The “Long Dark” is upon us, at least for those who live north of the equator, and while it’s all pre-holiday bustle, pretty lights, and the magical first snow of the season now, soon the harsh reality of slushy feet, filthy cars, and not seeing the sun for weeks on end will set in. And when it does, it pays to have something to occupy idle mind and hands alike, a project that’s complicated enough to make completing even part of it feel like an accomplishment.

But this time of year, when daylight lasts barely as long as a good night’s sleep, you’ve got to pick your projects carefully, lest your winter project remain incomplete when the weather finally warms and thoughts turn to other matters. For me, at least, that means being realistic about inevitabilities such as competition from the day job, family stuff, and the dreaded “scope creep.”

It’s that last one that I’m particularly concerned with this year, because it has the greatest potential to delay this project into spring or even — forbid it! — summer. And that means I need to be on the ball about what the project actually is, and to avoid the temptation to fall into any rabbit holes that, while potentially interesting and perhaps even profitable, will only make it harder to get things done.

Pushing My Buttons

For my winter project this year, I chose something I’ve been itching to try for a while: an auto-starter for my generator. Currently, my solar PV system automatically charges its battery bank when the state of charge (SOC) drops below 50%, which it does with alarming frequency during these short, dark days. But rather than relying on shore power, I want my generator to kick on to top off the batteries, then turn itself off when the charge is complete.

Primer assembly for the generator auto-start. The silver part is the regulator; the solenoid pushes the primer button when it fires. All the parts needed to be custom-made.

In concept, it’s a simple project, since the inverter panel I chose has dry contacts that can trigger based on SOC. It seems like a pretty easy job, just a microcontroller to sense when the inverter is calling for a charge and some relays to kick the generator on. It’s a little — OK, a lot — more complicated than that when you think about it, since you have to make sure the generator actually cranks over, you’ve got to include fail-safes so the generator doesn’t just keep cranking endlessly if it doesn’t catch, and you have to make everything work robustly in an electrically and mechanically noisy environment.

However, in my case, the most challenging aspect is dealing with the mechatronics of the project. My generator is fueled by propane, which means there’s a low-pressure regulator that needs to be primed before cranking the starter. When cranking the generator manually, you just push the primer button a few times to get enough propane into the fuel intake and turn the key. Automating this process, though, is another matter, one that will surely require custom parts, and the easiest path to that would be 3D printing.

But, up until a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t own a 3D printer. I know, it’s hard to believe someone who writes for Hackaday for a living wouldn’t own one of the essential bits of hacker kit, but there it is. To be fair to myself, I did dip my toe into additive manufacturing about six or seven years ago, but that printer was pretty awful and never really turned out great prints. It seemed like this project, with its potential need for many custom parts, was the perfect excuse to finally get a “big boy” printer.

Pick Your Project

And that’s where I came upon the first potential rabbit hole: should I buy an out-of-the-box solution, or should I take on a side-quest project? I was sorely tempted to take the latter course by getting one of those used Enders returned to Amazon, having heard that they’re about half the price of new and often need very little work to get them going. But then again, sometimes these printers have gone through a lot in the short time they were in a customer’s hands, to the point where they need quite a bit of work to get them back in good order.

While I like the idea of a cheap printer, and I wouldn’t mind tinkering with one to get it going again, I decided against the return route. I really didn’t like my odds, given that our Editor in Chief, Elliot Williams, says that of the two returned printers he’s purchased, one worked basically out of the box, while the other needed more work to get in shape. I wanted to unbox the printer and start making parts right away, to get this project going. So, I took the plunge and bought a Bambu P1S on a pre-Black Friday sale that was much less than list price, but much more than what I would have paid for a returned Ender.

Now, I’m not going to turn this into a printer review — that’s not really the point of this article. What I want to get across is that I decided to buy a solution rather than take on a new hobby. I got the Bambu up and running in about an hour and was cranking out prototype parts for my project later that afternoon. Yes, I might have had the same experience with a returned printer at about half the price of the Bambu, but I felt like the perceived value of a new printer was worth the premium price, at least in this case.

I think this is a pretty common choice that hackers face up and down the equipment spectrum. Take machine tools, for instance. Those of us who dream of one day owning a shop full of metalworking tools often trawl through Facebook Marketplace in search of a nice old South Bend lathe or a beautiful Bridgeport milling machine, available for a song compared to what such a machine would cost new. But with the difficulty and expense of getting it home and the potential for serious mechanical problems like worn ways or broken gears that need to be sorted before putting the machine to use, the value proposition could start to shift back toward buying a brand new machine. Expensive, yes, but at least you stand a chance of making parts sooner.

Your Turn

Don’t get me wrong; I’d love to find a nice old lathe to lovingly restore, and I just may do that someday. It’s like buying a rusty old classic car; you’re not doing it to end up with a daily driver, but rather for the joy of restoring a fine piece of engineering to its former glory. In projects like that, the journey is the point, not the destination. But if I need to make parts right away, a new lathe — or mill, or CNC router, or 3D printer — seems like the smarter choice.

I’ll turn things over to you at this point. Have you come up against this kind of decision before? If so, which path did you choose? Has anyone had a satisfying out-of-the-box experience with returned printers? Was I unnecessarily pessimistic about my chances in that market? What about your experience with large machine tools, like lathes and mills? Is it possible to buy used and not have the machine itself become the project? Sound off in the comments below.