I hadn’t done any 3D printing since I installed my Airspy. Mostly it was because I was lazy, but also because my 3D printers are in the same room as the Airspy. I was worried that interference from the printer would jam my signal, but it looks like there was no effect. Good news, as I’m starting a big project. I was printing from 1100 to 1600 using a Qidi X-Max printer.
Good to know but I’m intrigued, what interference do you think there might have been? It’s just another piece of electronics, I don’t see any reason it’d be more likely to cause interference than [say] a soldering iron, or a clock radio, or a DVD player etc etc.
I’ve got a Prusa mini and I had a little test receiver in the same room as it earlier this year while I was printing and there were no problems. I wouldn’t expect there to be any.
I really didn’t know what to expect. I don’t know if the electronics in the printer would bleed out any frequencies that might interfere with the ADS-B equipment. I have no way of checking for that.
Switching power supplies, the kinds we see as wall warts usually do not have an internal transformer, but instead switch the mains power as pulses to an electronic regulator. 115 or 230 volts ac and out comes our 5.1 volts with whatever current the wall device provides. The problem comes from the pulses switching on and off very fast, and because this is kind of a square wave signal, the harmonics of the switching frequency can make lots of radio noise. Put a small radio up near a switching power supply and you can hear it. AM radio will pick it up, FM not as much due to the demodulation of the signals. ADS-B is a pulsed signal, and as such, our receivers are very sensitive to the harmonic noise from electronics in the local area. Ham radio operators have to deal with all the time. ADS-B being up at 1090Mhz will likely see less interference as the harmonics depend on how fast the switching power supplies work internally. Just my thoughts as an old Ham and my experience while in the USAF. Have fun out there.
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Ideally your reception chain is mostly shielded from signals except for the antenna.
Thus unless you put electronics near your antenna (which is always a bad idea), it shouldn’t be an issue.
Now shielded is relative, putting a spark gap transmitter next to it is probably a bad idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spark-gap_transmitter
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I 3D print on a Prusa occasionally. My HF tuned receivers (Airspys) are less than a meter from the printer and I never noticed any impact. Nor have I noticed impact on the VHF or UHF tuned receivers. Those are located pretty far away outside and powered by POE on a network chain that starts 1 meter from the 3D printer.
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I have one receiver in my bedroom. The TV interferes with the signal when it is on. I have seen this clearly on the stats graphs.
You can clearly see where by wife turned on the TV.
This is an RPI running Piaware and using a ModeS Beast and Hab-Nevis/Uputronics Pre-amp.
I just remembered that last year I did some testing with my under-desk treadmill which is right next to the HF (DL) receivers. When the treadmill runs (45 to 90 mins most weekdays) it does increase the HFDL noise floor a bit but does not seem to impact overall performance significantly I guess since most messages have a lot of SNR headroom.
In fact, I got an outlet noise meter and the treadmill creates a large amount of noise on any outlet on the circuit and moderate noise on other circuits in the house. The receivers and devices are behind a UPS that does a good job filtering noise, but I also think the proximity to the treadmill motor creates a bit of noise. Currently the motor housing/cover has aluminum foil taped to the underside.
For a while I had my fancy home theater power conditioner on the rack with the receivers and computers to test. I think it helped but that didn’t last. Unsurprisingly, the power conditioner would trigger PC shutoff whenever the UPS switched to battery. Not a recommended chain of power devices. 
What I learned is that HF frequencies don’t seem to care that much. UHF is probably a different story.
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