An Update

Hi.

I feel like I owe you all a bit of an update of what's going on behind the scenes. As much as I can, I try to stick to the bi-weekly video release schedule, as I feel like that's what you all came here for and support my work for, but everything else, like Q&A hangouts, has kinda been falling off the cliff for the last couple of months. I'm sorry about that.

Here's the thing: You probably have seen the story about my studio this year, and it has been extremely draining me, physically and mentally. Working for basically two months straight to get set up in what you think is the perfect space for growing the channel and expanding the scope of what I can do, and then not even 6 months later having to basically evacuate it again due to issues outside of my control and spending what now has been another three months trying to squeeze 100m² worth of equipment back into the basement that I had just moved out of - on the one hand, it's amazing what you can get done under pressure, but on the other hand, I'm now back to square one, exhausted, drained, and realizing the energy I spent on all that really was just borrowed from future me.

Yes, I am incredibly grateful that I can do what I do for a living. But I also feel like the dream of building what I can only describe as a mini-Linus-Tech-Tips in the maker universe, it seems like the more energy I spend on chasing that dream, the more I neglect what I actually want to do, which is exploring the weird and wonderful world of 3D printing and everything that is attached to it. And as a consequence, I'm letting all of you down by not being able to provide you with as much content as I would like to.

So, I don't know. I'm just now starting to get back into a bit of rhythm with video releases, but both the studio and the workshop (remember my very first video setup?) are still an absolute mess. Things like the lathe and mill are still temporarily stored in a friend's shed and I'll need to move them back home soon (where there'll be barely any space for them) or else I'll be left with not much more than a pile of rusty scrap metal if I leave them there over winter.

I hope I'll be able to get into bigger projects again, soon-ish. I need to recover from the beat-down that the recursive studio move situation has been, but at the same time I need to have a video uploaded every two weeks and that's where most of the energy these days is going towards. Things like printer builds, livestreams, building that camera / printer robot that I've been talking about for a year now, that all needs extra effort to prepare, while I'm simultaneously trying to put out regular content, compress all of my equipment into an already-used space 1/3rd the size of where it came from, and recover from the move somehow. If you feel like my content has been a bit "filler-y" at times, that would be the reason for it.

I've just gotten the first parts of the livestreaming gear set up again, so hopefully next weekend we can have the next Q&A hangout with Inquisitor Patrons - I've also got that new Bambu Labs printer incoming, so we'll have a look at that in a livestream on the More Layers channel, too.

Anyway, thanks for your support throughout this ordeal - I'm really hoping to make 2023 a much better year the mess 2022 has been!

-Tom