[Raion]

While I'm not really contributing on a daily basis to the community I am still working on things behind the scenes and one of them was talking with a colleague and friend of mine in the 3D printing community. After seeing some of the prints that he has been able to create in the last several months I have finally decided that print quality is acceptable enough for us to start looking to build parts for our systems. They won't be perfect, but the quality is acceptable and with a layer of paint or epoxy to mimic the texture I suppose it's good enough. 

I haven't worked with him to model anything yet. But we will be within the month starting on it if we both have time.

[Shiunbird]

I have a Prusa MK4 from the factory around the corner here (planning also to get a resin printer and a Carvera) and it's so immensely useful.

I got a few dell 1U servers for cheap and managed to redo the whole cooling system (unfortunately the UPS fan ruined my silencing work) by designing a few ducts and a bit of soldering to increase the number of fans. The quality is truly excellent and if you print with a low layer height, you barely can see the layers.

There's a good art shop nearby, and I got thick matte spray paint and spray anti-UV coating. After a layer of the matte spray, you get a perfectly smooth part. Add the UV coat, it's glossy and you can't much difference to injection molding.

On top of that, it is a fun merge of the tech geekery with something that actually comes true in the real world, and you get to do the modelling using IRIX apps if you so fancy.