 We finally got our hands on a high-end FDM or Fused Deposition Modeling printer from Ultimaker called the Ultimaker Extended 2. We're a little late to the game in terms of 3D printing, but that's because honestly just printing from shapeways was always kind of a great solution for us. Ultimaker offered us an Ultimaker 2 to send to us, and it's kind of too badass to deny. So hang out to watch Tanner and I print some random stuff, and please like the video for more 3D printing stuff in the future. I would love to do more videos on this subject, but I need your guys' support in order to do that. So yes, I'm begging for likes. Please like and share this video. The Master Case 5 by Cooler Master gives you the freedom to truly make your mid-tower PC case your own with a variety of modular parts and accessories. Click now to learn more. So first off, what is an FDM printer? Essentially what happens is it squirts filament out of a hot end and lays down layers on layers and layers on layers of the stuff to eventually create your modeled object. This type of printer is typically what you would find for a home use style printing scenario, not necessarily industrial applications as they would very likely have a much larger printer with a different printing style. That being said, this isn't a cheap printer. You could go pick up a cheap 3D printing kit for like what, like $500 bucks plus or minus a couple hundred, but when you get into the really fancy high-end printers like this, it can get really expensive. For example, this guy is about $2,700-ish US dollars. With an expensive printer, you get a much bigger print volume, meaning that the bed you print on is relatively large, and especially with the extended version that we have, the object you can print can actually be quite tall. You will get a better print resolution in terms of speed and precision, so you'll get a better looking print in the end with less of those obvious levels from where it was moving. You get a machine that doesn't make as much loud aggressive noises, and then the rest of the improvements are largely going to be more subtle and hard to detect things that are actually still very important. Those things are like the specific bearings that were used, the hot end, the steppers, the belts, and their tightness, etc. which will both contribute to the longevity of your printer and the quality of the final print. I wouldn't say that Ultimaker 2 is an entry-level printer. If it's your first foray into the 3D printing world, I might start with something cheaper, but for the high-end printing buff, this may be your target. Now, without further ado, let's get to some printing. The first thing I tried to print was a little GoPro handle. My idea for this was that it wasn't an overly complicated print for a first print, and it would actually be useful in our day-to-day work. On the modeling side of things, I just downloaded this model, but in the future, I could just take the bit off the end that connects to the GoPro and model whatever I want behind it, so we can make specifically tailored GoPro mounts relatively quickly and inexpensively, which is awesome. I created two of these, one at maximum quality and the other at minimum quality. The maximum quality one took just over four hours, minimum quality just took over an hour and a half. One thing I'd like to note here is that the time the Ultimaker shows on itself is incredibly inaccurate, but if you're using the Cura slicing software, it will give you a pretty accurate time estimate before you start the print. Next up, we started printing the fire poles, which were conceptualized by me and then designed and modeled by Taron. The first one was very small model that we built with scaffolding enabled. This was an interesting print because of how much of the printing platform was extended over an overhang. The printer made quite a mess with the supports. After a very minor amount of work, I was able to cut the excess away and the final product looked quite good, but it was still a little funky. Next up, we printed one that was four times as large as the previous fire pole. This was an interesting print for a few reasons. I turned off the scaffolding and Taron took the top plate off and built it on the side, which makes way more sense, while adding notches so that we could put it together later on. The reason for this was to avoid the scaffolding mess we had earlier and to see how accurate the printer was when making small intricate notches. And this last one. Oh, look at that. That's really good. It didn't take much sanding. The only issue we ran into here was the top of the fire pole platform sat on the heated bed for so long that it actually started warping. An unfortunate and avoidable problem if you take the right precautions, but I wasn't experienced enough yet. Next up, we have the first part of a shroud that will be used in a build log Linus is doing for a one use server. The shard was conceptualized and modeled by Taron, and this print went on without a hitch. And it was impressive to see the printer deal with a slanted edge that easily. Then I tried to do a few prints of some random things and change the filament before the last big print, which is where disaster struck. The printer started acting really weird. And due to my inexperience, I wasn't able to identify what was going on. And after about five hours of troubleshooting, I was getting close to giving up. There seemed like there was a separate problem with every freaking part of the printer. But with the help of Twitch chat, who affectionately named the printer Darren and had been watching for about 20 plus hours at this point at twitch.tv slash Luke underscore lafr shameless plug and specifically the user more fiendly. I was able to finally solve the various problems that were going on and keep on printing. I have to give all to maker a point here because even though I had a vast amount of inexperience, it was actually pretty easy to kind of take things apart and tinker with them to try to identify the problem. So that's pretty cool. The last leg on this journey was the large part of the shroud that I mentioned Terran had modeled earlier for the server. At this point, both I and the Twitch chat had learned a lot more about 3D printers and things ran smoothly or are running smoothly as there's still about half an hour left on that 18 hour print. In conclusion, 3D printers are great, but this whole process is rather expensive. And at this point on the practicality or hobby side, it's definitely both, but I'd see it leaning more towards towards hobby. It will eventually be a practical tool for your house. But right now, unless you have the extra cash, I don't know. If you want to get ahead of the game, it might be a good idea. I could see these being standard issue devices in people's homes in the near future. And I'm sure Ultimaker will be here to see that happen as the ultimate or two is a thing of beauty in both aesthetics and an engineering viewpoint. TunnelBear, the easy to use web privacy app for mobile and desktop internet browsing. You can use TunnelBear on iOS, Android, Mac or PC. And they even have a direct Chrome extension that lets you tunnel or browse the internet as if you're in one of 14 different countries with ease. With TunnelBear, you can access websites that are geo blocked in your country. It's super easy to install and use. And if you encounter any issues, they have friendly support bears standing by 24 hours a day to help. They currently serve over 5 million users. And you can become a user absolutely free by heading over to tunnelbear.com slash LTT. They give you 500 megabytes of data for free every month. But if it's not enough for you, they have unlimited plans starting at a very reasonable 6.99 per month. Thanks for watching, guys. If this video sucked, you know what to do. But if it was awesome, get subscribed, hit the like button, share it, or even consider supporting us directly by using our affiliate code to shop at Amazon. Buying a cool t-shirt that isn't from Twitch. Or with a directly monthly contribution through the community forum. Now that you're done doing all of that stuff, you're probably wondering what to watch next. So click the little button in the top right hand corner to check out this video where I check out the G29 driving force from Logitech.