FullCTRL

Most machines had a manual phase before automation. 3D printing skipped it. It went straight to CAD, slicers, and walking away. That locks out anyone who thinks with their hands. And it strips the fun out for everyone else: press start, get an object with little to no human involvement in it.

FullCTRL is a 3D printer you drive by hand. The machine controls temperature, flow, and speed. You control the shape. Grip the handle and guide the extruder, or trace a cardboard cut-out and the machine revolves it into an object. Five buttons run everything: extrude, spin the bed either way, raise Z, heat, and home. You can also mix modes in one print.

I built it from scratch rather than modifying a kit. Polar kinematics with a rotating bed and a cantilever arm, aluminium extrusions, and 37 printed parts, all support-free so anyone can replicate them. I started on Klipper, but its command queue turned held buttons into laggy bursts. So I moved to a Duet board running RepRapFirmware with custom macros, and control became instant. A rotating bed means over-extruding at the centre and under-extruding at the edge. The fix was the whole point: flow sits under your thumb, and you correct it by feel.

FullCTRL showed at SaloneSatellite during Milan Design Week 2026 and earned an Autodesk Research Scholarship. The feedback confirmed the thesis: people are kinda tired of push-button manufacturing.

The polar bed was the right first move, and it's also the ceiling. Symmetric shapes only, and steep overhangs need tuning. So the next revision would be Cartesian. Same hands-on control, on individual axes. Any shape, not just symmetric ones. I'd also like to try clay extruders. The design is open source in the meantime.