I think I missed something in your description, but what are you running on your local server? I think most people set up postfix to relay the emails over to gmail or whoever, and there are options in postfix for backwards compatibility with Outlook or even Microsoft Mail so your wife could use whatever client she wants. If you don’t have a local mail server set up then this is probably what you want to do. This method allow a local or remote connection from any client so you could run K9 on your phone instead of a VPN.

For opening such a setup to the internet (and allowing access from anywhere), make sure you have strong passwords on your accounts, require SASL authentication, and set up fail2ban to block repeated attempts to hack your mailboxes. Don’t run anything else on the same server (or use virtual machines or strong containers) to reduce the chance of your mail server getting compromised other ways, and you should be good to go.

And people are trying to say that global warming is no big deal. OK, so these particular viruses don’t pose a danger to us, but come on, it only takes one…

TIL… I can get a literal ton of sugar for the cost of a month’s groceries.

If you already have a router tying these two networks together then you should NOT also have two NICs in one machine tied to both networks. Pick one or the other, you can’t have both. If you think you need both then you haven’t correctly considered your network topology.

This sounds familiar. Can you verify if you’ve enabled net.ipv4.ip_forward=1 in /etc/sysctl.conf? If you have to make a change, then issue sysctl --system to reload the updates.

Definitely worth it. Sometimes I make little things, like I got a new tool that has a difficult adjustment, but printing a knob made it comfortable to use. I got a new phone last week and couldn’t find a rubberized case I liked, so I designed and printed one this weekend which fits snugly and provides a much better grip. I’ve made cases for other projects, even built a weather station. The biggest project I’ve done is a star tracker (OpenAstroTech) which holds my camera, most recently used during the eclipse in April. Sometimes my printer may sit idle for almost a year, sometimes it prints constantly for several weeks, but it is a very useful tool worthy of a permanent location on my workbench.

At that capacity, I’ll cast another vote for SSD if at all possible, but you can certainly get small HDDs pretty cheap now.

If you want the easiest and cheapest way to add more drives, do a search for “sata port multiplier”. These cards go for around $25US on Amazon or Ebay. They are NOT fast! It uses a single SATA port to run up to five drives, so all the drives split the bandwidth, but long ago I ran some of them for a few years without any problems. You simply run a sata and power cable from your motherboard to the card, then plug in your drives, it doesn’t even require a slot on your motherboard.

The second one with the blue arm is the style I was talking about. It changes the angle so the filament doesn’t get pulled into the extruder at a right-angle. It will help for now, but there are other models that use a ball bearing for a spinning wheel that the filament rolls over. And if you really want to make it smooth, there are ball bearing rollers so the whole spool spins more freely. That’s one of the things I love about this printer, there is such a range of mods you can print to make the whole machine better.

That works, just keep testing changes until you figure it out.

May be a stupid question, but are you hearing any clicking from the extruder while printing? If the brass gear gets clogged up it can start slipping. Or if there’s not enough tension on the spring it might not push the filament through reliably. For that matter have you printed an arm to change the angle the filament feeds into the extruder (if you still have the spool in the stock position on top of the printer)? There are many better ways to handle that issue, but original setup causes a lot of friction and you’ll actually see the filament cutting a groove into the extruder, and the arm is the easiest print to solve it. You pretty much want to check everything that might be causing the filament to drag or not allow it to feed smoothly into the head.

You should only need to see a few layers to tell if there’s still a problem. No need to waste filament printing a complete failed piece.

Oh I should have mentioned in the previous post… if a cold-pull doesn’t make any difference, have you checked the nozzle itself? It’s a very tiny hole, easily damaged, so if the head smacked into anything it might have slightly crushed the tip (not something you would see by eye). You could also try clearing the nozzle with the long needle that came with the printer – if it doesn’t fit into the nozzle tip then it’s almost certainly suffered some damage. Always keep a bag of spare nozzles on hand!

You’ll want to google the exact steps for calibrating e-steps, but basically this is the setting that determines how many steps of the stepper motor are required to move the filament a given amount. You disconnect the bowden tube from the head, then push the filament through so a bit is exposed past the end of the tubing and mark exactly where the end of the tubing is on the filament. Now from your slicer you instruct the printer to extrude 100mm of filament, and very carefully measure how much actually comes out. If you have exactly 100mm then great, but typically you will find it off by a few mm (and in your case it’s probably less than 100mm). It doesn’t take much to cause a big problem. Any how-to page will show how you can read the current setting (I think it’s 92 steps by default), and there are formulas which will calculate the new number you need to change that to.

So the idea here is that if the slicer thinks it should be outputting 100mm of filament, but it only pushes 95mm instead, you won’t have enough filament to fill in the gaps. Setting the correct value on the printer will fix this, and then you can adjust more minor issues by changing the flow rate in the slicer. You will also note that different types or brands of filament extrude at slightly different rates, which is why your slicer may allow different profiles for the filament itself.

I’m not familiar with PrusaSlicer. Cura has always worked well for me, it’s free, and it provides quite a lot of options for fine-tuning your prints. If you find that Prusa doesn’t let you adjust the filament rate, give Cura a try.

The bottom two which are supposed to be completely solid aren’t even filling in the caps themselves. You’re not getting enough filament flowing through the nozzle. Are you using a 100% flow rate in your slicer? You might try printing at 110% with a one- or two-layer solid test to see how well it fills in.

If you have never calibrated your e-steps, you’ve probably been under-extruding and just never noticed the problem on previous prints. Always a good idea to check this if you haven’t before. This might be solved by adjusting the flow rate, but it’s better to properly calibrate your printer or you will still see problems in some areas.

Alternatively, you might have a partial clog in the nozzle. Try doing a cold-pull to remove anything that’s in there and see if it clears up the problem. No changes in the slicer will resolve this, it’s a mechanical problem.

It’s probably also worthwhile to measure the filament with calipers to see how close to 1.75mm it actually is. If you previously had a spool that was slightly over, it might have been covering up the defects that would be more obvious when using a spool that is slightly under. This problem can be solved just by adjusting the flow rate in the slicer.

You said you have made changes to the temp and speed, but didn’t say what settings you are using or have tried. Please post that info (along with anything that may have worked in the past) for reference. Also are you sure you got pure PLA, or is it a variant like PLA+?

I’ve always relied on multiple aspects for my used drives (currently ZFS raidz2 which itself provides multiple checks, but I also do backups of the really important stuff). It doesn’t matter though, all drives new or old are going to fail and you just have to be ready for it. The worst case is multiple drives failing at once, and I had that happen several times when using a weak power supply.

So far I’ve been really happy with the refurbs from Amazon though, plus the NAS is nothing to sneeze at. I upgraded the server to a newer machine, then realized that allowed me to step up in families for my SAS cards. Basically went from a machine that could push data at 70MB/s (and was constantly behind) to a new machine pushing 450MB/s or more with almost no lag. I run a lot of stuff on my home network so it’s been nice having the new speed, and the zfs pools are providing around 92TB on one set and 22TB on another set so I have room to go crazy. If I had to buy new drives I’d have maybe half that amount of space.

Check the SMART info on the drives you receive, if they already show signs of failure then return them immediately.

For “reputable” sellers, I typically go with ones who are selling drives in bulk and have a history of more than five minutes with lots of recent good reviews. I took a chance on a good deal for a “new” drive once and received an obviously used drive where the previous person had cut out the SAS bridge (these pins are required to power on some SAS models like what I bought, so the drive was a paperweight). You’ll get some lemons, but I’ve been running mostly used drives on my fileserver for the past twenty years and had reasonably good luck from bulk sellers (and easy replacements when I got a bad drive from one of them).

Oh, you might also check refurbs from Amazon. My current fileserver is running a set of eight 18TB refurbs which were significantly cheaper at the time, but the drive model itself was only a year old so I knew there couldn’t be much wear on what I received. And Amazon has a good return policy.

Yeah you don’t want the arm TOO tight or you just create another friction issue. I generally find if you have a very consistent under-extrusion then it’s likely the E-steps, but if the issue seems more random (some layers are great, only certain corners are bad, etc) that it comes down to friction somewhere in the line. Good luck!

Note that the brass toothed gear can also wear out. Maybe check it to see if there’s a lot of ground-up filament in the teeth? Then check the fitting where the bowden tube goes into the extruder, make sure that isn’t loose (it will be seen moving back and forth during retractions in a print). Also worth checking the bowden tube itself, make sure it’s not causing a lot of drag on the filament passing through it. And for that PTFE mod in the hotend, check the friction there, it’s possible to over-tighten the fitting and partially crush that tubing. You should be able to easily push filament through the hotend by hand once it is up to temp.

I assume you have something other than the stock setup for your filament roll to reduce the drag there so it’s not being pulled into the extruder at a 90-degree angle? There are a number of extension arms you can print to change the angle, but the best methods are either to move the filament spool off to the side (where the filament can enter the extruder in a straight line), or print a roller that uses a bearing for changing the angle in combination with a full bearing-supported roller that the filament spool itself sits on. I still have mine in the stock position on top of the frame but with the combination of bearing objects in the last option I have practically zero friction pulling the filament into the extruder.

Finally, when was the last time you calibrated your E-steps? It’s likely you actually have underextrusion on all layers, but they’re getting smoothed over and are not as obvious on the alternate layers. Never hurts to check this step.

tl;dr: eliminate all friction from the spool to the hotend, calibrate E-steps.

No worries, glad to help. I don’t print a lot with my machine any more, but things still come up (like I got a shop press a couple weeks ago and found a knob for the release valve so you don’t need a special tool for it … printed with no trouble and now the printer sits idle again).

You may be interested in these links, it can reduce or eliminate the problems which require cold pulls. Basically the issue is that the tubing moves up and down during printing and creates a slack space where the filament gets into a region of the nozzle it’s not supposed to reach. This modification uses a short length of tubing inside the nozzle that is pushed down tight, then your regular tubing sits on top of that where the movement doesn’t cause any problems. I’ve never had a single clogged nozzle or needed to do a cold pull in several years since making this change, so I highly recommend it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tCxO17XZtw https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4220059

You never know. Old filament CAN be used, but it takes special care with the slicer settings and it helps a lot if you have a dehumidifier to dry it out. I live in a dry climate, and have filament at work which has been sitting on the shelf for about 7 years, but I can still get beautiful prints out of it. All of my filament at home is left in ziplock bags but it still gets brittle over time (if you can easily snap the filament, it probably has a lot of moisture in it).

I wonder if this is a matter of countries refusing to choose a side (by not recognizing new countries), or if they ARE choosing to side with the aggressive countries?