3D Printing Myths I used to believe...

okay so i've been making 3d printing videos here on youtube for seven years and using additive manufacturing technology for over 10. but did you know the technology was invented over 40 years ago or that the old level your print bed with a folded piece of paper trick is fundamentally flawed well whether you're a 3d printing neophyte or a 3d printing pro these are three myths and misconceptions that i used to believe and things i think you should be aware of let's get started [Music] misconception number one 3d printing is a new groundbreaking technology if you're in the 3d printing space in 2014 you would have been bombarded with hundreds of articles by friends and family about how this incredible bleeding edge new technology was going to change the world and revolutionize manufacturing as we know it bringing about industry 4.0 now there's no question that the rise of knowledge of 3d printing is a fairly recent thing but the technology itself more correctly referred to as additive manufacturing has been around since the 80s with experiments in the concept dating back even well before then if you search for 3d printing inventor google will probably display chuck hall and a small bio but chuck holds involvement in the birth of additive manufacturing technology is only part of the story hideo kodama of the nagoya municipal industrial research institute in japan invented two additive manufacturing techniques in the early 80s using resin which hardened when exposed to uv light in fact one of the methods he proposed used a mask to control uv exposure per layer and is actually incredibly similar in concept to the low-cost resin printers we're using today known as msla or mast sla which employ an lcd screen to create that mask kadama's research and patent were published in 1981 but didn't go anywhere commercially so it was chuck hall's u.s patent for a very similar process which was granted in 1986 which really started the 3d printing revolution with the release of the sla-1 and forming of 3d systems corporation which is still one of the largest 3d printing companies in the world you can actually get a sneaky look into 3d printers from this early era in the intro to the 1998 film small soldiers one of my personal childhood favorites they show in the intro the prototype chip hazard and archer models being created on a very real 3d printer of the era it's a top-down sla but they've used some movie magic to make it look a lot more fancy and faster than it really is still the models emerging from this resin that at the end are the real deal support material and all it's pretty cool to see in a kid's movie from the 90s in my opinion with all of that said the reason you can now buy a 3d printer for under 200 bucks and it actually works it's thanks to the work of adrian boyer with a reprap project and hundreds of others after key intellectual property held by very large and powerful 3d printing companies finally expired so there you go myth number two abs is stronger and better than pla i sadly contributed quite a bit to this one and well i have my reasons before you could go buy 3d printer for hobby from like your local shop you used to have to spend 30 50 100 000 plus on a stratasys fdm fused deposition modeling 3d printer and these industrial 3d printers use chip filament cartridges of acronitrol butadiene styrene abs plastic what i understand early fdm technology relied quite heavily on the polymer chemistry and technology developed for other industrial processes such as injection molding which is why abs was settled on because of this many of the first hobby level 3d printers also tried to use abs but they didn't have the huge actively heated chambers of the stratasys units and for example this monstrous bfb3000 one of the first machines i ever worked on claimed to be able to print abs without a heated bed or chamber yeah it couldn't but my tier time up mini from 2012 was designed exclusively to print with their own brand of abs despite it being prone to warping and delamination if the ambient temperature got too low but i thought hey so what if half the prints warp and fail if they're too big and the temperature's too low for printing in abs it's a pretty tough and durable material right well sadly it took the thorough experiments of stefan over at csc kitchen to reveal to me and many others just how weak abs really is compared to other filament options on the market today including pla but there is more to modern 3d printing filaments than meets the eye because almost nothing on the market today is just pla or abs but rather what companies produce are alloys combinations of different polymers to achieve the best balance of strength and printability much like the reason we alloy metals when i first got my up mini 3d printer i could never really understand why the up branded filament printed really well at 270 degrees c but it was way hot for any other brand of generic abs and it wasn't until other companies started to bring out abs polycarbonate alloys that i realized that's what their filament was which gave it additional stiffness and strength thanks to the polycarbonate added to the mix i also used to believe abs was really uv stable when it's actually one of the worst plastics for uv exposure and you're much better off with asa so no abs isn't a fantastic filament option anymore in my opinion other than the fact it tends to be quite cheap and has a few desirable properties like its temperature resistance and the ability to be smooth with acetone vapor today there are tons of pla alloys on the market offering incredible toughness improved temperature resistance and printability all in a mind-boggling range of colors and finishes and i'm not sure how great the planet these alloys are compared to pla which in its raw state is compostable but that's a topic for another video finally number three bed leveling isn't leveling and setting nozzle height with a folded piece of paper means your prints are probably going to fail this is one of those cases where incorrect terminology just kind of evolves with the adoption of a technology but something i feel we can all work together to correct and i'll start with bed leveling i'm not kidding when people have told me they tried to use a level to level their bed and you can't really blame them for trying when you level your print bed you're trying to scrub the printing area so the nozzle or the print bed in the case of resin printers is the same distance no matter where it is in x or y this is something you need to do on milling machines as well manual or cnc and it's called tramming tram is the squareness of the mill head to the xy table that's exactly what you're trying to do when leveling the print bed and screwing up the printer frame if you find the vertical walls of your prints are angled or incorrect then you need to tram your frame to screw up the axes a set square and pair of calipers are very useful for this especially if the gantry has dual lead screws which are notorious for going out of square when you power the machine off and a 3d printer should be as close as possible to being square before you even think of adjusting the spring-loaded bed print beds are only like this to make up for frame imperfections in theory if a 3d printer frame was perfectly square you wouldn't need them at all but what of setting nozzle height don't i do the paper trick to set the nozzle height thing well yes i do but i believe there's a fundamental misunderstanding among the community on what this actually does let me explain say you just assembled your brand new generic i3 3d printer you need to set up the nozzle height so you tighten all four springs even though only three are actually needed for points of contact anyway you tighten them all up and home the printer then you begin to set bed level and nozzle height again terminology but that aside the most common way is to use a piece of paper fold it over a few times as you move the nozzle between points slowly bringing the bed back up until you feel resistance between the paper and nozzle some people say it should only have slight resistance other stages really dig in this is where a bit of the confusion starts to creep in but have you ever done this only to find your printer starts the first layer way too far away from the print bed and the print fails it's incredibly frustrating you said it so meticulously i've been there well here's the kicker a 3d printer doesn't start the first layer at zero it starts at whatever you set it to 0.15 or 0.2 millimeters or whatever never zero after homing the printer two zero and using that folded piece of paper to set the nozzle height you've set that first distance to now a folded piece of paper too far away from zero but the beds are springy so if you have the bed too close to the nozzle it often will still print it'll just dig in a bit too much so if you have excessive elephant's foot on your 3d print then it's probably caused by incorrect nozzle height with practice you can certainly dial in a pretty good first layer manually using the paper trick as a guide and then bring it gradually closer one wheel at a time while printing some large extrusions that's generally how i do it but what if you want to be perfectly spot on well you can use this a feeler gauge first you need to ensure your bed and nozzle is preheated to the temperature you intend to print at because metal expands it contracts depending on temperature then you need to home the z-axis again this brings it down to the origin which is zero next you need to raise the z using g code commands or jog it using the interface of your printer if you're able to to the same amount as your feeler gauge's thickness let's say you have a feeler gauge of 0.3 millimeters you jog it by 0.3 in zed because the gauge is metal it's really easy to tell once the nozzle is snugly contacting it not pushing down too much or too far away and there you have it you should have a perfect first layer with this approach i'm not sure if it's been implemented commercially i often just see this sort of adjustment card and maybe baby stepping which sort of helps get around these issues but this is a trick that i've been using lately to get a perfect first layer every time we never stop learning and i hope this video helped clear up a few myths and misconceptions in this incredible space which even after so many years i continue to learn new things every day if you enjoy this video then maybe consider subscribing to make his music us my aim to empower your creativity through technology if there's any other misconceptions or incorrect 3d printing details used to believe in or anything else you'd like to share i'd love to hear them in the comments below thanks for watching guys bye

Channel: Maker's Muse

Views: 1,703,327

Keywords: 3d, printing

Id: oX4up29xUuw

Length: 10min 59sec (659 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 12 2021