5 3D Printing Mistakes you WILL make - and how to avoid them! 3D Printing 101

in today's video we're talking about five mistakes that you will make when getting into 3d printing let's get started welcome back to know 3d printing 101 here on makers muse guys so what I mean by mistakes that people will make well with 3d printing there's a lot that can go wrong when you're first getting into it and I'm talking about FDM 3d printing not the resin based systems that are becoming a bit more popular now for hobbyists and these are mistakes that I have personally made many times in the past so it's my hope of this video that I can share that share these mistakes with you so you can avoid actually making them yourself anyway let's get started mistake number one incorrect bed level or nozzle height this is massive I've got an entire series of videos one on correct first layer and one on bed leveling but basically your first layer of your 3d print is the most critical if this is not correct if it's too far too close not level then your print will fail either straight away or hours into the process so this is one of the first things that newcomers to 3d printing actually miss they're really keen to get into it and I'll rush into 3d printing especially on machines that have manually leveled systems like the popular Aldi printer that just was released again this year you know that machine has four Springs one in each corner and you manually level that bed so if you don't spend a lot of time getting that accurate first off you're gonna end up with lots of prints that fail and it may be really frustrating not knowing exactly why that's happening well it all comes down to your correct bed level and nozzle height so that's number one number two using the wrong settings so this is something I've done many times in the past I have used my 3d printing slicer I've sliced a file sent it to the printer and then wondered why is the plastic warping or why does it look so crap well I've used the wrong material settings in my slicer I've used the wrong settings and you might think yeah that that doesn't sound like something I'd do it's actually easier to make this mistake than you think it's just one number that you can change and that makes all the difference to your printing quality for example you might be running multiple materials you see behind me I have a whole plethora plethora of materials behind me of different types for example this is poly alchemy elixir PLA it's a PLA plastic but it prints at a higher temperature than other brands of PLA so using the right settings is absolutely critical and getting a good print off your machine and it's one of the first mistakes people will make is I'll use the wrong settings and always spend that little bit of extra time in the slicing stage to double-check your your actual parameters before you go ahead and send the g-code and wonder-why print doesn't work mistake number three tangled filament I'm sorry to break this to you guys but if you're getting tangled filament it's not the manufacturers fault it's probably something you've done generally when filaments manufactured and spoiled on two rolls it can't physically get tangled it's something that happens when you open up the box and to demonstrate and make pulley alchemy very sad because it's the closest spool this is how you should store filament you should have it looped around one of the holes on the side of the side of a spool and store like this do not store it like this because what can happen extremely easily is that this loose end can dive under another one and you can roll it up and it might look like it's fine it might look like the spool has no tangles until several hours into the print and you notice that it's catching or worse case you don't even see it catch it jams the whole spool gets pulled towards the extruder and the filament stops extruding and your print fails tangled filament is a real pain especially if you're swapping colors quite often in a print production studio environment so if you do have a tangle or suspect you have a tangle my advice is to pull as much film energy can like this usually helps have a friend as well to help pull the spool the the spool filament away from you and then you basically want to wind it on in a way that it doesn't tangle now filament will kind of want to start wrapping around itself like it's doing on the floor there so always give it a chance to spin and see the end spinning here and then by unrolling as much as you can to make sure there's no tangle you're going to ensure that won't be a tangle during your actual print I actually have a really great video of the sounds of 3d printing failure if you want to check that out which also has the sound of a tangled roll of filament if you want to get used to that audio cue to know if your 3d printers suffering from it I do warn you it's a painful video to watch but you can click the card here and check it out mistake number four not using support materials where they are needed avoiding support material is totally fine for lots of 3d printing and lots of designs out there for 3d printing have been designed to not need support material but on the other hand a lot of them do and it's very easy to commit a file to printing that will fail catastrophically because you did not put support materials in the software's these days some of them are getting better but a lot of them will not give you any sort of visual feedback as to you like the fact you need support materials it comes down to just trial and error and personal experience one of the files I like to print quite often is the gaia andersen cat which has a very nice overhang where the head is and if you do not put support material in the print will look perfect until the last last 10 15 minutes or so in which case it will start trying to print the head and then the cat will end up like an abomination so avoiding support materials is fine but always keep in mind that you should check to see if you need it by using the g-code preview if available in your slicer because sometimes of allowing for support material can mean the difference between a print surviving and succeeding or failing horribly and finally mistake number 5 this one sums up all of the others not monitoring a 3d printer I need to say this 3d printers whether they're the cheapest kit on the market all the way up to extremely high and machines can fail and they can fail quickly within the first few minutes or they can fail towards the end but it's really important to always keep an eye on your 3d printer check it every 15 minutes or so what I tend to do is I send a print and I watch it lay down the first layer and then I'll come back maybe 10 15 minutes later to make sure it hasn't pulled off that layer and then I'll come back maybe every hour or two hours after that because usually once that first leg is stuck down like I said you're good but I worked in a print studio and I had way too many people come in because they committed to print and then something went wrong straight away so they had a printer running for 20 hours or so making a ball of plastic that just covered the nozzle and extra assembly and just made the whole printer destroyed because I didn't monitor their 3d printer also on a safety aspect guys monitoring a 3d printer is important because a lot of machines on the market now have a bit of an issue with connectors failing and care some of them can have a fire risk aspect to them as well so it's really important to monitor printers in case something goes wrong and you can be there to actually stop it also filament this is just a bit of a bonus mistake but keeping track of if you have enough filament in the machine some machines do have filament feedback systems now but a lot of them don't so making sure your machine's not just about to run out of filament with five hours left is also another good reason to make sure you go and check your printer so thanks for watching guys hope you enjoyed these 5 3d printing mistakes that people make and hopefully by discussing them with you you won't make them in future as I said I've made all of these and more before and also this is a good opportunity to mention our new e-book 5020 praying tips and tricks' because I used to work in this industry full time and I have picked up many little knickknacks and tips and tricks that can help keep 3d printers running and we just released that last week that's been quite popular and you can check the card out here to learn more and if you enjoyed this video on makers news guys I want to see future 3d printing tips tricks and reviews and more 3d printing 101 I would love you to subscribe I would means quite a lot to me so thanks for watching guys and happy printing bye [Music]

Channel: Maker's Muse

Views: 1,772,973

Keywords: 3d, printing, 101, 3D Printing mistakes, 3D Printing, 3D Printing 101, problems, beginners, how to avoid, 3D Printing fails, failed 3D Prints, print adhesion, tangled filament, not extruding, failed print, PLA, ABS, tutorial, guide, newbies, maker's muse, makersmuse, angus, angus deveson, australia, free, teaching, education

Id: aWg1nG2AbA8

Length: 8min 28sec (508 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 21 2017