Finally put the second printer to work

I had that exact same backup machine sitting around for a while before I figured out what to do with it. Mine wasn't used for small fixtures or jigs like yours, but I repurposed it for utility housing and enclosures. I mostly use it as a dedicated printer for anything that needs to be kept completely separate from the main build area.

My primary machine handles big, high-detail parts, but I use the spare for things like print housing for my Arduino projects or simple mounts for shelf supports in the garage. Since it is a V2, it has been great for dialing in specific temperature settings for ABS without messing up the profile I have for my main PLA runs. Running that higher temperature can be a pain on the primary rig. I discovered that because it is an older setup, it is actually much more forgiving when I just want to batch-print a ton of simple, non-load bearing pieces at a slightly lower quality. It does not matter if the print is rough; I just need it to function as a bracket or a cover. It really just serves as a fast, reliable little utility printer for utility stuff.

I took the opposite route from testing and enclosure ideas. My main machine is locked down for just finished jobs, so I needed a machine for development. I ended up using the spare Ender 3 V2 specifically for getting comfortable with the advanced slicers. I spent a month just fiddling with Klipper settings and testing out some custom filament profiles I found online. It wasn't about the prints themselves, but about mastering the setup before I risked my main unit.

I found that using the second unit to practice complex orientations and variable infill settings was the best use of the time. I’ve gotten pretty confident now that I can push limits on the build volume without the fear of damaging a job. I mostly run low-resolution calibration prints on it just to see how diffrent speeds affect the retraction settings on the specific extruder model. It feels like I have a dedicated R&D platform now. It really improved the consistency of my primary prints because the guesswork was done on the spare first. I think it was a waste of time to just make more jigs when I coud have just spent that time improving the software workflow.

Agree with the point about keeping the spare as the development machine. Mine became the test bed for hardware changes too. Whenever I get a new nozzle type or want to try a different bed surface, I swap it onto the old V2 first. Last spring I put a new leveling setup on it and spent a weekend getting it sorted. If something goes wrong it costs me nothing, and once I know the process by heart I can do the same upgrade on my main machine in half the time.