3DPrinting

Late to the party, but to add on:

• the glamor shots of finished prints that you'll see in photos and videos are super misleading. Shine a harsh light at most prints at a steep angle and you'll see a fairly rough exterior finish in the z-axis
• Ellis's tuning guide is a good thing to run through. It's pretty straightforward and will give you a feel for what to tweak and when to tweak it
• I've been printing for something like 8-10 years and have never bothered with a filament dryer. I tend to buy 3 kg spools and some of them sit open for quite some time as I work through them. They live in my basement, which does have a dehumidifier in it but is usually around 55% humidity
• keep in mind that FDM printers are basically a CNC hot glue gun and keep your expectations in line
• 45° print orientation can be a cheat code if you have crazy overhangs
• watch the first layer. If you get a good first layer odds are your print will be fine
• different filaments have different physical properties and will print differently. This is true across polymers (ie PLA, PETG, ASA, ABS, TPU, etc), but can also be true across brands, colors, and blends (PLA vs PLA+, etc)
• don't get hung up on things like acceleration or velocity. Speed is all about flow and the best way to bump that up is bigger nozzles, thicker layers, and wider extrusions

For real advice: get a pair of calipers and print some radius gauges. Then jump into CAD, even if it means learning it. The real magic of 3D printing is in making custom designs. I'm personally a huge fan of functional prints. Once you start seeing opportunities to print replacement parts, make jigs and fixtures, and make your own designs for things you'll find tons of opportunities.

Few advice I give people getting started:

• don't buy to many filament spools ! They are not trivial to store and preserve. I known it's exciting to get all of the nice colors. It's better to start with one spool of PLA and finish it before you open the next one. Myself I opened this year a spool I bought when I got started in 2018.
• add a filament dust filter to clean the filament of any dust and debris before it enters the printer. It can be as simple as a piece of paper towel holded around the filament with a clip. This will save you the headache that comes with a clogged nozzle.
• now days, model sites like Printables and Thangs are full of AI slop. Do not even bother to download a model that doesn't have a real photo of the real printed part. If the creator didn't bother to actually print his design before publishing, you can be sure it will be a nightmare to print, if not impossible.
• lots of very interesting videos on YouTube to learn 3D printing and 3D modeling techniques for 3D printed parts. MakersMuse a d CNC-Kitchen are good channels. You can skip all of the productsl reviews, focus on the teaching videos.

Something I've seen people fail to do is watch the printer print. People go "Welp, I've bought my newfangled 3D printer, first out the gate I'm gonna pick out this giant model that I like, I'm gonna hit go, and I'm gonna go grocery shopping." then they come back to a ruined model and a damaged machine and wonder what happened.

Start out small, and watch it print. You'll find out what doesn't work and how to design or slice around it.

Are you in the US? I recently discovered the Home Depot 5gallon storage container is perfect for filament storage. It's airtight and has a clear plastic lid that lets you see inside. Most storage containers are milky white which prevents a clear view of the filament inside.

It's much easier than the individual cereal box containers I have for filament storage.

3D printing is generally pretty easy these days. Most of the difficult things from the early days have been largely automated through the use of numerous sensors and firmware improvements, as well as better engineering and materials being used to make the printers.

That said, some things are paramount.

Most filaments absorb water (hygroscopic), and need to be properly dried before use. A quick search should make a lot of resources come up.

The printing surface should be kept clean at all times. Keep a spray bottle of isopropanol and a cloth handy. Wipe the bed after each print.

Calibrate your filaments. Grab Orca Slicer and go through the calibration procedures. Save the profile with the brand and material in the name. Some filaments will diverge depending on colour as well, so if you start seeing different results it’s worth it re-calibrating for the new colour - save it as a new profile.

Most of all, have fun! Experiment, ask as many questions as you have. Don’t be shy. Sometimes what may seem like a stupid one is actually very important and non-obvious.

Not to scare you here, but just being real. There’s so many new people in the hobby these days with printer prices getting so low, and so many get easily frustrated so easily and just blame the machine without learning the hobby….

This hobby takes a LOT of patience. Things are going to go wrong, prints are going to fail. You will have to try over and over again with different methods and tweaks. (Not 100% of the time, ofc, but it’ll happen!) While specific printers will have their quirks, most print issues are not printer specific, so any guide to “fixing your prints” will be a good starting point. The most common reply you’ll see to an issue is “user error”- which usually is the case involving any of your settings, filament quality/condition, and/or the condition of your print bed. Keep the bed clean! Dish soap and water is the best thing. A lot of people praise Iso. Alcohol, but that doesn’t always work, and in some cases actually ruins bed surfaces.

Calibrate your filaments and keep them dry. There is no “best settings for X”- they will be a good starting point, some might actually work for you without tweaks, but there is literally thousands of combinations of print material, printers and print environments…so, what works amazing for you might just be a pile of spaghetti for me! Learn the slicer software- they are super powerful now. All the settings can be overwhelming, but you’ll get there in time! Printer mfgs love to brag about print speeds, but fast almost never equals clean. In most cases just slowing down your print speeds can significantly clean things up, or even prevent failure.

If you are pulling .3mf files from any of the sites, be aware that they will have the creator’s full print settings in the file when you load it in the slicer, a lot of which probably wont work for you or might even throw errors in your slicer (bambu labs files are bad about this in non-bambu slicers)- so you’ll need to go through and check everything that changed. Some might be on purpose because of the design (top/bottom layer patterns, fuzzy skin, painted supports, etc)

This hobby is super rewarding and it’s really fun to watch things come to life, but you gotta have the patience to work and grow with a very complex machine!

Pick a (small, simple) project you think will be fun, and design a solution yourself.

The more projects you can design, the more useful your 3d printer will be. Yes, downloading and using models online can help solve some problems, but the real magic of 3d printing is creating a completely custom solution that only you need. Most of the time, even when I download a model someone else made, I use it as a starting point to design one myself that meets my specific needs.

Check out Zack Freedman. He is amazing at 3d printing solutions, and he genuinely wants to make you amazing as well. This is a great tutorial about how to THINK about designing prints, and then how to make it happen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcMvTfUfNXo

FreeCAD is great, but has a big learning curve. OnShape is browser based and I find it works best for me. Tinkercad is a great starting off point.

But play around and figure out what works best for you.

I took a class at a local library, and while most of it was basic, it was really interesting seeing what they felt was the most important to teach (how to shrink a design in the slicer software and minimize print durations), and also really cool to see all their abandoned projects people made and left behind, or half built with the infill structure visible.

I found it really interesting to learn about all the types of infill patterns and when to use them.

Watch out for overhangs on models. Every feature needs a surface to print on.

Also, probably not such a thing anymore, but give some time to get to know your printer before doing mods to it. It's near impossible to troubleshoot issues when you dont know whether the issue is caused by a defect with a new printer or something caused by a modification.

Keep your filament stored in something whether it be ziploc bags or those fancy filament storage containers. Also get some desiccant and hygrometers so you can actually dry and measure. I have found the desiccant bags to be pretty worthless while the little colored or white balls/pellets work well and can be recharged.

Calibrations are important, but some of the defaults work well out of the box. Don't expect perfection from the start, aim for "good enough" and improve over time.

• Bed leveling (tramming) is mostly automated these days, since it's such a vital step
• Extrusion multiplier (a.k.a. flow rate) needs to be done on a per filament basis, but it'll probably work fine with defaults. Dialing this in is useful, but not super critical in the beginning.
• Pressure advance... eh, no comment, as I haven't mastered this yet. Suffice to say my petg prints could be better, and this is the likely reason

Beyond that, filaments vary in quality. Try to stick to one brand and type that works well for you and your needs and once you've mastered that, try others.

And learn blender (or anything else that can export to .stl or other supported formats). It turns your printer into a proper household tool you wouldn't be able to live without. My house has so many functional prints that I wouldn't be able to go back to not being able to print whatever doodad I need.

Are you me? I also just ordered my first printer which is a Centauri Carbon, lol. Should hopefully be coming in today.

I've just been looking up guides on youtube. This one seemed pretty informative.

I've also been reading about filaments and properly storing them, which might help you to look into.

I found YouTube a very useful source for tutorials, etc.

Check out CNCKitchen and MakersMuse. Someone else already suggested Zach at VoidStar Labs. He's really fun and has a great sense of humor.

I love my Centauri carbon (I started on an Ender3 v3 and moved to a Bambu A1, and now I have the Carbon). I don't like where the poop comes out, and I despise that it levels the whole bed every time instead of just the actual print area, so I only do that once in a while if it seems off

I thought I would introduce the lowest amount of water to my setup and get the very best bed cleaning and bought electronics grade pure isopropyl and diligently wiped my bed after every print. I had all kinds of issues with bed adhesion for months and finally figured out that some of the electronics grade stuff has some sort of additive that was lubricating my plate. It's all 91% generic from the local drugstore now and much better results.