act": what it actually requires, and why nothing changes before 2028• Bambu Lab PETG Matte: specs, US pricing, and the Halloween sale that puts the P1S at US$399• Prusa HT Hotend Upgrade: 400 °C printing on the Core One for US$199.99• Creality Sermoon P1S: a US$2,299 standalone blue-laser 3D scanner• E3D FlowCore licensing and the Snapmaker × Phaetus Liber hotend; Snapmaker Space opens• Nearly Natural buys Modernized Pottery, a 3D-printed planter business founded in 2023• Sydney and Glasgow print lattices that map their own cracks; Edith Cowan University joins the AMCRC• ESA's space-printed thrusters return to Earth for hot-fire tests

Need something printed? Upload your STL, 3MF, OBJ or STEP file at www.3dprinting.zone for an instant price, shipped Australia-wide.

Sources: 3DPrint.com; Tom's Hardware; VoxelMatters; 3D Printing Industry; 3DBite; Bambu Lab forum and store; Prusa Research; PR Newswire (Creality, Nearly Natural); E3D; University of Glasgow; Process Online; ESA via VoxelMatters and Metal AM. Currency conversions at about A$1.44 per US dollar, RBA rate of 2 October 2026.

A dishwasher basket wheel snaps, a fridge shelf clip crumbles, the bracket on a roller blind gives way, and suddenly a perfectly good appliance is heading for the kerb over a few grams of plastic. This episode is about the most useful thing a 3D printer does in an ordinary home: making the small part nobody sells any more. We walk through real examples, how to find or create a model, which material suits which job, how to design a part that actually fits, where the safety limits are, and how right-to-repair law in Europe and Australia is shifting the ground under manufacturers.

You'll come away understanding the four ways to get a model for a broken part (searching model sites by part number, measuring with a $20 digital calliper and drawing it yourself, scanning or photogrammetry, and the small but growing list of manufacturers such as Philips and Miele that publish official files); which material to choose, from PLA for indoor low-stress parts to PETG and ASA for heat and sun, TPU for flexible feet and gaskets, and resin for tiny detailed gears; the design rules that make parts fit and last, including 0.2 to 0.4 mm clearances, orienting the print so layer lines do not carry the load, and making the part thicker than the original; the list of things you should not print, from anything safety-critical or pressurised to food-contact items and high-heat locations; and where the EU Right to Repair Directive and Australia's Productivity Commission recommendations have actually landed as of 2026.

For anyone who has ever stared at a broken clip and wondered whether the whole appliance really needs replacing, plus a practical tip: print a quick test coupon of the critical dimension before committing to the full part.

Need something printed? Upload your STL, 3MF, OBJ or STEP file at www.3dprinting.zone for an instant price, shipped Australia-wide.

Sources: Prusa Knowledge Base; CNC Kitchen; Tom's Hardware; Right to Repair Europe; Australian Productivity Commission; Australian Treasury.

Millions of free 3D models are a click away, but where do they come from, who pays the people who design them, and what are you actually allowed to do with a file once you have downloaded it? This episode walks through the big model sites, from Thingiverse's 2008 origins and 2026 rescue to Printables' Prusameters and MakerWorld's points and one-click print profiles, then unpacks the licence line on every model page in plain language.

You'll come away understanding how Thingiverse, Printables, MakerWorld, Cults3D, MyMiniFactory, Thangs and Patreon differ and how each one makes money; how designers are rewarded through points, boosts, tips, paid files and subscriptions, with real figures; what a 3MF print profile is and why it made one-tap printing possible; what the Creative Commons letters BY, NC, SA and ND mean, what "non-commercial" does and does not cover, including paying a service to print for you; how MakerWorld's Standard Digital File License and miniature "merchant tiers" differ from Creative Commons; and how to spot a model worth printing before you spend the filament.

This one is for anyone who downloads models, whether you own a printer or not. Practical tip: if a model is colour-painted, download the 3MF rather than the STL so the colour data survives, and post a photo of your finished print on the model page. It costs nothing and it is how designers earn. General information only, not legal advice.

Need something printed? Upload your STL, 3MF, OBJ or STEP file at www.3dprinting.zone for an instant price, shipped Australia-wide.

Sources: Creative Commons licence legal code and FAQ; Prusa Knowledge Base and Prusa Research blog; Bambu Lab blog and MakerWorld terms; 3Dnatives and 3D Printing Industry; TechCrunch; FB Rice (Australian IP commentary).

A capable 3D printer now costs less than a mid-range phone, so why would anyone pay a print service? And if services exist, why would anyone buy a printer? This episode runs the numbers properly: what an entry and mid-range machine really costs in Australia in 2026, the hidden costs nobody puts on the box, the hours you will spend learning and re-printing, and the genuine joys of owning one. It is presented by a print service, so the case for buying your own printer gets a fair and honest hearing.

You'll come away understanding what the popular entry and enclosed mid-range printer classes cost in Australian dollars and what the sale price hides; the real running costs of filament, nozzles, build plates, a filament dryer, tools and electricity, with a worked calculation showing power is cheaper than you think; the time cost of the learning curve and a realistic beginner failure rate; a break-even calculation for a handful of parts a year versus printing every week; when a service is the right call even if you own a printer (materials you do not run, bigger parts, multicolour, resin, deadlines and calibrated repeatability); and how instant online quotes actually work.

For anyone weighing up their first printer, anyone who owns one and wonders whether it was worth it, and anyone who just needs a part made without becoming a hobbyist.

Need something printed? Upload your STL, 3MF, OBJ or STEP file at www.3dprinting.zone for an instant price, shipped Australia-wide.

Sources: Bambu Lab, Creality and Elegoo Australian stores and authorised resellers; Prusa Research Knowledge Base; Australian Energy Regulator and Essential Services Commission Victoria; FilamentHub Australia; 3Dprinting.com safety guide; Prusa Research print-farm disclosures.

Resin printers build objects upside down, out of a puddle of liquid, hardened one hair-thin slice at a time by violet light. The result is detail that filament printers simply cannot match: raised text a millimetre tall, tabletop miniatures with individual fingernails, jewellery masters ready for casting. But the process comes with a chemistry set attached: washing, curing, gloves, ventilation and waste you cannot pour down the sink. This episode walks through how it all works and when it is the right tool.

You'll come away understanding how photopolymerisation and 405 nanometre light turn liquid resin solid; the difference between SLA laser, DLP projector and MSLA/LCD printers; why layers are 0.025 to 0.05 mm and why print time depends on height rather than how many parts you load; what peel forces, supports, hollowing and orientation have to do with a successful print; the wash-and-cure chain with isopropyl alcohol and UV light; the main resin families, from standard and ABS-like to flexible, water-washable and dental or castable; the real safety story around skin sensitisation, fumes and disposal; and honest numbers on build volumes, printer prices and resin costs in Australian dollars.

For anyone weighing up a first resin printer, painters and gamers curious about printed miniatures, and makers deciding whether a job belongs on the resin or the filament machine.

Need something printed? Upload your STL, 3MF, OBJ or STEP file at www.3dprinting.zone for an instant price, shipped Australia-wide.

Sources: Formlabs, Prusa Knowledge Base, RadTech, Liqcreate, Elegoo, AmeraLabs, Contact Dermatitis (Wiley).

Multicolour 3D printing looks like magic: one machine, one nozzle, and a figurine comes off the plate already painted. This episode opens the lid on how that actually happens, from the filament changers that swap spools hundreds of times in a single print, to tool changers that avoid the swap entirely, to the humble pause-and-swap trick anyone can do. Along the way it explains the dirty secret of the hobby: on a busy five-colour print, the pile of purged plastic can outweigh the model itself.

You'll come away understanding how a single-nozzle colour change works and why every change throws away a fraction of a gram to a couple of grams of filament; why a five-colour figurine can take three to five times longer than the same model in one colour; how colour gets into a model in the first place, through painting in the slicer and the 3MF file that carries the result; what multi-material printing adds beyond colour, including water-soluble supports and flexible-plus-rigid parts; and the design habits that cut waste and cost, like stacking colours by height and limiting colours per layer.

Practical tip: before you buy a filament changer or order a multicolour print, slice the model and read the filament and time figures in the preview. The slicer already knows how much will go into the bin, and it will happily tell you.

Need something printed? Upload your STL, 3MF, OBJ or STEP file at www.3dprinting.zone for an instant price, shipped Australia-wide.

Sources: Bambu Lab Wiki and Blog, Prusa Knowledge Base, Bambu Lab Community Forum, 3MF Consortium, Polymaker, HueForge, XDA Developers, Bambu Lab, Creality, Anycubic and Prusa stores, 3dprinting.zone.

STL, OBJ, 3MF or STEP? The file you upload decides whether your print arrives the right size, the right colour and without a "non-manifold" error. This episode walks through what a mesh actually is, why a format designed in 1987 still dominates, and why the newer 3MF standard has quietly become the default in Bambu Studio, PrusaSlicer and OrcaSlicer.

You'll come away understanding why STL has no units, no colour and stores every shared corner several times over; why a Fusion export can arrive ten times too small; what "manifold" and "watertight" mean and how automatic repair really works; what chord tolerance does when you export and how much resolution a 0.4 mm nozzle can actually use; why engineers prefer STEP and why slicers still have to turn it into triangles; and what survives when a painted 3MF moves from one slicer to another.

Practical tip: for a single-colour mechanical part, send STEP. For anything multicolour or multi-part, export the 3MF project from the slicer you painted in, because that is the only file that carries the colour data with the model.

Need something printed? Upload your STL, 3MF, OBJ or STEP file at www.3dprinting.zone for an instant price, shipped Australia-wide.

Sources: 3MF Consortium core and materials specifications; Prusa Research blog and Knowledge Base; Bambu Lab Wiki; Autodesk support documentation; Hackaday; Wikipedia (STL, Wavefront OBJ, ISO 10303).

Two identical tugboats, same file, same printer, same plastic. One took an hour and a half to print, the other nearly three hours, and the only setting that changed was layer height. This episode puts real numbers on the most consequential trade-off in everyday 3D printing: how thick each slice is, why 0.2 mm became the default, and what you actually get when you go finer.

You'll come away understanding what layer height is and why it is tied to nozzle diameter (roughly 0.1 to 0.3 mm on a standard 0.4 mm nozzle); why print time scales roughly inversely with layer height, so 0.1 mm costs about twice as long as 0.2 mm, with worked examples; the staircase effect and why layer lines show on domes, faces and shallow slopes but barely on vertical walls; when fine layers matter (figurines, text, organic curves) and when they are wasted (boxes, brackets); variable layer height in PrusaSlicer, Bambu Studio, OrcaSlicer and Cura, and the 10 to 25 per cent it can save; what layer height does and does not do for strength, plus first-layer height and how resin printers' 0.025 to 0.05 mm layers compare.

For anyone who has only ever printed on the default profile, and for anyone about to pay a print service and wondering whether to ask for the fine setting.

Need something printed? Upload your STL, 3MF, OBJ or STEP file at www.3dprinting.zone for an instant price, shipped Australia-wide.

Sources: Prusa Knowledge Base, OrcaSlicer Wiki, Bambu Lab Wiki, CNC Kitchen, Formlabs Support, UltiMaker.

Every 3D print is mostly air on the inside, and one number in the slicer decides how much. In this episode we pull apart the infill percentage: what it is, why printed parts are not solid, and what dragging that slider from 15 to 50 to 100 per cent actually does to strength, weight, print time and the price you pay.

You'll come away understanding what infill is and why hollow is normal; what grid, triangles, honeycomb, cubic, gyroid and lightning patterns are each good for; why strength rises with density but strength per gram falls, and why CNC Kitchen's testing shows extra walls beat extra infill for most loads; how infill drives grams, hours and dollars, with a worked example of a 100 gram part at 15, 50 and 100 per cent; when to go high (threads, compression, tiny stressed parts) and when 10 to 15 per cent is plenty (decorative pieces, enclosures); how low infill causes pillowing on top surfaces; and why gyroid is the go-to for flexible TPU.

For anyone who has ever hovered over an infill slider and wondered whether the higher number was worth it, whether on your own printer or at the checkout of a print service.

Need something printed? Upload your STL, 3MF, OBJ or STEP file at www.3dprinting.zone for an instant price, shipped Australia-wide.

Sources: CNC Kitchen; Prusa Knowledge Base and Prusa blog; UltiMaker Cura documentation; Obaide and Saad, Revue des Composites et des Matériaux Avancés (2025); FilamentHub Australia price guide; 3dprinting.zone infill guide.

A phone holder that slumps on a Sydney dashboard, a garden fitting that goes chalky in one summer, a "flexible" case that snaps: almost every disappointing 3D print is a material chosen for the wrong job. This episode walks through the six filaments you will actually meet, PLA, PETG, ABS, ASA, TPU and nylon, and explains how each one prints, how it behaves once it is in your hands, and what a kilogram costs in Australia right now.

You'll come away understanding why PLA is the default for anything decorative but softens near 60 °C, what a glass transition temperature is and why a parked car in summer beats it easily; which materials need an enclosure and a hot bed and why ABS fumes deserve respect; why nylon and PETG have to be kept dry; what changes when you pick silk, matte, glow-in-the-dark or sparkle PLA instead of standard; why nothing printed on a hobby machine is automatically food safe; and a simple decision guide that matches a job (car part, phone case, garden fitting, figurine) to a material.

Ideal for anyone about to order a print or buy their first spool. Practical tip: if the part will live somewhere hot, in the sun, or gets flexed every day, do not print it in PLA, however good the colour looks.

Need something printed? Upload your STL, 3MF, OBJ or STEP file at www.3dprinting.zone for an instant price, shipped Australia-wide.

Sources: Prusa Knowledge Base filament guides; Bambu Lab filament guide; All3DP; CNC Kitchen; RACV; Bureau of Meteorology; US CDC/NIOSH; Australian filament retailers (Bambu Lab AU store, OzFDM, FilamentHub, RAW3D, Core Electronics).

Most desktop 3D printers are, at heart, a very precise hot glue gun on a robot arm. In this episode we follow a spool of plastic all the way to a finished part: what fused filament printing actually is, the handful of components that every machine shares, how a 3D model becomes thousands of lines of G-code, and what the nozzle is really doing as it lays down each 0.2 mm layer.

You'll come away understanding why FDM and FFF describe the same process and why only one company can use the first name; what the hotend, extruder, heated bed and gantry each do, and how a bed-slinger differs from a CoreXY machine; the model-to-slicer-to-G-code workflow and the decisions the slicer makes about layers, walls, infill and supports; why a 0.4 mm nozzle, 0.2 mm layers, a roughly 200 °C nozzle and a 60 °C bed are the defaults for PLA; what really drives print time and material cost, with grams, minutes and Australian dollars; and why first prints fail, from poor adhesion to warping and stringing.

For anyone who has never seen a printer run, anyone about to unbox their first one, and anyone who has wondered why their prints come out ribbed. Practical tip from the episode: the strength of a printed part comes mostly from its walls, not its infill, so add a perimeter before you add infill percentage.

Need something printed? Upload your STL, 3MF, OBJ or STEP file at www.3dprinting.zone for an instant price, shipped Australia-wide.

Sources: Prusa Knowledge Base, Bambu Lab Wiki, Prusament and Polymaker technical data sheets, E3D, the RepRap project, Wikipedia (Fused filament fabrication, CoreXY, G-code), Hackaday, 3D Printing Industry, CNC Kitchen.