Guidelines
What belongs on the board, how licensing works, and how to read a solution's print settings.
Dashing Prints works because people post real problems and other people spend real effort solving them for free. A few rules keep that worthwhile:
- Post real, physical problems. A bounty should describe an actual everyday annoyance you want a 3D-printed fix for — not a request for someone else's copyrighted design, and not a joke or test post.
- Solutions must be your own work. Upload files you designed or that you have the right to share under an open license. Do not upload a paid model you purchased, or a file scraped from another maker's paywalled listing.
- Be specific and honest. Describe dimensions, tolerances, and what a solution does and doesn't solve. Overstating what a print can do wastes the next person's filament.
- No harassment, hate speech, or spam. Titles, descriptions, tags, and images should stay on-topic for the request being solved.
- Report problems, don't retaliate. If a post violates these guidelines, email us (see About → Contact) rather than editing or upvoting it into place.
We may remove content or restrict accounts that violate these guidelines. See our Terms of Service for the full policy.
Open-Source STL Guidelines
Every model file shared through Dashing Prints is meant to be freely printable, remixable, and shareable — that's the entire premise of the board. When you publish a solution:
- You're confirming the file is your own design, in the public domain, or licensed in a way that permits free redistribution (for example Creative Commons or the MIT license).
- You keep whatever attribution or license terms you choose to attach, but you cannot restrict other members of the community from downloading and printing the file for personal use.
- If your design remixes someone else's open-source model, credit the original in your description and respect the terms of its license (most Creative Commons licenses require attribution; some prohibit commercial reuse).
- Accepted formats are STL, 3MF, STEP, and OBJ. Upload the format your slicer actually needs — STEP or OBJ if the geometry matters for someone editing it further, STL or 3MF if it's print-ready as-is.
Print Profiles
Each solution lists the print settings the author actually used, so you can reproduce their result instead of guessing:
- Material — the filament type the part was tested in (PLA, PETG, ABS, TPU, etc.). Swapping material can change fit and strength, so treat this as a starting point rather than the only option.
- Layer height & nozzle size — the resolution and nozzle diameter used. A part tuned for a 0.4mm nozzle may need adjusted tolerances on a different nozzle size.
- Infill — how dense the interior was printed. Load-bearing parts generally list higher infill; decorative parts list lower infill to save filament and print time.
- Supports — whether the model needs support material to print cleanly. Several solutions are deliberately designed to print support-free.
- Estimated print time — a rough duration on the author's printer, useful for planning but not a guarantee across every machine.