I have an ender 3 v2, upgraded the springs/leveling knobs, and slapped on an auto leveler. I do really enjoy the printer, but I've found between work and raising a toddler I just don't have the time to tinker like I thought I would. I assumed I would need to do general maintenance, but mostly be able to just print things fairly regularly. Seems I mostly just re-level this printer and barely get to actually print things.

What I'm wondering is if the P1P is as "tinker free" as it is marketed. I don't mind maintenance, cleaning and all that, but do want to be able to have an idea and just kick off a print job.

Thanks in advance, I could just be leveling it crappy all the time too. Wouldn't surprise me if I am just missing some critical information or something on how to level and keep it leveled.

I went hunting for new bed surfaces the other day on AE (Ender 3 clone and Bambu X1C), and I veered off into other materials. That got me thinking about further possibilities.

The regular options I've seen/used:

• Material/coating: Glass, PEI, PET, PEO, G10 (and G11)
• Textures: Smooth, matte ('textured'), coarse matte, faceted, carbon fiber

I'd like to put together a table of materials, finishes, coating vs. solid, recommended filament, max temperature, price, etc.

Finding G10 made me think that, really, ANYTHING can be a print surface as long as it isn't toxic and displays decent adhesion to filament. Then I stumbled on to carbon fiber sheets, which got me thinking about patterned surfaces. I looked around but didn't find many.

So, what else is out there?
Is it possible/reasonable to make my own surface textures, and if so, is there any info on the depths of etching or useful techniques?

Edit: Just found these PEY sheets. Apparently they're smooth and the only selling point is that they're sparkly.

I'm currently getting by with a mixture of Design Spark Mechanical, FreeCAD, and OpenSCAD for prototyping/editing files, I'd love to find a good alternative that isn't from a predatory company like Autodesk