So in a stroke of insanely good luck, I didn't blow up my machine!

For the last few weeks I've been working to get several pieces of equipment working properly. Starting with the tablet that I bought in order to get back into drawing after an almost 15 year hiatus, I needed to replace the 3-in-1 cable as the HDMI portion of the cable was faulty from the factory. That was the easiest fix of the batch by far, and I have two sets (as the manufacturer sent me an extra set) of an alternate connection cable in case the 3-in-1 doesn't work for some reason, so that should keep me going for a while on that front.

Moving on to my Creality Ender-5 Plus, the original board that came with the machine developed a critical failure around the same time as the Sonic Pad tablet I bought for the machine overheated and cracked, rendering it unusable. Buying replacements for both proved to be a complete waste of time as a firmware update—which contained a known fault and a proprietary lock out code—rendered the replacement parts useless.
After a go 'round with customer service about how to "fix" the issues I was having, I bought yet another control board and installed it. Everything seemed to be going fine, and the machine seemed to be working correctly until I went to run a print and the extruder stopped working and got clogged so bad that I needed a blow torch to clear it. Several troubleshooting sessions, one minor upgrade, and a new feed tube—as the original was destroyed by one of the three clogs that occurred—later, and I decided to try one last thing; adjusting the power output on the control board itself.

Now, I need to emphasize this... I am in no way shape or form so tech savvy as to be even remotely qualified to do what I did, so I was fully expecting to end this machine's working life with a massive puff of rancid smelling smoke.

The reason I had this expectation is this: the adjustments required me to use a multimeter, and a very small screwdriver, while the machine was running I was fully expecting things to go horribly wrong as in order to adjust the power levels of each driver I needed to turn the dial of a potentiometer that is around 1/16 to 3/32 of an inch across (in other words, small enough to need a magnifying glass to see it) so slightly that—with my eyes being what they are, especially in the summer when my allergies and general fatigue from living in in the Midwest, in a house that does not have working A/C—it was impossible to see that the dial had even moved.
However, it worked gangbusters and for the first time since the end of April, I was able to run a print from start to finish, with no adhesion issues, no extrusion failures, and no random travel alarms.

Now, I think I still have some tweaks left to do to the machine, but as of right now, all of my machines (the laser etcher just needs to be set back up, and likely updated) are operational, and as far as I am concerned, ready for service. So, tentatively and with the understanding that my equipment might fail again at any moment, I can honestly say that SFS is back open and—on a limited basis—ready to start taking commissions again.

I apologize for having to close everything down in the time it took to fix these problems, but I needed to focus my full attention on them and could not handle the idea of committing to a deadline until they were fixed. As far as that goes I will say this, until it gets too cold for me to reliably run my printer, I'll be turning out parts for a project I'm working on, and will (assuming everything continues work correctly) be posting teaser images, and—if time allows—setting up a youtube channel, and posting links to videos detailing the parts.

I'm glad to be running again, and look forward to any business I might get.