Tolkien called this idea “sub-creation,” suggesting that only God could create, in the complete sense of the word. But that humans, being made in God’s image, would by their nature strive to create. Anything we create uses what God gave us and would therefore be a lesser order of creation, thus sub-creation.

I recently visited Killarney and I thought it was a great system. As a tourist, the €2 was no big deal to have a cup for the whole week. Then I just returned it before I left and got the money back. They do this all over Germany and have branded cups for each town. It would be cool to see it more widely done elsewhere too.

I did but with no luck.

Yeah, I appreciate the suggestion, but I’ve tried every trick in the book and turned in all the settings. I had a pretty extensive thread on Reddit where people were trying to help me figure it out. In the end I just switched to a PEI plate and it instantly solved all my adhesion problems. Which is fine because I like the texture it puts on my builds anyway.

This is very different than my experience with Creality, with the exception of having a hard time getting prints to stick. And as I said, that issue was solved by simply getting a PEI plate. I also have a few other friends and family who have Creality printers and I haven’t heard any bad stories. Maybe it’s that model?

The Prusa is what you want; it works straight out of the box and requires basically no tinkering. It’s just not at the price point you’re looking for. Given that, I would go with the Ender 3 v2. It’s a great printer, but you do have to assemble it first. It’s easy enough to do, mine had good instructions with it.

For a print surface, I live in an extremely dry climate and had a hell of a time getting anything to stick to the bed until I switched to a PEI sheet. It’s a textured, magnetic, metal sheet coated in PEI. It’s nice because it magnetically sticks to the printer and you can peel it off and flex it to pop off your prints. That single issue was pretty much the only issue I’ve had with my Ender 3 v2. Very little tinkering. It’s a great printer at a great price point. But you do have to put it together first.

I’ve thought about getting a BLtouch or something similar, but I just don’t have to really level the bed very often. The only times I do re-level it are when I occasionally have to pick up and move my printer.

I also have never used an enclosure, but I only print with PLA. As others have mentioned, there are other materials you can print with that create toxic fumes that you would want to vent outside. In that case, you would enclose it. They could also reduce noise, but that’s never been an issue for me.

I would also recommend sticking to PLA filament at first because it’s easy to print with and sticking to one material means you don’t have to change any print settings.

tl;dr The Ender is a great choice, unless you want to increase your budget and buy a Prusa.

I agree. But we are not there yet. And there is already a lot of carbon in the air.

Yes, I did completely miss your point. However, I think these are two different issues. One is that oil companies are benefiting from our tax system and using carbon capture for good PR. The other is that we are trying a variety of things to help reduce the effects of climate change and one of those things is carbon capture. Oil companies using using carbon capture to gain good favor doesn’t preclude it from being a potentially helpful process.

Part of the problem with new technologies is that they’re inherently less efficient than the same technologies once they’ve been further developed. And the problem with that is that it takes millions of dollars develop and deploy new technologies.

This was once the biggest argument against solar and wind. It was expensive and markedly less efficient than coal. However, solar and wind are now pretty good and continuing to get better. All because people were willing to invest the many millions of dollars to develop those technologies.

This is almost always the argument with new technologies. But to make the argument that it’s a good reason to stop investing in a wide variety of technologies that could literally help save the world is shortsighted.