Mechanismatic

A pattern I’ve noticed isn’t the legal aspect, but rather the monetization. Everyone is offering a platform where an obscure writer can pay to give away their writing for free or pay for an ad campaign where you’re spending more on ads than you will otherwise make off your work. One of the significant advantages for writing is that it requires very little overhead versus another activity like making physical objects that require equipment and material. But the market is saturated and publishing platforms are harder to access unless you’re a guaranteed seller who is already somewhat famous or has a built-in following. And there’s always someone out there willing to “help” by taking your money for the promise of connections and exposure.

It reminds me of the old poetry contest scams where you submit a poem, they tell every poet that they’ve “won” and will be published, and then they offer a “discount” for poets published in the book to get print copies for you and your friends and family, but the book is only advertised to the poets.

It does seem like there should be more open and free resources for this—websites where authors and readers connect without barriers or monetization. There probably are, but they don’t show up high in search results. Obviously they’re not going to be seen before all the paid options with ad funding.

Bed adhesion is usually the biggest issue, often attributable to the z height being off, and a lot of older printers didn’t have z-axis sensors or the software to accommodate for the variances, so it involved the old paper test. Depending on the printer, it might shake itself out of its z height setting while printing. A lot of people ended up spending as much as the cost of their printer upgrading with after market parts to try to resolve some of these issues.

I haven’t used the Monoprice before, but my research says that Monoprice doesn’t make their own printers. They just rebrand someone else’s. So the Monoprice Maker Select appears to be a rebranded Wanhao Duplicator i3, which looks like it came out sometime in 2016. So while you might have bought it six years ago, the actual printer design is much older and missing out on possibly 9 years worth of innovations.

If you can eventually afford to replace it with something else, there are some sub-$400 printers out now that might give you a much nicer experience. I started with an Ender 3 v2, which was a pain, similar to what you experienced. I upgraded to a Sovol SV06, which was great (and recommended to me by a professional with a print farm and wide variety of printers). Now I’m on a Prusa CORE One, but I don’t recommend spending big until you know you’re really into 3D printing. If you do consider buying a newer printer at some point, I’d recommend seeing if you can see someone else’s in action so you can experience the difference. Makerspaces might be a good resource for this.

Unfortunately, with the factors you mentioned, you might want to cut your losses because I’m guessing you’ll just become more frustrated if you try to get more out of it. There is a learning curve for 3D printing, especially with older models like the one you have. The quality of printers has vastly improved for beginners in the last six years. Without the ability/funds to upgrade to a newer printer, what you have may be more trouble than it’s worth because it would likely take a lot of effort and learning to get it working decently. You might also need new filament since anything old is likely brittle after absorbing moisture over the years.

That said, I wouldn’t give up on 3D printing entirely. It can be a great experience. Maybe find a local makerspace that can help you or that has 3D printers of their own to learn on.

For around $300, there are some newer models that are significantly better than an Ender 3. The Elegoo Centauri Carbon has been getting good reviews. I started with an Ender 3 V2, spent much of my time dealing with bed adhesion issues, then moved on to a Sovol SV06 which has a lot fewer issues and in some scenarios printed better than the Prusa MK4Ss I have at work. I recently upgraded to a Prusa CORE One, which is great, but I wouldn’t recommend spending the money if you don’t think you’re going to print much.

The website would have to verify the lack of a print photo. I’m guessing at this point it would probably be some AI image recognition filter so they don’t need to have humans verify all the uploads manually.

In the same way that Printables has an option to hide AI-generated content from the search results, you could just have an option to exclude models without print photos.

Printables and Thingiverse typically. Sketchfab is great for 3D scans of real objects.

I recently traded up my Sovol SV06 for a Prusa CORE One and have MK4Ss and an SV07 Plus at work. The Sovols are good budget machines in general, but the SVO6 was so much more reliable than the SV07 Plus, which required a lot more troubleshooting. The MK4Ss and the CORE One are great if you have the budget to spend on them. They’re reliable and good quality. The community of users is large and any issues you might run into have typically been troubleshot by others already.

I’ve heard squeaking from an extruder that had little bits and shards of previous filament that was getting stuck during loading and unloading of filament rolls. You might try opening it up and seeing if there’s anything stuck in the channel or grinding against a gear.