Between the Amazon TV series The Rings of Power releasing in less than a month, the animated film War of the Rohirrim expected in 2024 and Hobbit hole-style homes becoming increasingly popular on AirBnB, it’s clear Tolkien fans are having a moment. Joining the excitement is Drop, which today announced two new prebuilt, custom Lord of the Rings-themed keyboards shipping in time to live-blog your thoughts on the new show. I’ve been using both keyboards for about a week now, and as the resident Tolkien nerd at CNET, I have a lot to say about them. 

It’s been about nine months since Drop had Lord of the Rings fans all over the world gleefully emptying their bank accounts for a pair of incredible and officially licensed keycap sets themed in either the Elvish or Dwarvish languages from the books and movies. These keycaps offer an incredible amount of detail and customization, but if you’re not already into custom-built keyboards these sets can be fairly intimidating. Lots of folks just want to buy a keyboard and use it, so today Drop is offering exactly that. Mechanically, these keyboards are a custom version of the Drop ENTR keyboard with Holy Panda X switches and Drop Phantom stabilizers. That means the keyboard has a nice audible clack to it but isn’t so loud that the other people in the office or at home will have something to say about it. The keycaps themselves have a soft finish and a nice cupped surface so you’ll be comfortably typing on it for hours without the fatigue associated with average keyboards. 

Each of these USB-C keyboards is absolutely beautiful to look at and offers a few simple customizations in the box for some color variety. The custom etched designs from OSHETART on the right side of the keyboard are only available with this set, and not something that can be purchased separately if you already own the Lord of the Rings keycaps from last year. More impressive than the color tones and not-so-subtle nods to the books is how much work went into the language on the keys to be more than just the standard English words transliterated into Elven Tengwar or Dwarvish Cirth symbols. Many words on an English keyboard have no translation to a fantasy language conceived before computers, so things like Caps Lock become Pedi Caun, which is Cirth for “speak loud.” The entire keyboard has translations like this, designed for the user to discover on their own. 

A few days into playing with these keyboards I found myself admittedly confused by a lot of the language choices on the keyboards. I know what the English character A looks like as a Cirth rune, and that was not what I was seeing on the keyboard. That’s because the goal of this keyboard translation was not to allow you to press a Cirth or Tengwar symbol on the keyboard and have the English transliteration appear on the screen, but to actually allow you to write in Cirth or Tengwar. 

Like the keycap set before it, the characters you see on the keyboard line up with the Cirth and Tengwar computer fonts originally built by Daniel Steven Smith in 1998. Old school Tolkien fans may remember these fonts drew some conflict from the Tolkien Estate, which asked Smith to remove these unofficial fonts from his site, but they live on as the most complete font sets for Cirth and Tengwar available today by way of a host of free font sites. If you install one of those fonts and type as though you’re writing for those languages instead of English, which you can see an example of here, you’ll get some of the most accurate script possible from keyboard to screen. 

Beautiful as these keyboards are, there are a few quirks. Drop’s ENTR keyboard is backlit, but the keycaps themselves are not doubleshot keycaps that let light pass through. According to Drop, this is because the dye sublimation process used to make sure the keys stay as pretty as they are right now through years of use doesn’t work well with doubleshot keycaps and a choice had to be made. The result is a nice accent light during the day but a keyboard that is not nearly as fun to look at when the lights are off. 

My other issue with this keyboard is really more of a minor design dispute. The Elven keycap set includes a broken sword on the Return key which, if you ask any 10 people who have read The Lord of the Rings and seen the movies, would be identified as Bilbo’s Sting and not Elendil’s Narsil. According to Drop, this design decision came from a desire to be loyal to the books and not the movies. I don’t agree this visual is more accurate than what was shown in the films — they’re both incorrect in different ways — and for the most part, that’s OK. Tolkien never offers a complete description of the sword in the books so both examples are artist interpretations. If I start going off about Oakeshott Typology and what makes a long sword different from a short sword in design, it would end up being a wholly different 2,000-word article that has nothing to do with these otherwise great keyboards.

If you’re a Lord of the Rings fan and you’ve been looking for an excuse to add a wired mechanical keyboard to your computer, you’re unlikely to find anything better than these anytime soon. The keys feel great, the colors and designs are exceptional, and this is one of the nicest-looking keyboards you’re going to find without spending considerably more than the $170 Drop is asking for each of these. And after the explosive popularity of the original keycap set from last year, Drop assured me it’s ready to deliver a significant volume of these with plans to ship by late September or early October, depending on when you order. 

Drop + Lord of the Rings keyboard – Elvish

$169 at Drop

Drop + Lord of the Rings keyboard – Dwarvish

$169 at Drop

The post Drop’s Newest Keyboards Contain Secrets for ‘Lord of the Rings’ Fans to Discover first appeared on Joggingvideo.com.

If you’re new to the world of Cricut machines or you’ve got your own little factory going with multiple running at the same time, the right tools and accessories can make a huge difference in both your enjoyment and production. While there are a lot of “official” accessories out there, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re the best. That’s why I’ve put together this handy list full of all the great little tools I use every day with my Cricut machine. After years of trial and error, I’ve found my favourites.

If you’re looking for the right things to add to your craft table, this is where I recommend you start. 

Scotch-Brite

Scotch-Brite lint rollers

Surprisingly effective and super cheap

Cricut makes great big rolls of Transfer Sheets to help you get vinyl from the adhesive sheet to wherever you want to put your creation, but that doesn’t mean it’s always the best tool for the job. Whether it’s because of convenience or price or just the right amount of adhesive, if I’m working on multiple projects at once I prefer to use lint roller sheets instead. The convenient little roll on a nice handle makes it easy to get adhesive over the project and lift it off the paper, and the tearaway nature of the lint roller sheet makes it super easy to separate from the roll and get onto whatever the destination is for your creation. 

It couldn’t be easier for small projects, and it’s way cheaper than using the official Transfer Sheets most of the time. 

$12 at Amazon

Cricut

Cricut basic tool set

For easy peeling, weeding and trimming

There are a lot of starter tool kits for Cricut users out there, and Cricut makes some of the best for the price. There’s a weeding pick to help you lift up things you’ve already cut, a spatula to get bigger projects off the mat without tearing, tweezers for cleanup and precise placement and scissors for helping you get to the right part of the cut easily. And when you have the right piece off the cutter, you can use the scraper to either clean your cutting mat or more easily apply the thing you’ve cut. There are certainly more tools available to advanced users, but this kit is everything you need to get started — and genuinely what every Cricut user should have starting off. 

$10 at Amazon

Weenkler

Weenkler 12-inch trimmer

I prefer a precision cut whenever I can get it, especially when it comes to rescuing something I’ve cut on my Cricut from the rest of the sheet. I’m not the most accurate with a pair of scissors, which is why I always recommend a good trimmer. The Weenkler trimmer is the correct width for all sheets of vinyl, and the extender allows you to cut larger pieces with the same level of accuracy. 

It doesn’t get much easier than this as tools go, and it makes all of your leftover scraps more uniform for the next project. 

$11 at Amazon

Cricut

Cutting mats (four-pack)

Something for every situation

Your Cricut machine came with the same StandardGrip Mat everyone has, but that is not always the best mat for the job. Cricut actually makes three other kinds of mat for different materials and situations. The LightGrip Mat is great for paper projects where you need to be more careful, while the StrongGrip Mat is ideal for thicker vinyl and other more rigid materials. There’s even a FabricGrip Mat, just in case you need to cut some fabric. It’s not always easy to find each of these at your local craft store, which is why I recommend starting out with one of each, just in case. And this set of four straight from Cricut is the best way to do it. 

$40 at Amazon

Cricut

Cricut BrightPad Go

Weeding wherever you are is so much nicer

It’s fairly common for Cricut users to cut a whole bunch of things all at once and then spend an evening weeding those things so you have a nice pile of projects to work with. And the one thing every Cricut project has in common is that more light always makes it easier. When you’re at home you have a lot of control over how much light you have to work with, and the BrightPad Go is a big way to help with light when you’re anywhere else. This rechargeable tablet lets you control how bright the backlight is, and it’s thin enough to take with you anywhere. It’s perfect for working on a project for a few hours when you aren’t at home, so you’re always able to keep being creative.

$99 at Amazon

Tweexy

Tweexy Craft Vinyl Weeding Scrap Collector Ring

Keep it all clean

Pros:

• Fits any size finger
• Keeps your surface clean

Cons:

• Scraps can stick to the inside

Having a place for your small scraps of weeding is essential. I have ruined several projects by accidentally fusing a scrap of Infusible Ink onto a t-shirt, so I find this little cup extremely helpful. The top flaps help keep your scraps from falling out and it helps pull them off of the weeding hook.

$10 at Amazon

Reafoo

T-Shirt alignment guide

Make designs on clothes that much nicer (Update: Currently unavailable)

One of the more common things Cricut users tend to make if they decide to do things with clothing is a set of family T-shirts. Whether it’s for a family vacation or someone’s great idea for standing out at a big outdoor event, making an iron-on design for a T-shirt can be pretty quick. Applying that design to a shirt so it looks just right is not always so easy, especially if you’re applying a design to multiple shirt sizes. That’s why it’s a good idea to have an alignment ruler guide tool, so you can make sure you’re getting the right placement with each shirt size. 

This four-pack of shirt guides will help you place graphics on just about every kind of shirt without complications, and they can be used over and over again. 

$6 at Amazon

The post Best Cricut Accessories: Everything You Need to Make Something Great first appeared on Joggingvideo.com.

If you’re a creative person, there’s a good chance you either own a Cricut or know someone who does. These cutting machines are amazing for helping you make anything from decals for your favorite things to custom cards to give for special occasions and about a thousand other things in between. You are limited almost entirely by your own imagination, especially now that Cricut has made so many accessories to help you expand your crafting. And thanks to some Prime Day deals that are still available, it’s a lot less expensive to either start your Cricut journey or expand your workshop.

Cricut Explore 3 (save $40)

$279 at Amazon

Cricut’s Prime Day Sale put a ton of its gadgets and accessories at great discounts that are still good. The new Explore 3 and Maker 3 cutting machines offer a lot of different features for cutting hundreds of different kinds of things depending on what you need in your life, but there’s a lot more to it. Cricut has an array of lights to help with weeding and a ton of different colored materials to put in whichever machine you choose. Here’s a quick look at my favorite deals:

• Cricut Maker 3: $379 (save $50)
• Cricut EasyPress 2 9×9: $99 (save $90)
• Cricut BrightPad Go: $79 (save $20)
• Cricut roll holder: $30 (save $25)
• Cricut weeding kit: $12 (save $14)
• Cricut EasyPress Mini: $39 (save $30)

There’s no telling when these post-Prime Day deals will last; it could depends entirely on availability. If these sell out, it will likely be a long time before most of these things are anywhere near these prices again. If you want to take a look at the full list of Cricut products and accessories still on sale today, you can see it for yourself here.

Amazon Prime Day 2022

• Amazon Prime Day Deals: Best Ones So Far
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• 100 Amazon Prime Day 2022 Deals Under $25 You Won’t Want to Miss
• 80 Amazon Prime Day Deals Under $50 You Need To Check Out
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The post All the Best Cricut Products Are Still Discounted After Prime Day first appeared on Joggingvideo.com.

When COVID-19 forced all of us to stay in our homes for a while, one of the first things I bought was a projector and an inflatable screen. It let my neighbors and I watch movies when theaters were closed, and when things got a little safer those night turned into MarioKart 8 tournaments on the weekends. It’s not something I ever would have bought before lockdowns, but it has remained something I regularly reach for a few times a month. I recommend this neat little projector to everyone I know, but now that a Prime Day deal has dropped the price to the lowest I’ve ever seen it’s time the rest of you know my fun little secret. 

Anker Nebula Capsule II Mini Projector: Save $180

$530 at Amazon

Anker’s Nebula Capsule II isn’t the best projector you can buy. Its 200-lumen 720p projection isn’t the greatest image quality, its 8-watt speaker isn’t going to deliver room-shaking theater-quality sound, and the battery is really only good enough for about 1.5 movies. Where this little projector shines is in its compact size and incredible smarts. I regularly throw this projector into a soft case with a microfiber cloth and take it with me. It sits on flat surfaces just fine and I can use the mount on the bottom to connect it to a tripod with ease. Best of all, if the surface I’m projecting onto isn’t perfectly flat, the projector’s auto-detect feature figures out the correct focus and image angle for ideal picture. 

Like all Nebula projectors, this compact beast has every app you could possibly need for streaming right from the projector, and has a full-size USB port and 3.5mm output if you want to connect a gaming console or some more powerful speakers. The USB-C power adapter can also charge the battery when it’s in use, so if you have power nearby you can use it all day long to have fun with anyone around. 

This projector usually runs for $580, but it’s at Amazon right now for a much more reasonable $400. Anker makes a much nicer 4K UHD Projector with much better audio if you’re excited about quality over portability, but it’s also going to cost you $1,120 right now. Portability and smarts really make this projector worthwhile for me, and hopefully it gives you something to smile about. 

Amazon Prime Day 2022

• Amazon Prime Day Deals: Best Ones So Far
• Amazon Prime Day Alternatives: Shop the Best Anti-Prime Day Deals Now
• 100 Amazon Prime Day 2022 Deals Under $25 You Won’t Want to Miss
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The post My Go first appeared on Joggingvideo.com.

If you exercise outdoors near cars, you need to stop wearing normal headphones and start wearing bone-conduction headphones so you can hear what’s around you. Specifically, in my personal opinion, OpenRun headphones from Shokz, because they’re the best you can buy. And thanks to Amazon Prime Day, these headphones are also on a significant discount.

Shokz OpenRun Mini Bone Conduction Headphones – $40 off

$90 at Amazon

I love a good pair of headphones, but I don’t love spending a ton on them. My threshold for spending on headphones is about $100, which is why when all of my cycling friends started raving about bone-conduction headphones a few years back, I was more than a little hesitant. The headphones I was looking at were around $160, and because they use bone conduction instead of normal earbuds I wouldn’t be able to wear them on airplanes or anything like that. These would more or less only be workout headphones, and it took me a while to spend the money. 

A week after I did, I was nearly sideswiped by a pickup truck, and the only thing that saved me was hearing it come up behind me. There’s a reason these are recommended on our list of the best outdoor headphones you can buy. 

Bone conduction headphones sit just outside your ear, resting on the bone. Music vibrates through a set of pads into your skull, and you hear those sounds as if they’re coming from a speaker a few feet away. You can hear everything you’re listening to on your phone without interrupting the sounds coming from the rest of the world around you. For cyclists and runners — really anyone who does anything outside — this is a game-changing experience. It’s more accurate and pleasing than normal headphones with “passthrough mode” and you sacrifice very little in audio quality. 

My favorite bone conduction headphones, and I’ve tried them all, are the OpenRun headphones from Shokz (the company formerly known as Aftershokz). They’re waterproof (which means easy to clean when I’m all sweaty), the battery lasts me about 7 hours on a charge (perfect for those 70-mile riding days), and they’re comfortable enough that I can wear them all day and not feel them pressing on me. They charge magnetically with a proprietary charger, but Shokz includes two cables in the box in case you lose things like I do. Oh, and right now the price on these has dropped to an incredible $90. 

If that’s still a little rich for your blood, no worries. Shokz also has the cheaper OpenMove bone conduction headphones with up to 6 hours of battery life and IP55 dust and water resistance for $56, which is a $24 discount on its normal price. 

See at Amazon

Whether you’re physically active outdoors or you just like exploring new things, I highly recommend giving these headphones a try.

Amazon Prime Day 2022

• Amazon Prime Day Deals: Best Ones So Far
• Amazon Prime Day Alternatives: Shop the Best Anti-Prime Day Deals Now
• 100 Amazon Prime Day 2022 Deals Under $25 You Won’t Want to Miss
• 80 Amazon Prime Day Deals Under $50 You Need To Check Out
• 55 Amazon Prime Day Deals Under $100

The post My Favorite Workout Headphones Are $40 Off Right Now first appeared on Joggingvideo.com.

While there are plenty of makers who love to make things only for themselves and their friends, the growing movement of crafty people eager to make enough to sell more than a couple things at a time can’t be ignored. And if you look at Cricut’s products from the last year, it’s clear the company’s overall goal is to make products with features specifically aimed at folks who want to sell what they make. Cricut’s Smart Materials allow anyone to make multiples at speed without the need for mats of various sizes and organizers of any kind. 

The Cricut Easy Press line was also updated, supporting hats and larger format projects, but if the goal is to make more faster there are plenty of shirt presses designed to make that easy. In typical Cricut fashion, the company has made its own large format press for making a lot of different things all at once. Also in typical Cricut fashion, it’s pricey unless you plan to run a small business from your house.

7.0

Cricut Autopress

$1,000 at Cricut

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Like

• Best in class safety and accessibility features
• Nearly perfect heat application
• Safety-focused design

Don’t Like

• Extremely expensive
• Bulky and heavy
• Control system feels like a step backward

Straight out of the box, the Cricut Autopress is big. At nearly 17 inches wide and 26 inches deep when in use, it weighs a hefty 53 pounds. This is considerably larger than many competing presses, but not in a way that is useful. Many shirt press plates support designs up to 15×15, whereas Cricut supports only 15×12. This is noticeably larger than the 12×10 found in the largest Cricut Easy Press and offers the same promise to evenly distribute heat across the entire plate. While it’s true you can disconnect the power and controller to stand this Autopress up when not in use for better storage, it’s a huge piece of equipment that requires a lot of space to function in your craft room. 

The Autopress is curiously smart in some ways and not as smart as it should be in others. Where many shirt presses ask you to crank an awkward handle to apply pressure to a design for maximum application of vinyl or ink, all you need to do with the Autopress is gently press down on the handle and listen for the machine to do the rest. The sound of a locking mechanism means considerable force has been applied to the project, and when the timer you have set expires the pressure is released and the mechanism lifts. Similarly, if you apply any upward pressure to the handle it will immediately release the lid as a safety feature.

Considering you could be applying 400 degrees Fahrenheit of heat to fabric or wood, it’s great to see such consideration. It’s also nice to know that once this bulky machine is set up, anybody can use it with ease.

The Autopress controller is fairly simple. There are a pair of dials, one for temperature and another for time, and four buttons where you can store presets. That’s it. The controller exists as the brain of this big machine and anything else you want it to do needs to be manual. There’s no Bluetooth phone connection for saved projects like the Cricut Easy Press 3; in fact, you need to connect the USB port to a computer and use Cricut’s desktop app for software updates.

If you have a modern Mac, you’ll need an adapter because the Autopress uses USB-A, not USB-C. Considering how many people have grown accustomed to exclusively using phones or tablets to control other Cricut products, thanks to the Cricut team’s hard work, the Autopress feels surprisingly manual in this respect. 

I’ve been using the Autopress for two weeks now, and wow do I get the appeal. I was able to make three shirts in minutes and quickly assemble almost 20 feet of gold trim on a set of Jedi robes with so much less work than even the Easy Press would’ve afforded me. The ability to quickly lower this lid and know an even amount of pressure was being applied, allowing you to move on to the next part of a project, is incredible. It’s not hard at all to imagine a makerspace with multiple heat pads so you could quickly switch out designs and make a couple dozen things to sell in an hour. Cricut says the goal of the Autopress is to make it easier to produce things at scale. In my opinion, it accomplishes that goal handily. 

At the same time, there’s no denying this thing is big and expensive. There are a ton of other shirt presses out there for half the price, and when comparing them it’s not always immediately clear what makes Cricut’s machine worth the $1,000 price tag. It’s undeniable this is the safest press I have tested: The plastic rim around the heat plate to keep you from accidentally brushing against it and the auto-pressure system are features you’re unlikely to find elsewhere. Even distribution of heat is also a significant concern with a lot of less expensive presses, especially at the edges of heat plates you can see in many consumer reviews of other models.

But is all of that worth an approximately $500 price increase? For a lot of home makers, the answer is probably no. But for those who love Cricut products and need that extra bit of assistance to turn their creativity into something they can sell, this is a great addition to your space. 

The post Cricut Autopress Review: A Clever Heat Press in an Expensive Box first appeared on Joggingvideo.com.

News that Apple is finally done with the iPod Touch after its seventh generation lingered on shelves for years has many Apple fans seriously considering picking one up this week. And while some folks have found themselves debating a trip to the store to pick up one of the last iPods at the Apple Store, I am reminded of just how much I like the iPod I wear on my wrist every day and how much nicer it is for my needs than a big iPod Touch. For a long time now, my iPod has been my Apple Watch, and I think it’s something more people should try out for themselves. 

Apple Watch SE

$229 at Amazon

It’s been a long time since the iPod existed exclusively for people to load up with music and have their entire library with them at all times. The sheer volume of people who rely almost entirely on streaming music services for their entire library these days has eliminated the need for local storage beyond what you can get with the base model iPod Touch, which is 32GB. That storage size is enough for you to grab multiple days of music in offline mode through those streaming apps, but also tons of podcasts and audiobooks from to keep your ears busy when you’re not connected to Wi-Fi. But did you know you could do all of this fairly easily on an Apple Watch, many of which also have 32GB of onboard storage? You can, and it’s surprisingly easy.  

Apple’s wrist computer has been hailed as a decent standalone music player for a little while now, especially if you use AirPods and you can quickly switch audio from your phone to your watch with a button press. But the ability to listen from your wrist isn’t really the most interesting part of the Apple Watch experience. All of the apps on my phone that support Apple Watch playback are already installed, so no need to worry about separate configuration. I can navigate my Watch either using the screen or the scroll wheel, and in most cases I can even use Siri to play something on my watch with even greater ease. There’s no need to worry about anything in my pocket, and it’s extremely unlikely that I’ll accidentally set my Watch down somewhere and forget it. 

Now playing:
Watch this:

Apple Killed the Last iPod

6:43

The biggest difference between using an iPod and Apple Watch is the way apps behave. Not every app on my watch behaves the same way, and in fact many don’t behave the same way as the default Apple apps. Audible, for example, asks me to go into the app on my phone and go through multiple steps to move a book to my watch. It’s very different from the Apple Books experience, and that change in steps can be confusing to learn from app to app. And, of course, you’re not going to be doing a lot of gaming on your Apple Watch, which is a lot more possible on the iPod Touch but nowhere near as nice as what you get on your iPhone these days. 

Even the cost of the Apple Watch can be fairly close to that of an iPod Touch. Currently, the Apple Watch SE is available starting at $229 and when you consider what you get in that package compared to the $190 iPod Touch it’s a pretty great deal. You can of course spend a little more for a slightly nicer Watch, or get some increased storage model iPod Touch, but ultimately the differences in price aren’t as far apart as they used to be. (The Watch even has a leg up on the Touch, in that you can opt for a cellular version with always-on connectivity.) But in 2022, digital music devotees need to “think different” once again: Start using your Apple Watch like an iPod, and you’ll find it’s a lot more convenient and fun to use than you might imagine. 

The post Your Next iPod Could, and Probably Should, Be an Apple Watch first appeared on Joggingvideo.com.

My love for 3D printing and my desire to maintain a 3D printer are immediately at odds with one another. If I spend more time diagnosing why a print failed or what I need to achieve optimal printer performance than I spend creating things to put in the printer, I’m not interested. So despite my having been a 3D printer owner and fan since around 2015, my time spent actually printing things is fairly low. When Anycubic announced the Kobra as a starter printer and generally smaller companion to the Kobra Max (reviewed by my colleague James Bricknell), I was curious to see how far less expensive machines had come in the last seven years. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I found my biggest issues in 3D printers of yore had evaporated with this new model. 

8.5

Anycubic Kobra

$299 at Anycubic

$320 at Amazon

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Like

• Auto-leveling bed out of the box
• Quiet, consistently good printing
• Removable, heated bed is fantastic
• Great price

Don’t Like

• Included software needs to be better
• Cooling fan issues cause thin prints to struggle

Short of shipping it fully assembled, the Kobra couldn’t be much easier to put together by yourself. The step-by-step instructions in the box have you well on your way inside of 20 minutes, leaving you plenty of time to fire up the machine and follow the prompts on its touch display. 

In theory all you need to do after assembly and setup is a quick one-time bed leveling, heat test and the initial filament insertion before attempting the included test print to ensure everything is OK. Reality did not line up with this theory, as my test print failed twice without any clear indicator as to why. 

After a little poking around online, I found the culprit: The instructions Anycubic provides for initial configuration ask you to lower the print head to a sheet of paper until it doesn’t glide smoothly. These instructions are not for a standard sheet of paper you’d get at Staples, so my print head was slightly too high and causing problems. A small tweak lowered the print head to the correct position and immediately yielded a little plastic owl (the standard test print for Anycubic machines).

With the standard done, it was time to fire up the Cura interface and slice a file for this printer. Anycubic included Cura on the microSD card in the box as well as a USB reader for it, making it easy to push files from my laptop to the printer without needing to directly connect. Unfortunately, the provided version of Cura did not come with instructions for this Anycubic printer; I had to follow a different set of instructions for manually building this. Later in my review period, Anycubic provided a config file for Prusa Slicer, which also worked great for prepping files for printing. Whichever software you use, once ready you pop the microUSB card into the the printer’s front, tap the file you want and you’re good to go. 

My frustration with the software and general lack of support at this stage is immediately balanced by how great this printer is when it works. Once I was able to get support from Anycubic, things were great. But if you’re going to market this as a printer for beginners, there needs to be some consideration for the beginner experience beyond the printer’s assembly and maintenance. Anycubic is far from alone in this, as most 3D printers are put on shelves for people to figure out on their own. While that is good enough for many already in this space, it’s not the best path if your goal is to grow consumer excitement for 3D printers in general. 

Once the software is actually set up and running, the Kobra is spectacularly consistent in the quality of its prints. More than 100 hours of active printing in the last week has shown I can set a print and walk away confident that I will return to a nice, finished print a few hours later.

In all of my tests, the only real issue I found was with the prints’ output temperature. Because the cooling fan at the extruder isn’t quite powerful enough, the extruded filament doesn’t cool as fast as it probably should, which leads to issues with thin or narrow sections of a print. It’s a small thing you can work around in a lot of cases with some small changes to the default output temperature of the extruder, but if your goal is to print something delicate or extra thin you may encounter some inconsistency at the edges. 

Once a print is complete and the build plate underneath has cooled, you can grab the build plate’s spring steel surface and give it a quick bend: The entire thing comes off and flexes easily, so you can pop anything off of it with ease. Having spent many hours with glues and sprays on 3D printers from older generations, having a simple flexible plate I can rely on and easily clean is fantastic. 

For $300, the Anycubic Kobra is the best starter 3D printer I have used in a long time. It’s easily $100 better than any of the bargain $200 printers you’ll find anywhere, both in overall print quality and how fast it completes simple tasks like heating up to the correct temperatures. And if Anycubic puts just a little more energy into supporting its users through the software side of things, instead of leaving it all up to the 3D printer community, this little printer could help get a lot of new people into this hobby. 

The post Anycubic Kobra Review: The Everybody 3D Printer first appeared on Joggingvideo.com.

If you own a Cricut Joy, the smallest of the Cricut machines, making cards for friends and loved ones has always been a breeze. But if you own one of the larger Cricut machines, the special mat designed to make assembling fancy cards wasn’t available to you. As of Sunday, Cricut has announced it’s finally releasing the Card Mat 2×2, a special mat designed to fit in full-size machines and possibly work to assemble multiple cards at once if you’re up for the job. 

Cricut Card Mat 2×2

$18 at Walmart

The original Card Mat for Cricut Joy models allowed you to take a pre-folded piece of card stock and slide it in so you can do all sorts of things to the side of the card you wanted to design. It makes adding drawings, foil highlights or cut-outs to reveal an underlying accent color much easier. So if you’re going to build a version of this mat for the larger Cricut Explore and Maker machines, it makes sense to support building more than one card at a time. And that’s exactly what the Card Mat 2×2 does, as the name suggests you can build four cards at once. 

I’ve been using the new Card Mat 2×2 for about a week now, and if you’ve ever used the Card Mat for the Cricut Joy you’ll immediately understand how this works. If not, Cricut’s software doesn’t yet have a great tutorial but it’s relatively easy to pick up. A software update allows you to select the Card Mat as the build surface you want to work in, and it’s easy to click and drag your designs into the correct spots on the Mat. If your card design requires multiple tools, the software will prompt you to swap after each operation just like any other Card Mat. As long as you remember to swap out the correct tools in the instructions, you can build amazing cards in no time at all. 

Cricut’s new Card Mat 2×2 is available for $18 starting today at most online retailers carrying Cricut products and will be available in stores soon. 

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There are a ton of different ways to use iron-on materials these days, but where you use them matters a great deal. Unless you have special and usually quite expensive equipment, it can be difficult to work with anything curved. The front panel of a hat, the side of a backpack, even the shoulder of a shirt can be challenging to get right with a flat iron. Cricut’s EasyPress line has been working for a couple of years now on multipurpose, practical presses in several sizes to suit as many different kinds of users as possible. This year that list includes its first curved press, dubbed the Cricut Hat Press. 

I’ve been using this Hat Press for a few weeks now, and while it couldn’t be more clear Cricut had a single purpose in mind, this new press has opened up a world of possibilities.

9.0

Cricut Hat Press

$149 at Amazon

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Like

• Lightweight, simple design
• Nearly perfect heat application
• Easy-to-use software

Don’t Like

• Reliance on the app with every use is unfortunate
• Software fails to deliver enough safety warnings to users

I have fond childhood memories of my mother buying sheets of special paper at Walmart to print personal designs on a couple of shirts for the family. I also remember those shirts not lasting particularly long, which is why all my family has left of those shirts are photographs. Over the last couple of years, maker companies have been competing on all the different ways iron-on materials have been improved. And it’s fantastic — we can now create our own designs with ease and apply them to dark fabrics or add custom vinyl to dozens of kinds of fabrics. Cricut’s own Infusible Ink line allows creators to bypass the impermanent nature of iron-ons entirely and actually dye the fabric with comparably little investment. It has never been easier to make your own shirt with high enough quality that someone asks where you bought it.

And really, that’s been Cricut’s biggest success to date. The company has made its name creating tools which unleash the power of creative people at home. Cricut first became popular with cutting machines capable of turning sheets of vinyl into designs you could apply to anything, and now has one of the most capable machines you can buy today for engraving and embossing and even wood cutting as additional capabilities. Whether you’re the type to make custom shirts at home for the whole family before going on vacation together or you’ve started a small business on Etsy, it’s nearly impossible now to not have crossed paths with something made using a Cricut device.The one thing that hadn’t really improved much until quite recently is the iron itself. Everything you can buy today claims to work with the iron you have at home, but the truth is, your iron isn’t very good for this kind of thing. Many irons don’t distribute heat evenly across the full platter, or maintain a specific temperature in order to finish anything larger than a logo on a shirt. And even if you have a consumer clothes iron you can thoroughly rely on, if you’re trying to apply designs to something like a hat it becomes a great deal more challenging. 

Cricut’s Hat Press comes in three parts. The press itself is almost more handle than press, with a pair of dead-simple buttons on its face and a long power cord. You plug it in, press one button to turn it on, and one more button to engage a timer that we’ll discuss later. When you aren’t using the Hat Press, it rests in a thermally safe cradle. This cradle safely dissipates or absorbs heat even when the press is set to above 400 degrees, making it so you can rest it on a table without risk of damage. But to really ensure there’s a perfect press, Cricut has made a special portable hat form to rest the hat on while you work. It’s designed to take heat just like the flat versions Cricut includes with its other EasyPress products, but is perfectly designed for just about any hat. 

All three of these parts come together with the new Cricut Heat app. Where previous EasyPress products had temperature controls on the side to manually set the press to whatever you need, this new generation gets its instructions via Bluetooth. A simple pairing between your phone and the Hat Press gets you what you need through a set of recommendations. You tell the app what material you are using and what kind of hat you are applying it to, and the app gives you the preferred temperature with how long to apply force to send to the press. Once you’ve done so, you can use the app to monitor the correct temperature and act as a timer to help you apply heat without damaging the fabric or the iron-on material. 

As clever as this app is, truth be told, I find it unfinished. The Cricut Heat app must be connected in order for the Hat Press to truly function. If you power it on without the app it heats to a default setting, which is fine for vinyl on most fabrics, but anything else requires the app. If you’ve previously used the app for a project and wish to return to that project, the app has the ability to resend the previous instructions, but only after you’ve returned to the app with the Hat Press already turned on. It’s also important to highlight that the app doesn’t do a great job warning you about higher temperatures. Cricut sent two different kinds of the hats it makes for this press, and I accidentally melted the plastic insides on one of each of them. Cricut Infusible Ink requires the press to be at 400 degrees for the transfer of ink, and instructions for where to avoid touching the press is one of several warnings this app should provide its users. 

Slightly melted though they are, my first two attempts at making hats were incredibly fun. And like other Cricut products I’ve shown off, my friends immediately had other ideas for designs I’d never considered. But what I really had fun with was using the Hat Press on things other than hats. Applying vinyl to the side of my backpack, which I never would have been able to manage without a curved press, is a welcome additional feature. And the same can be said of shirts — being able to apply designs all the way around a sleeve without difficulty is something I’m honestly surprised Cricut itself doesn’t make a bigger deal about. The marketing for this is decidedly about the hats, but makers of all kinds will find so many more uses for this. 

If you’ve been getting by with just your at-home iron and your favorite iron-on materials, the $150 price tag of the Hat Press is undeniably a lot. But if you’re trying to find the best tools for making a ton of different things that aren’t just the front or back of a shirt or a tote, Cricut has just about nailed this unique expansion of its lineup. And if you look at what competing curved heat presses look like, you’ll see this is an ideal design at a more than reasonable price for what you get. 

The post Cricut Hat Press Review: Curves Don’t Fight Back Anymore first appeared on Joggingvideo.com.