The Begining
On Christmas 2018 I received a da vinci mini w 3D printer. Wow, what a gift! I can’t seem to stop printing. At first I was content to just print, #3DBenchy was my first. But after a short time I found many designs that I wanted to not only print but paint.
​
This blog is meant mostly for sharing my experiences on my journey of discovering the possibilities the wide wonderful world of 3D printing has to offer.
​
My hope is that we can help each other along the way.
My First Few Prints
As I excitedly unpacked the da vinci mini, I found that setup was amazingly simple. Just remove a few packing supports and snap in the extruder.
​
The next thing to do was to download XYZware, a simplified proprietary slicer and printing program. Then connect the provided USB cable between my laptop and the printer and calibrate, which was simple. The onlything left to do is find something to print.
A quick web search returned a lot of sites. I think I have heard of Thingiverse… Oh boy, so many things to print, where do I start?
​
I decided to start with a benckmark… #3DBenchy. I watch it print… so cool. It came out great. what else to print?
After a lot of searching and a handful of small prints I realized that while this is really cool, I’m going to want to paint what I print.
​
More searching…