3D printing & STL6 min read
Drain holes for hollow resin prints: how many, how big, where
Why a hollow resin print needs two drain holes per cavity, where they go, how large they should be and how to plug them, with the published Formlabs minimum.
Omnvert Blog
Measured, hands-on guides on file conversion, PDF, 3D printing, fonts and developer tooling.
3D printing & STL6 min read
How to hollow an STL for resin printing: wall, drain holes, plugs
Measured resin savings on seven scans, how thick the wall should be, where the drain holes go and why thin figures save less. With an online hollowing tool.
3D printing & STL5 min read
Why AI 3D models fail in the slicer, and how to fix them
Overlapping shells, holes and flipped faces from Meshy, Tripo or Rodin explained, the three ways to fix them, and a measured before-and-after of a rebuild.
3D printing & STL6 min read
Why your STL imports at the wrong size: inches, cm and metres
STL has no unit, so slicers read millimetres. How to tell inches from cm or metres, what PrusaSlicer and Cura detect on their own, and how to fix the file.
Images & conversion6 min read
How to turn a logo into a cut-ready SVG for vinyl
Trace a logo into closed contours a vinyl plotter can cut: what the 0.5 mm minimum feature means, how the blade-width clean-up works and how to scale on import.
Images & conversion5 min read
Layered multi-colour vinyl from a sticker photo
Turn a sticker photo into one cut layer per colour: how the katman-N-rrggbb groups are built, why layers sit side by side, and how to cut and register the sheets.
Images & conversion5 min read
Print-ready PDF/X-3 or EPS from a raster logo
Trace a raster logo for the press: PDF/X-3 with a FOGRA39 CMYK output intent, transparency flattened to paper white, EPS for older RIPs and a preflight checklist.
Images & conversion6 min read
Reading the cut report: enlargement hint and detail retention
What each line of the cut report means: the status badge, the contract's three mm values, clean-up rounds, the enlargement hint and the detail retention warning.
3D printing & STL5 min read
How to make a lithophane: thickness, size, light and print settings
Turn a photo into a lithophane STL: which photo works, 0.8 to 3 mm thickness, print width, white PLA at 100% infill, fine layers, orientation and backlight.
3D printing & STL6 min read
How to split an STL that is too big for your printer bed
Bed sizes of common printers, how cutting an STL into parts works, margins, orientation and how to join the parts with glue, pins or dovetails.
3D printing & STL5 min read
Slicer errors explained: what STL warnings mean and how to fix them
What PrusaSlicer, Bambu Studio and Cura mean by open edges, non-manifold edges, reversed faces and floating parts, and how to repair the STL behind them.
3D printing & STL6 min read
STEP to STL: export settings that keep curves smooth
Linear and angular deflection explained with numbers, how they change file size, which preset to use for FDM or resin, and how to handle units and assemblies.
3D printing & STL6 min read
STL file too large to upload? Limits by platform and fixes (2026)
Upload limits on Etsy, MakerWorld, Printables, Thingiverse and Cults3D, checked October 2026, and how to bring an STL under them without losing detail.
3D printing & STL6 min read
STL volume, weight and cost: check a model before you print
Turn an STL's volume into grams and cost: filament densities from data sheets, how walls and infill change the weight, and how far an estimate can be trusted.
Images & conversion6 min read
What is inside a Google Photos Takeout, and why dates go missing
Year folders, album copies and one JSON sidecar per photo: what Google Photos Takeout contains, which fields hold the date, and why photo apps ignore them.
Images & conversion6 min read
Why some Takeout photos do not match their JSON
Truncated supplemental-metadata names, moved (1) counters, edited copies and JSON in another ZIP part: why Takeout photos lose their JSON and how to match them.
PDF & documents7 min read
Microsoft Publisher is retired: how to open your .pub files now
Publisher leaves Microsoft 365 on 1 October 2026. Who is affected, which options still open .pub files, and how to convert a whole archive to PDF.
PDF & documents7 min read
Publisher alternatives in 2026 and how to move your work
Word, PowerPoint, Canva, Affinity, Scribus and LibreOffice Draw compared on price, learning curve and .pub import, plus a step-by-step plan to move your files.
Images & conversion7 min read
Compressing images without visible loss
What a quality setting really controls, what chroma subsampling throws away, which SSIMULACRA 2 scores map to which settings, and why re-encoding hurts.
PDF & documents6 min read
Getting tables out of a PDF and into Excel
A PDF has no cells, only positioned glyphs. How extractors infer columns from ruling lines and x coordinates, where that fails, and how to verify the result.
3D printing & STL5 min read
How to reduce STL file size without ruining the print
Why STL files get large, how to read the triangle count straight from the file size, and what binary, re-export, decimation and 3MF each save in practice.
Developer tools7 min read
Inspect an EXE without running it: reading PE headers
What the PE headers, section table, import list and per-section entropy tell you about a Windows executable, and where static triage stops being enough.
Developer tools6 min read
JWT debugging safely: decoding is not verifying
JWT structure and base64url, the alg and kid headers, the none and algorithm-confusion attacks, expiry and clock skew, and how to debug a token without leaking it.
Privacy & security6 min read
PDF redaction that actually works
A black rectangle hides text without deleting it. Where PDFs keep the original content, how to remove it properly, and four ways to verify a redacted file.
Developer tools6 min read
Read a pcap without Wireshark: headers, flows and TLS
How pcap and pcapng are laid out, where snaplen truncation bites, how to turn packets into flows and endpoints, and what TLS still leaks in a capture.
Images & conversion7 min read
Removing an AI watermark from an image
What removing an AI badge actually involves, when inpainting gives a clean result, and why erasing the visible mark leaves the embedded provenance intact.
3D printing & STL8 min read
STL vs 3MF vs OBJ: picking the right 3D file format
What each format really stores, how many bytes the same mesh costs in all three, why units decide most arguments, and the edge cases that break silently.
Fonts & typography7 min read
Stylised game fonts are Unicode, not fonts
The fancy letters in Adopt Me and Roblox names are Unicode characters, not a typeface. Which blocks they come from, where they get rejected and what they cost.
Fonts & typography8 min read
Web font formats and subsetting: WOFF2 done properly
What really separates TTF, OTF and WOFF2, why subsetting saves the most, and how a Latin-only subset silently breaks Turkish text on a live page.
Images & conversion6 min read
WebP vs AVIF: which format wins, and where
Measured compression figures with sources, WebP's 8-bit and 4:2:0 ceilings, AVIF's encode cost and missing progressive rendering, and how to choose per content type.
PDF & documents6 min read
What decides OCR quality on a scanned PDF
OCR accuracy is set by the image, not the engine: resolution, binarisation, skew, compression artefacts, language data and layout. Plus how to judge the output.
Privacy & security7 min read
What photo metadata reveals: Exif, IPTC and XMP
The location, timestamps, serial numbers and embedded thumbnail inside a photo, what platforms really strip, and how to verify a file is actually clean.
Images & conversion
Compression, resizing, format choice and measuring quality loss.
9
PDF & documents
Merging, OCR, pulling tables into Excel and redaction.
4
3D printing & STL
STL file size, mesh repair and pre-slicer checks.
12
Developer tools
EXE/PE inspection, pcap analysis, JSON, JWT and encoding work.
3
Fonts & typography
Font formats, subsetting, web font loading and licences.
2
Privacy & security
Metadata hygiene, redaction mistakes and where files get processed.
2