Thanks much for the tips, guys. I'm more confident now in the options for not running out of filament while printed or having to accept unrealistic amounts of waste. (That happens enough on its own with rafts and supports.) I've been doing all my printing from SD card. I have adjusted some settings to avoid overheating but haven't yet looked into slowing down the printing for detail areas. Thanks for the links - I'll check them out when at a computer instead of my phone.
You may not need to do any slow down with your printer. I noticed that if I work with certain materials (PLA is the biggest offender here as it flows very easely), small details that are printed along the Z-axis ("the heigth" if you will) can result in "echo-ing" or "ringing" as it is known. Lowering my printers' acceleration and Jerk settings, adding a filament cooling, lowering the speed somewhat can totally exclude this issue on MY printer, but as I understand it this problem is like : the bigger your printer is, the bigger your potential issue with it will become. Also, and this is something I still need to get my head round, "the stiffer the printer, the worse the problem". I've no idea why (it is said a less stiff frame "works along" to avoid this specific problem) but if true, you can't get much stiffer than using a 4mm thick steel frame now can you.
Explaining how it looks like is a bit difficult, it's kinda like a shadowy flat replica or little wave behind the actual printed detail. And many people I know don't even think twice about this, as the effect is done away most of the time during the afterwork/sanding/smoothing/painting stage. But I like my prints to be clean from the bed, with as-little-as possible use of stuff like supports (let alone Rafts) because I'm a believer in the GIGO rule.
To avoid that, I use slow-downs on layers. Also, some material is harder to get to stick to the bed : PETG for example which is said "not to need a heated bed" refuses to stick to my heated bed unless I crank up the bed temperature to somewhere between 95° and 100°C Centigrade and up the extruder temperature to 253°C. But doing that for a full print will cause warping, even when the printer is in a controlled enviroment/enclosure.
Knowing where and when to slow down is something that I learned out of experience. There's no golden rule there.
So by using S3D, I can simply say, "okay, first layer at 100°C Bed, 253°C extruder and speed reduced to 50%" to ensure full stick-on-bed. The second layer will lower temperature to 95°C on the bed and 245°C on the extruder, and upping the speed to 100%. I don't know if there are printers that allow their firmware to give that amount of control when using the "print out of memory" approach but as yet I've not seen that. Theoretically it can be done by injecting these kind of instructions into the G-Code of the Reprap so I can't exclude the possibility that there are printers that can do such stuff. But mine, at least with the current Marlin firmware, can't do that.
As said, depending on what kind of material you print or how big the build space is, you may totally not need that kind of control and printouts using a printers' internal memory will be fine.
It is my idea that the Dremel is build very much with "as fool proof as possible" operation in the back of the mind, sacrificing the liberty of certain choices in the process. But that doesn't make it a worse printer.
It's a tool, and only through your OWN experience with YOUR machine you'll master your printers' oddities and use its strengths to make it shine just as much as by avoiding the weaknesses the design incorperates, something that can be somewhat frustrating and fullfilling at the same time in my limited experience.
