It’s a maddening, yet somehow fun hobby. If you do it just remember it’s better to get a high quality small one vs a shit huge one.
I started with a CR10 knockoff that was a fucking nightmare. Good for learning how they work, but an overall shit user experience. I upgraded to an Artillery Sidewinder X1 and all my headaches went away (for the most part)
The Sidewinder has been reliable so far. If you really don’t want to mess with anything, a comment above recommended Prusa which I agree with they’re just pricier.
I haven’t shopped around in a few years so there may be more notable brands now. Get one with an auto bed leveler, that’s one thing I wish I had. I don’t have the heart to flash in new firmware and deal with the hardware install (bl touch)
I do quite a bit of parametric modelling and I see how something like this could be made. Find the angles of the sun at specific times, project planes at a fixed distance and angle matching around your cylinder, sketch the time number you want on each plane with a fixed pitch and then project-cut back through the cylinder. Would be a pain in the ass though. And a pretty tough 3d print without soluble supports, given all those tiny tiny interior walls and cavities.
Actually printed one on a Zortrax printer a few years back - not perfect, but came out pretty good.
There are two different versions depending if you're in the northern or southern hemisphere. It's fun to show it to people and show how it changes if you rotate or adjust the pitch/angle of the sunddial.
Is this available on thingiverse or something? I’d very much like to try my hand at printing it on some Prusa’s I have access to. But don’t think I’m up for that big of a parametric modelling challenge.
I have PETG bog planters sitting out in the sun doing just fine. I print PETG all the time on my prusa printers. Just be sure to dry the filament extensively for best results, especially on something like this where you don't want a lot of stringing lol
That’s a cool project, it’d be interesting to see a time-lapse video through full daylight hours (with a couple extra frames at the intervals when the numbers are clearest).