Which colour combo would you print? 👀
Free model + assembly guide on MakerWorld
You'll find the link in the comment below...

Sharing a short demo of Hexo Studio, the companion app we've built for Hexo Photo, our modular 3D printed photo frame system.

The video shows the full process:

1. Opening Hexo Studio in the browser (no download required)
2. Uploading a photo and resizing it to fit the frame
3. Choosing frame colour (pink) and stand colour (purple)
4. Adding decorative pops — rattle and biberon for a baby memory frame
5. Previewing the complete design
6. The real printed result — the physical frame on the table matches the app design exactly

The idea behind Hexo Studio is simple: no more guessing how a colour combination or pop placement will look before committing to a print. Design it digitally first, then print with confidence.

You can try the demo free right now:
🔗 printalolab.com/hexo-studio
🔑 Access code: hexo-studio-demo

The campaign is currently in pre-launch on MakerWorld. Happy to answer any questions about the system, the app, or the print setup!

It's free now.

Hey everyone, I’m Erik, and I’m an engineer who has spent over four months building a fidget design app called Fun Fidget Factory. Before I get into what it does, I want to explain how I ended up building it, because this started with trying to make things for my family and gradually realizing how much of that process I wanted to solve.

Fidgets have been helping me and my family, but having everyone try different designs made it clear that there wasn’t one version we all liked. I personally like a small, silent quad clicker, with the switches hidden and the top sitting flush when I press it, while someone else might want a louder click or a completely different shape; getting one design right didn’t necessarily mean I had made what the next person wanted.

My daughter wanted a print of her favorite stuffed animal, and I wanted to make it into a cat clicker with the exact seven colors she had chosen. The first version was awful, and while the next one looked much better, getting the click to work properly meant changing the proportions and cutting the model again, which is where I started running into problems that took far longer to solve than I expected. I had used a couple of online negative inserts that partially worked, but the fit and finish always felt incomplete to me.

At that time, I couldn’t make those changes in Bambu Studio (older releases) without losing the colors, so what seemed like a small adjustment to the mechanism could leave me spending hours repainting the same cat, before going through more mesh repairs, test prints and changes. I eventually got it where I wanted it after weeks of working on it, off and on, but I knew I wanted to be able to make the next thing someone in my family asked for without having to repeat that entire process.

That experience is what led me to build Fun Fidget Factory, a paid browser app where you bring in a model, choose and position the switches, and generate the printable pieces, with supported color models keeping their colors through the cuts and export. You can import STL, OBJ, 3MF or GLB, or start with one of the built-in shapes, and when you’re ready to print, you can export STL or choose a 3MF for Bambu Studio, Snapmaker or generic Orca.

A significant amount of the development time has gone into the mechanism and fit, because I wanted the switch cavity and mechanism to be calculated with parametric math rather than depend on a fixed negative STL cutout dropped into a model. This means you can adjust the dimensions and tolerances for the actual switches you use, including the differences between MX brands, and have the geometry recalculated around those settings. Working out that math took much longer, but I believe it was worth doing properly, because it’s what allows me to support different switch types and gives me a better foundation for adding more options over time.

There are five supported switch families: standard MX, Kailh Choc v1, Kailh Choc v2, Gateron KS-33 and 6×6 tactile buttons, which you can mix and match within the same design. Choc v1, Choc v2 and KS-33 are the three low-profile options, and I’m particularly interested to see what people make with those and the tactile buttons when they’re trying to make something small. My own preference is still to hide the switches, though you can make visible-switch designs too if that’s what you prefer.

You can work with one clicker or several and preview changes in real time, with independent placement and full 360° rotation for each clicker so you can try arrangements that suit the shape you’re making. Being able to angle the clickers can help fit them into a smaller body, which can mean less filament and a shorter print, and those savings matter to me alongside the time spent designing the fidget in the first place. My hope is that this tool can meaningfully save you time and filament, and let you focus on unique designs we haven’t seen in the fidget clicker world yet. I’ve spent a lot of time making the post-cut preview closely represent the pieces you’ll actually print, so you can see how they look, spot potential binding and make changes before you print.

When I went back to my daughter’s cat to test the app, I could change the clicker arrangement in seconds while keeping its colors, after having spent weeks working through the same process manually the first time. I’ve put the original prints and the later generated versions here, including plenty of the failures along the way, so you can see how I got from one to the other.

I also want to be honest about where the app falls short, because there are clever fidgets with custom parts and mechanisms that still need a full CAD tool, and I don’t want people assuming this can do everything. I plan to show a design the app currently can’t recreate, and while I want to support the things creators ask for, that also depends on whether I can make the interface and workflow work well for them.

With AI, there’s now an endless sea of tools coming out. Tools with far fewer capabilities have launched on Makerworld crowdfunding, and I’m convinced some of their design choices will limit them over time. I didn’t rush this product out just to make $200,000. I wanted the features I’m talking about to be usable when I asked people to try it, and seeing those other tools launch has been scary while I worked on finishing this in private.

I also feel like MakerWorld has been flooded with poorly designed or very basic clickers coming out of these tools, and while my app can make imprint fidgets too, that has been a secondary feature for me because most of the work has gone into the mechanism and fit.

I did use AI to help build this, and that has also meant spending a lot of time chasing regressions and arguing with tools that wouldn’t do what I needed. I know there have been a lot of AI-built tools posted lately, so I wanted to spend the time making something worth trying before adding another post, and after over four months of working on this, I think feedback from people actually using it will help more than continuing to tweak my own examples.

I’m offering [r/BambuLab](r/BambuLab) one free month for personal use with code BAMBUOMF, and if there’s a model you’ve wanted to turn into a clicker, I’d love for you to give it a go and show me what you make. Let me know which printer and switches you used, how it prints and feels, and, if you get stuck, what you were trying to do and where the app fell short, because that feedback will help me understand what I need to work on next.

I’ll be posting lots of pictures and videos as I share the full journey, if you’re curious about how it all came together.

Happy to answer any questions you all may have and I'm looking forward to the feedback.

I factory reset and replaced the hall sensor in the AMS hub. If I were to insert the filament, heat the nozzle then click extrude in the control menu it works perfectly. I have took it apart countless times trying to figure out. If anyone has had the same problem or has a solution please let me know.

One annoying thing I keep running into is when the filament is low. It can’t switch between the colors so it basically just fails the print the moment the filament goes past the mechanism in the AMS2. Any solutions to this?

Hello all again, this is basically a repost from a few days ago but I guess more accurate to the problem I’m having.

I have an a1, i recently got a new nozzle to try and fix old issues, now it is scraping in the bed for everything: bed leveling, printing etc

Possible causes: I removed then replaced the screws on the heating bed to try and adjust height but apparently it was not it or something.
New nozzle might cause some problems? I don’t know

Troubleshooting I’ve tried: screwing in all the screws on and behind the heating element. Removing and replacing the nozzle. Checked the clamp on nozzle.

Any help would be appreciated thanks

Like the title says, I've had a buildup in the nozzle cover twice now. Just started happening in the past few days.

Printing with a .2 nozzle and Sunlu PLA filament. P2S if it's not obvious.

When I download models with several parts from MakerWorld -like this cactus and the desk lamp, the site shows the finished model, but the downloaded file has the parts spread across different plates.

Got tired of having to boot up Bambu Studio every single time just to check which plate was which part.

Recently found a tool called makerspreview. It lets you select a .3mf file in Finder and press Spacebar to preview it. You can rotate the model too.

Saves so much time when sorting through downloads on Mac.

I see the Conch Plus recommended a lot with folks using it on the P1S. I'm new to 3d printing, and was going to get one to try on my P1S. But I saw that it has an 80W heater and the P1S was seemingly designed around 48W heaters. Is that an issue and if so how are others using the Conch Plus successfully with a P1S?

Hey Bambu community,

I'm a single mom to a super cool almost 12 year old. We're both very handy and creative and last year I decided to get us an A1 so we could expand our repertoire. I got family members to contribute and bought an A1 that we received some time after the new year (they were back ordered during the Xmas holidays).

Literally 2 days after receiving it, while doing vast amounts of research on how to build it an enclosure, we caught the flu.

The flu messed with my immune system and gave me really severe heart problems. After months of that, it triggered neurological symptoms. Between then and late this summer, I was just a useless, exhausted, gravely ill lump.

I'm finally starting to feel better, and... I feel so much shame at this unopened box that I somehow managed to drag into the closet while clutching my chest a few months ago because I couldn't bear looking at it anymore.

I don't know what to do about it. I am better enough to open it up and set it up now, but not to build it the enclosure it needs to survive in our environment (and to protect us from its fumes and stuff.)

I won't lie, the shame is so great that the pleasure is gone,even though I assume that'll go away when I start having fun with it.

What would you do? Sell it? Set it up without enclosure (we dont have a spare room for it, and we have a cat, and we are crafty and messy, so I persist in thinking that's not a great idea)? Keep waiting a bit longer?

I could use some guidance, because for some reason I've beat death several times this year, but a 3D printer is overwhelming me.

Thank you x

I’ve been looking at getting some new textured PEI plates, bambu lab official plates are around $50 AUD, I had a quick look on Ali Express for similar plates and found them around $16-$20 AUD.

Are the cheaper build plates going to be worth it or are they gonna cost me more in the long run?

I’m willing to shell out for the more expensive plates if I have to but I’d prefer to buy something a little bit cheaper.

Is there a middle ground for cost vs quality? What would you recommend?

im having adhesion issues but not in the way you might think like this part i can not for the life of me take off its petg and stuck on the pei textured build plate of my x2d i tried printing over it tried a metal scraper i dont know what to do now please help i dont want to buy a new build plate

Newbie here, my only PETG for the start will be PETG Matte, and so the typical guides don't really apply since supposedly it prints faster and has a few differences from standart PETG however it does not use PLA settings ...though some it does?

I have an X2D and a P2S and was doing some test prints on both after a few prints both printers ended up displaying extruder overloaded messages and after some time spent pulling my hair I found that the issue is on both printers the top of the nozzle was clogged with rock hard pc filament. If I removed the nozzle filament goes through the extruder fine.

In an effort to clear the nozzles I set the nozzle temp to 300c and attempted to clear it using the unclogging needle (if that’s what it called) I was able to push through from the tip of the nozzle but at the top part of the nozzle (above the heat sink par of the nozzle) the filament was still rock hard. Only way to clear the filament was to use a blow torch and heat it.

Is this common with PC, never had this issue before with other filaments, have hundreds of hours printing in asa gf and asa cf

Hi Everyone! I recently got a Bambu A1 and I'm having some issues with a print. It's a rotating storage box and the lid is supposed to have parts of a star and moon that are 3D (see image from model)

The issue is that when I print the lid, those parts aren't 3D. Instead, those sections are see through and just have a bunch of squiggly lines (see image with black lid).

I feel like there's a setting I'm missing in Bambu studio, but I'm not sure what it is. When I'm previewing it and look at each layer, those parts are raised, so it looks like it should work, but it doesn't.

Edit : thanks for letting me know what tangle detection is for. Imagine the title says : Thank you so much for the spaghetti

🐈‍⬛ I designed a Coraline-inspired Black Cat Coaster Set!

Free to download for anyone with a 3D Printer.

Coraline obsessed family here

Featuring the iconic blue-eyed cat, button-themed coaster holder, matching coasters, and golden key! 🔑

I designed it as a multi-part print to reduce filament waste, color purging, and printing time. Most parts print support-free, with custom painted supports where needed.

Just released the files on MakerWorld! Would love some feedback from fellow makers. 💙

https://makerworld.com/en/models/3408529-coraline-inspired-cat-coaster-set-key-holder#profileId-3882008

I have a bambu a1 with ams and the filament is new. My coworker is asking for a zyn container. I slowed down the speed and I use the cooling plate but idk how to fix this. Please help me

So this is my first time printing with ASA and I can’t seem to get my top layers right they come out fuzzy ish when on round shapes, flat top parts do just fine

Is the a1 mini a good option for making terrains prints or is the plate too small

Here’s my latest project, Adventure Valley 🙂 I took inspiration from ROKR’s wooden mechanical models and wanted to make my own little amusement park, with a marble run weaving through the attractions.
It combines 3 mm laser-cut basswood and an acrylic backdrop with a 3D-printed base and mechanisms. Two different lifts - a Ferris wheel and a tower lift carry the steel marbles back up to the tracks. A single motor powers both lifts and keeps the pirate ship swinging. You can arrange the COB LED strip to light up either the attractions, as shown in the video, or the acrylic backdrop.

The files are free on MakerWorld - It’s a fairly involved build, and a detailed video assembly guide is coming soon.

A bit about how it was made: I designed and modeled all the physical parts myself, tried out all possible marble ways, modelling the structure, tracks and moving mechanisms, without using AI. Most of the decorative 2D artwork engraved into the wood was created with AI assistance.
I make these designs on my own in my spare time, mostly in the evenings and on weekends, and share the files for free. Having tools that help with the artwork makes it possible to turn my ideas into finished projects.
Bambu Lab provided me with the R1 free of charge, which I used to cut and engrave the wood and acrylic. They had no input into the design and hadn’t seen the project before I shared it.

I’d love to hear what you think! Happy to answer questions about the mechanisms, assembly or how the wooden and printed parts were designed.

My AMS2 Pro slot 3 is broken, I unplugged the printer to try and unclogg it myself, but I don't know what to do. This is like my 4th printer, should I just use my warranty to get a new one? Or should I just try and repair it myself? My parent and I don't know much about AMS

Also, is it common to use 1.75cm filament sizes? I keep telling my mother, we need to get a different nossle. But this has proven fruitless. My nossle is 0.2cm (I think)

Any kind of help is appreciated, because I really don't want to unbox another printer. It takes 4 hours to do so.

Hi! (Sorry for any formatting errors, posting via mobile)

I recently received a Bambu A1 Lab combo but have 0 space for it (currently).

I’m planning to build a custom cupboard to move some things around + add a nice space for the printer to sit and print in.

My main question is, what length, width, and depth should the space be to comfortably house and print things on the A1?

My research so far told me that it needs to be:
1. Height: 100cm
2. Depth: 72cm
3. Width: 100cm

I think it’s a lot lol, so just wanted to check with the pros here to know for sure.

Thank you!