PIF

My PIF parts arrived, and I am now proud to say that it was Defib who printed mine. Proud to say it because they are basically flawless. If I look REAL close I can nitpick some things, but they are some of the best prints I've seen and a new quality I aspire to match. I didn't want to name them in case I had to bad mouth the quality, but nope. Unfortunately I am still waiting on some of the parts, so I have been able to do things like pre-emptively install the heat set inserts, but my progress is still very limited.

Feedback

Not related to PIF specifically, but I do have some more feedback for the process in general: The heat set inserts are slightly problematic.

If you don't have a specific heat set insert tip on your soldering iron, just about everywhere online suggests that you use the side of your soldering iron tip, not the tip of it. Nobody really says why, but that is drilled into your mind. The Voron build guide says "heat inserts with a soldering tip," not calling out any hard requirement on a specific heat set insert tip.

Well, some of the heat set inserts are supposed to be lower than flush. You have to either use a specific tip, or go against advice and use the tip of your soldering iron tip. I did the second, but I was kinda surprised that I had to. More clarity here wouldn't be a bad idea.

Overall, not a huge deal, I'm still finding the process fairly pleasant. But as I said early on, this log is useless (in my eyes) if I don't offer feedback as I go.

M3

Frustrated at having snapped my M3 tap, I got into a chat for my local maker space, and they confirmed the multitude of things I was doing wrong. Not wanting to wait on shipping, I bought the ONE kit (that came with way more than I need) that included any metric screw taps. It was garbage quality. I'm going to have to return them and order another M3 tap from the Internet. The quality of the first one was good, I was just bad at using it. Sigh. A LOT of the Voron build is locked behind having properly tapped extrusions.

I don't regret DIYing the tapping, because I DO need to learn to do this properly for my own projects. But this has been painful learning.

Finances

I got hit with some unexpected financial bills. That's made a lot of my projects a bit slower. This is probably the most-hit because I'm following existing plans and am missing pieces I cannot realistically make myself. My other projects will probably shift more to theorycrafting rather than building for a bit as well.