Cali Kid Corals

Reef 3D printing request thread

I appreciate others may have differing opinions, and my primary point is hoping to educate folks who aren't as familiar with the difficulties of producing these things as others.

I'm not going to engage further given the tone.

Edit: written as someone who also has officially accepted patents (this thread made me check the status of those ironically), has open sourced all his aquarium things (including the software and 3d design files for my alkalinity tester and software such as my previous free frag tracking website), and happily pays for files on sites like Etsy/Cults3d/... I will however now be going in and switching all my licenses to creative commons non commercial given this thread
Allllll good dude. Mine are also non cc (and I never plan on claiming rights to payment for the designs contributed nor expect anyone to follow non cc licenses and plan to put money to action and stop peoples….but anyway) I still think magic johnson is the best possible player ever and nobody can ever think otherwise. Everyone else is a copycat or unethically copying him. He was the official first. Lololol
 
Last edited:
Those look super cool actually.

Regarding designing and printing, I think there's a gap between:

0. printing things based on found files that are free online, designing commonly produced things, and things people directly invent

And

100. Openly searching for unique things people are selling online and looking to get clones created and distributed (hopefully free, but maybe for profit too?)

There's somewhere between those a fine line, and copyright law is certainly gray, but I feel there is a line somewhere in there that's not ideal to cross. I say this as someone who offers up all his files free online. It takes a shocking amount of work to design things that work right, and it'd make me super sad of I designed something, people were interested enough to buy it so I created a site to go with it, and then a reef club became a source for clones of it.

That's kind of what happened with random flow generators. The originals were published free, then some people started taking the files and selling them, removing the watermarks, maybe slight tweaks, and now that original maker gave up on distributing things anymore.

I don't mean this passive aggressive at either of you, and everyone's got different lines in there, but as an open source maker I feel it needs to be discussed.
I agree that there is a line we shouldn’t cross. I think it’d be wrong to outright copy someone’s idea they took the time to make and shared it for free. There is some gray area IMO. For example the ones I have from VCA I feel like have a design flaw. That’s my second pair that’s broken at the same spot. If someone made a better version that wasn’t just a copy, I’d feel ok buying it. I wouldn’t buy a rebranded copy. Just because something is legal since it isn’t patent protected, doesn’t make it ok. Kinda with the issue with the copy cat vortech pumps that are now available. Although it isn’t a fair comparison because one is a huge company that rips people off and the other is a small business. I’m not that handy at designing yet but some reefers have shared some files with me, I’d never think it’d be ok to turn around and use that file for profit. Ive designed a few simple versions of frag plug holders that fit in the specific cup I’m planning to use for the frag swap. I’d be embarrassed to say how much time I’ve spent on something that looks so simple lol. I had to print and make adjustments like six different times for it to fit in the jar how I wanted it to. I can’t imagine how long more complicated things take. My respects to people who design and are willing to share their files. Too bad sometimes people don’t understand that just because it’s legal, doesn’t mean it’s moral. I think everyone in the club got to see how that felt last frag swap with the raffle lol. Just my two cents
 
I agree that there is a line we shouldn’t cross. I think it’d be wrong to outright copy someone’s idea they took the time to make and shared it for free. There is some gray area IMO. For example the ones I have from VCA I feel like have a design flaw. That’s my second pair that’s broken at the same spot. If someone made a better version that wasn’t just a copy, I’d feel ok buying it. I wouldn’t buy a rebranded copy. Just because something is legal since it isn’t patent protected, doesn’t make it ok. Kinda with the issue with the copy cat vortech pumps that are now available. Although it isn’t a fair comparison because one is a huge company that rips people off and the other is a small business. I’m not that handy at designing yet but some reefers have shared some files with me, I’d never think it’d be ok to turn around and use that file for profit. Ive designed a few simple versions of frag plug holders that fit in the specific cup I’m planning to use for the frag swap. I’d be embarrassed to say how much time I’ve spent on something that looks so simple lol. I had to print and make adjustments like six different times for it to fit in the jar how I wanted it to. I can’t imagine how long more complicated things take. My respects to people who design and are willing to share their files. Too bad sometimes people don’t understand that just because it’s legal, doesn’t mean it’s moral. I think everyone in the club got to see how that felt last frag swap with the raffle lol. Just my two cents
Yea i hope not to see something like that happen again, clearly in the grey area I wouldn't argue that, but it felt wrong.
 
Maybe it’s strange because I come from OpenECU world. On one hand we believe in right to repair and modify the snot out of something because it’s my godamn American right. But also we won’t share how we made our tolulene mothball mixture that got us 0.02s faster than the competitor.(living breathing contradictions)

Fk. What’s my point. It’s all good when we are going up against “the man.” But let’s make sure we ethically don’t stick it to the little guy thst wants an edge?
 
I appreciate others may have differing opinions, and my primary point is hoping to educate folks who aren't as familiar with the difficulties of producing these things as others.

I'm not going to engage further given the tone.

Edit: written as someone who also has officially accepted patents (this thread made me check the status of those ironically), has open sourced all his aquarium things (including the software and 3d design files for my alkalinity tester and software such as my previous free frag tracking website), and happily pays for files on sites like Etsy/Cults3d/... I will however now be going in and switching all my licenses to creative commons non commercial given this thread
I never ment for my comment to be taken the wrong way as things can be over text. I just ment it as if you look around your house everything is an upgraded version of that exact same thing. If you look at your TV and how much it has changed over the past almost hundred years. Color, size, weight, remote, led, that type of comparison could go on and on with everything. Copying someone else's work with the exact same thing is a cheeky thing to do but the majority of the time innovation is just an improvement of something that already exists.
 
Fwiw. I’m still down to download and print the snot out of any open sourced whatever lol

(And I promise to tell you everything I dislike about the design,,,then make my own instead)
 
Last edited:
Tweaking around my frag jar holder design for this upcoming swap. Added pressure tabs on the side of the disk to keep it stable and a long stick to pull the frag out of the jar. I'm getting a lot of stringiness when it prints the long stick. Any advice on what settings to adjust to hopefully clean that up?

1000005914.jpg
 
Tweaking around my frag jar holder design for this upcoming swap. Added pressure tabs on the side of the disk to keep it stable and a long stick to pull the frag out of the jar. I'm getting a lot of stringiness when it prints the long stick. Any advice on what settings to adjust to hopefully clean that up?

View attachment 61811
Impressive you got it to stand and print that high. There isn’t anything other than reorientation or redesign.
Redesign: make it oblong or rectangular; make it two pieces
Reorient: place that tower on the build plate

Settings: dry filament, slower speed at the top, lower fan speed
 
Tweaking around my frag jar holder design for this upcoming swap. Added pressure tabs on the side of the disk to keep it stable and a long stick to pull the frag out of the jar. I'm getting a lot of stringiness when it prints the long stick. Any advice on what settings to adjust to hopefully clean that up?

View attachment 61811
I switched to these 8 oz jars and lights. Then tried these two holders. I like the one in the left more
 

Attachments

  • image.jpg
    image.jpg
    47.2 KB · Views: 16
Tweaking around my frag jar holder design for this upcoming swap. Added pressure tabs on the side of the disk to keep it stable and a long stick to pull the frag out of the jar. I'm getting a lot of stringiness when it prints the long stick. Any advice on what settings to adjust to hopefully clean that up?

View attachment 61811
Maybe make the stick thicker? Mine came out ok I think I did the poles 5mm
 

Attachments

  • IMG_0650.jpeg
    IMG_0650.jpeg
    83.1 KB · Views: 15
Great ideas and designs! I'll try making it square shaped and bigger. My stingy ass only made it 1.5mm diameter to speed up the print and save on filament...
 
Great ideas and designs! I'll try making it square shaped and bigger. My stingy ass only made it 1.5mm diameter to speed up the print and save on filament...
Another way to save on filament is to print with no top or bottom infill. Infill and perimeter only. Sometimes you can still print down to 5% and connect all the features
 
I believe right now the industry leans on PETG as it is the least toxic for the application. PLA absorbs water so it is usually not recommended. Sometimes PETG requires printing inside of an enclosure and has the higher heat index.
 
Back
Top