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Comment by ecopoesis | Hacker News Reader

This seems a bit stupid. There are dozens, if not hundreds of different 3D printer varieties, each of which requires its own tuned slicer settings. Hell, I have to use different slicer settings depending on the filament manufacturer.

What advantage is there in delivering a presliced models? Everyone has standardized on STL files for a reason.

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I agree they should offer STL models for people who want to do the slicing themselves, but I do like the idea of providing presliced models that are tuned/tested for popular printers.

EDIT: "We guarantee that if your print fails, you will be given as many opportunities as needed to re-print and get it perfect. L2L allows us to track the completion of every print."

So I guess the purpose of a proprietary format is to restrict the number of times you can print a file? That's not going to work very well when you're interfacing with open source printers. I imagine it's trivial to slurp the gcode off the serial connection to the printer.

I don't think they are providing a 'proprietary' format as such, it's just gcode tuned to different printers.

Reverse engineering the head paths to produce a mesh would be pretty difficult (though not impossible)

I think the reason they give you the opportunity to download another file is simply so that the gcode can be tweeked (for variable such as layer height, hotend temp, max acceleration of head etc.). It could be, for instance, that with your particular filament the gcode doesn't tell the hot end to get hot enough, and you end up with layers splitting. Or worse, a huge tangle of melted filament.

That language I quoted implies you're only allowed one successful print per purchase.

What you're buying is a single-print, so what you're saying is correct. If something's gone wrong, you can re-print as many times as needed, but once the product is complete, then your print is done.

But that's nothing to do with the file format though right? I mean, it's just the end user has to be honest no?

There isnt an advantage other than adding a DRM layer so you can't print as many as you like. It says in the help page that you can restart the print as many times as you like, but after 80% you have to mail them to get another try.

This seems to solve a problem the sellers have, not the customers (printers).

(Nevermind that you can just grab the gcode output and save it for later if you want to)

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