If you hang around in the 3D printing community, you have no doubt seen the question of electrical power come up, which I have always found to be kind of an odd thing to think about. We don't think about the power used by a hot glue gun or soldering iron, do we? I suppose there are people who run their printers 24/7 or run print farms, though.

Anyhow, I decided to give it a go with one of my old printers on the bicycle.

It took the length of the print, but I was able to manage it. Hard though; it's also a bit higher power than I am used to running, I've only gone above 100 watt-hours per hour a few times. There's no way I'd have been able to do this with my Voron printer and its 650W rated bed. What if you had to pedal for it every time? Consider this the next time you print something.

Alternatively, reassure yourself that in a coming global apocalypse, you'll still be able to make plastic boats, or if you prefer, more useful items. I should mention here that the laptop was also powered by the bicycle, though not the entire time. Once I switched on the heated bed, the 12V buck regulator was not able to power both the printer and laptop anymore.

It would be rude of me not to mention that this is not the first pedal powered 3D printer out there; that one was done as an art project by Pierre Clément Nivière back in 2016. As a result, it looks much nicer than mine, but looks a lot less comfortable and less optimized for a good pedaling speed. From the pictures, it also looks legitimate - I believe that it really powers the printer, unlike a certain toaster video. It printed a little statue though, so I might still be able to lay claim to the first #3DBenchy.

I did install the OS (Linux Mint) for the laptop and Prusaslicer under bicycle power though. With FreeCAD installed, I can have a fully human powered prototype facility. Although, in an apocalyptic scenario, you'd be hard pressed bootstrap any of that without internet access.