Print a Japanese Lucky Cat…and a Benchy…Throw out the MacBook…and Buy a new SD Card…or Not?
What? Throw out the MacBook? Sacrilege… the Apple Mac pundits are more than likely saying.
Look. I am an Apple user — well, more than a user; an aficionado is the most accurate term. Apart from my 3D printer — a Crealty — and my Arduino boards and Raspberry Pis, all my tech stuff is Apple. OK…just my laptop and phone…and mouse and keyboard. While this article is not about Apple products, it is well known that Apple products often don’t mix well with non-Apple products.
In my journey from 3D printing misadventures to 3D printing adventures, one of the many challenges I faced when trying to get my 3D printer printing — never mind successfully — was that I was using macOS-based versions of Ultimaker Cura and Pruser Slicer software to slice my models.
This is a multifaceted problem that has different elements contributing to it. Solving the printer’s printing issues, including its desire to emulate the Great Glass Elevator that first appeared in Roald Dahl’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, is proving to be a severe challenge, similar to debugging a nasty bug burrowed deep inside a software app.
You know, those bugs where there seems to be nothing wrong at first glance — or the first 100 glances? But something is wrong because the app isn’t behaving like it should. You know there is a sneaky, nasty little bug somewhere, but you can’t duplicate it. And if you can’t duplicate it, you can’t find and fix it.
Well, my printer’s problem or bug is like this. And the worst part is every time I think I’ve fixed it and emailed the tech hospital to thank them for all their troubleshooting advice, the nasty little bug launches a sneak attack.
Bugs, Slugs, & Worms
Or is the bug a worm burrowing into the printer’s brain?
Maybe it’s a slug — like the slug in the song “Hey Slug” by Sarah Maddack. Do you know this song?
Are slugs even worms? Why is what looks like a software bug being compared to a slug that the singer/songwriter found on the rug in her room?
Did you know this slug plays the violin?
Oops. As it turns out, the slug doesn’t play the violin. It can dance, and it dances all night to its favorite song. It’s the worm with the kitty committee — and the chickens — that can play the violin and dance the Worm Dance.
Actually, with many apologies to Sarah Maddack.. the slug plays the violin. The worm dances all night to the Worm Dance and has a kitty committee… and chickens.
Should I ask my 3D printer if it can play the violin? Or should I ask whether it has a worm in its brain — a mainboard — that can play the violin?
In a world known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, where the latest technologies are fusing the biological, digital, and physical worlds (as described in an earlier article), my printer already has issues cutting its printed models’ apron strings. Therefore, it stands to reason that it could have a worm in its brain that knows how to play the violin. Honestly, I haven’t seen any evidence of this worm nor heard any tunes emanating from the printer.
There is just this sneaky little bug that insists on printing all the failed prints simultaneously when I start a new print. To try and solve it, I printed a Japanese Lucky Cat (and a Benchy) test print, bought a new SD card, and threw out my MacBook Air. The test prints are printing perfectly. The new SD card and Windows laptop have stopped the print head from entering the stratosphere. What’s next? What else can I do?
The fact that the test prints print perfectly shows that this isn’t a hardware issue — in other words, it’s not the printer’s fault. If there were something wrong with the printer, the test prints would fail. Slicing models on a macOS device is a “sometimes undocumented” but known issue. Corrupt SD cards can affect how the printer reads the gcode file.
Looking back, these are all solvable issues. And because they are all solved, the printer should easily cut its printed models’ apron strings — and it does…when the print finishes successfully. It’s just when the print fails or is stopped somewhere before the end of the gcode file.
Conclusion: The Firecrab Take
While it would be nice to demand that Crealty include these seemingly obscure issues in their help guide — or knowledge base, even I, on my technical documentation soapbox, think it’s unreasonable to expect a tech startup to have documented all these crazy issues as soon as the printer is released. They should be documented when they have been discovered and a solution found.
This brings me to my next point: community engagement. Users, especially the first users of a new product/service, bring valuable information to the table, as they are often unofficial beta testers.
It is easy to ignore this information — startups are often trying desperately to meet stakeholders’ (VC funders) expectations. And there is just no time to engage with new users on community channels like Slack or Discord. However, it is worth setting aside some money and employing someone — even if it’s only part-time — to connect with these users, extracting the information from these community channels, and passing it on to the technical writers to create how-to guides, user guides, and even trouble-shooting FAQs.
