First Layer
Bed levelling, first-layer squish, temperature towers and the tolerance prints that come off the four-printer rack — repeatability work, not showpieces.
Browse the seriesBench index
Bench-tested guides for makers who build first and buy second.
Eakles is a working bench that happens to publish: 581 guides, tutorials and field notes on 3D printing, electronics and workshop fixtures. Each one was built, broken and rebuilt here before it was written up — so what you get is the tolerances, the ambient conditions, the part that failed and the fix that held.
Publication rules
How a bench session becomes a published guide.
Three rules decide what goes live. They exist so that “why should I trust this procedure?” has an answer you can check, rather than a story about who founded the site.
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Built before written
Nothing here comes off a spec sheet. The build happens at the bench first, on the actual printer, board or fixture, and the write-up starts only once the part is sitting in front of us — including the step that nearly ended it.
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Reproduced by a second pair of hands
A draft goes live only after someone else rebuilds it from the written steps alone, without asking the original author a single question. Any step that needed verbal clarification is rewritten before publication.
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Corrections are appended, not edited away
When a reader reproduces a guide and finds something we missed, the erratum is dated and appended beneath the original article. The original text stands, so you can see what changed and when — including in guides written years ago.
No unboxing-only reviews, and no ranked “best tool” lists assembled from spec sheets. Tools are described by measured behaviour at the bench.
Recurring series
Four running series, one library of 581 articles.
Guides and journal do different jobs here. Evergreen how-to that should survive a reprint lives in the guide library; dated field notes from the shop floor live in the journal. The four series below are the routes most readers arrive through.
Solder Joint Diary
Joints shot at magnification, cold-solder failure modes, iron tips and flux behaviour — recorded at the bench, described by what the joint actually did.
Browse the seriesFixture of the Month
One jig, drawn and built, with the clamping arrangement that keeps the part still while you work on it — and the reason the first version moved.
Browse the seriesTeardown, Then Rebuild
Published a year after the first failure, so the verdict is a measured result rather than a first impression — the fix either held or it did not.
Browse the seriesJournal · field notes
What happened at the bench this week.
Bench conditions, failures and costs, written down on the day and dated. Running headers stay the same week to week so you can compare like with like. The journal is explicitly not a how-to archive — that job belongs to the guide library.
Read the journal logWhat broke this week
The part-cooling shroud on rack 3 curled into the fan path after the brim corner lifted at layer 118. The print finished. The shroud did not.
Bench conditions
21.5 °C and 43 % RH on Monday, 18.9 °C and 51 % RH by Thursday. The spool was dried Tuesday night and moved straight into a sealed box.
What the fix cost
No parts bought. Forty minutes at the bench and one reprint in PETG at 0.2 mm layers; the second shroud is still on the machine.
Dated field notes · not a how-to archive
Reference layer
Tables meant to be read on the page, with a tool in one hand.
Tolerances, fastener crosswalks, wire and cost figures live outside the tutorials, as a layer of their own. Each table states the printer, board or wire specification it was measured against. On a narrow screen the tables scroll sideways rather than truncate the numbers.
| Reference table | What it holds | Reach for it when |
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| Printer tolerance charts | Measured hole and boss fits for FDM, listed by nozzle diameter and material batch. | Before you commit a dimension to a drawing. |
| Metric and imperial fastener equivalents | Nearest-size crosswalk for cap screws, nuts and washers, checked against the hardware drawer. | When the part you already own has to decide the design. |
| Wire gauge and current references | Ampacity and voltage-drop figures for hookup wire, stated with the insulation they were measured on. | Before you size a run — not after it is soldered. |
| Cost-per-part worksheet | Material, machine time, failed prints and rework, tallied per part rather than per spool. | When you weigh printing a part against buying one. |
These are working numbers from one bench, not certified values. They tell you what held here, under the conditions recorded above each table.
Browse the reference layerContinuity
All 581 articles keep their existing addresses.
The redesign changes how the site reads, not where a single piece lives. Every published guide, tutorial and field note still resolves at its own /%postname%/ permalink, so the piece you bookmarked years ago lands exactly where you left it.