I guess he’s just not going to tell her and I’m going to add a new fruit every holiday until she tells him/me to stop

Around a year ago I started writing my own slicer. Why would I do this? Simple because I'm an overzealous junior software engineer and I think I stumbled onto a new way of non-planar slicing that behaves like conical slicing in that it allows for no supports and yet doesn't require a special printer(granted the ender 3 in the timelapse is special but in all the wrong ways but yours doesn't have to be).

Figured I'd finally share some stuff about it here. I've been calling the method V-Slicing since it uses voxels to approximate the mesh to make layer generation simpler. After about 6 months of development, I finally had a relatively usable demo which still had issues like low resolution, long print and slice times, just slicing took 6-8 minutes for a modified benchy and print times were in the 6-hour range (about 3-4x planar+supports). This excessive print time was due to a limited max layer height at the time(around 0.15* horizontal resolution), which keep in mind was locked to the nozzle size which for me was 0.6mm, but set to 0.8mm in software for faster test prints(looking back this shouldn't have worked as well as it did). The toolpath generation was also suboptimal leading to printing areas multiple times(this came from printing connecting sections between two parallel walls, which was unavoidable in that version due to the algorithms used. This over-extrusion combined with the thin layers meant that sometimes the nozzle got caught on squished-out plastic and thus layer shifts were common even the first finished benchy had a small layer shift, but it is very small so I didn't notice it and the print finished, sadly the sun set by the time it finished and I don't have lighting on my printer yet, so some of the print isn't visible.

https://reddit.com/link/1dua2dc/video/th64nbs0q9ad1/player

This is the first successful benchy printed with V-Slicing and it may be my ugliest, stringiest benchy(retractions weren't tuned yet) it is also my favorite benchy if for nothing else just the sheer insanity of it and all the time that went into it. By this time I was on the second complete rewrite of the slicer and had only been able to print single-wall thick 1cm³ prints sucesfully prior to it.

https://preview.redd.it/idxwizrqq9ad1.png?width=4000&format=png&auto=webp&s=c7c577e3fc9d51378546d6fad8653628377dcb6a

I decided to name the project Crystalite since it looks like a growing crystal when using a single seed point instead of a planar first layer and 100% infill. I know that I'll get some questions about trying this development slicer, but I can't in good faith share it given how many bugs are in it knowing that it is more likely than not going to damage the printer for most prints, but I started a new rewrite with all the lessons learned combined to hopefully produce a solid, reliable slicer with better quality.

I have a website with the devlogs of the final rewrite for version 1.0 of Crystalite, but I don't want to get on the mod's bad side, so I think I will just copy-paste over the text and images to this sub if there is interest in the project.

Custom made this TPU print for my mom’s fridge to stop the door from swinging all the way open. 3 months later and it’s held up the entire time!

This is my custom-made 3D printer. The extruder has an independent rail that uses endstop as a Z probe and can travel over obstacles without knocking off the print

To be honest the videos raving about Bambu labs are not click bate... I moved up in quality and down in build volume from a Ender-10. This project would've taken me a week Vs. half a day on the Bambu printer with WAYYY better quality. If you're still on the edge, go ahead and take a swan dive and get you one lol!

BTW: the project is animal crossing bell bag with signature leaf coasters that magnetically attach. Per my wife's request haha!