Sometimes I think I’m pretty cool. Sometimes I think I’m pretty smart. Sometimes I think there’s something wrong with my brain. Well, I guess there is, but that’s a different story. Sometimes it just takes a simple solution 15 years in the making to bring me down a peg.

I’ve owned this particular 3d printer for 15 years. It’s the “grandfather’s axe” of 3d printers. I think the only original parts are the frame, and the hotbed.

No matter which bench I’ve tried to put it on, the feet at the bottom of the printer were always JUUUST too far apart to sit nicely on the benchtop. The front or the back would hang off the edge of the bench.

It’s Friday, 10:12am. A nice day, cool breeze, some overnight rain has passed through, leaving dewy grass and a lovely fresh feeling in the air. In my workshop/garage, my reorganising has proceeded wonderfully. I have finally relocated the printer from my office, back where it belongs – to the workshop.

I constructed a simple bench extension to sit over my larger, floor-standing 3d printer, where I sit this little workhorse. Alas, again, the feet humble me. They are JUUUST too far apart to sit nicely on this new benchtop. Perhaps I should have measured the benchtop material first, and constructed the benchtop around the printer. Or…

Whether it be a stray neutrino that’s traversed billions of light-years to strike a particular neuron in my brain, a once in a universe-lifetime event, or this was the proverbial straw that broke the “goddammit I’m going to sort this once and for all” back, 15 years later, I suddenly realised something.

I can adjust the feet.