Beginners Guide to 3D Printing in 2022 - Watch Before You Start

[Music] welcome to the ultimate guide for 3d printing my name is austin i'm a mechanical engineer and i've been 3d printing and running a 3d printing business now full time for the last four or five years so today we're going over everything that you need to know all the way from unboxing your printer uh to what softwares you need to use fire safety uh what all the settings mean and then finally how to get the perfect print every single time let's jump into it so after you've built your printer it's critical that we go through these three things in order to ensure the maximum print quality as well as make sure that we're getting the least wear and tear on your machine as it operates number one is belt tension okay we need to check the x y and z belts of your printer we want them tight but we don't want them too tight or it will wear out your machine a lot faster than under normal conditions a good test of this is to actually just try and pinch the belts together there should be some resistance but you should be able to touch them together if you stroke the belt like it was a guitar string it should basically just vibrate for a second next up is the wires okay this one is also really important because we don't want to fire okay that's super simple just make sure to move your xy and your z axis make sure that none of the cables have even the slightest potential of getting caught on anything this is extremely important and should be done before every single print however please do note that this should only be done when the machine is powered on okay you don't want to be moving around the axis of your machine when it's powered off because if you do that basically what you're doing is you're actually sending power back through the machine and the machine electronics and that is not good for it so let's just not do that third let's make sure that our nozzle is tight okay if the nozzle is not tight basically what happens is that melted plastic can ooze out from the top of the nozzle it will fall it will land on your print and then the printer head will actually knock into it and basically your print will just fall off the bed it's a common cause of print failure so make sure that your nozzle is tight with that out of the way now we have a 3d printer that is built and ready for printing it's time to talk about some materials okay i've been in the industry a very long time i've printed with the vast majority of materials that are available on the market today and i can tell you that pla petg and abs are by far the most common use and also the most common requested by clients so let's talk a little bit in depth about all of those we're gonna start with pla but before we actually go in and start talking about pla there is a few um notes and recommendations that i do want to make so with any roll of plastic basically a uh key point is that moisture is the enemy okay if you live somewhere that's humid you're probably gonna want to have a dehydrator for your filament yes the plastic that is on that roll will actually pull moisture out of the air and absorb it and that can really affect the quality of your print um for example if you take a roll of nylon and you leave it somewhere humid or basically anywhere when you actually go to print with it you can literally hear the water and the moisture boiling off as that filament comes out through the nozzle so therefore i do recommend a dehydrator and especially especially if you live somewhere humid i'll put a bunch of links in the description of this video for the specifics on that now my second recommendation is print bed adhesive okay the very first layer of your 3d print is the absolute most important and we need to be sure that it sticks to the print bed sufficiently now personally i use 3d printer adhesive on every single print that we run and yes if you check online if you go to the facebook groups there's a lot of people out there bragging like oh first layer so perfect no adhesive needing no adhesive needed no one cares okay use print bed adhesive if you want to improve the probability of success on every print um if you think about it if you're about to run a 10 to say 200 hour print the three cents that it costs you in 3d printer adhesive or even just a glue stick is basically just an insurance policy that that print does not come loose from the print bed and yeah honestly it's just worth it so i'll leave it at that you can take my word for it or not you'll probably learn on your own regardless so now lastly what we need to talk about is filament costs okay the prices of filament are extremely variable variable from one store to the next if you're only ordering a couple of rolls here and there you really can't go wrong just using amazon however if you find yourself ordering a ton of filament reach out to a local supplier ask them about a bulk order discount or a coupon code for example if you have a store you know down the road from your house and you're printing all the time just ask them hey i'm coming here i'm always going to buy your filament is there any deal that you can give me you might save a bunch of money in the long run doing that now we can get into the materials so starting with pla okay pla stands for polylactic acid not that anyone really cares but we do care about are the properties and use cases of pla so pla typical nozzle temperature somewhere between 200 and 230 degrees and a print bed temperature of around 50 degrees now when you buy a roll of plastic it will always have the recommended temperatures on the box always always start with those the reason that pla is so commonly used is because it does not shrink very much therefore it's pretty easy to start printing with what happens with some other materials is that the first few layers that you print are so close to the print bed that they are pretty much at print bed temperature so like for pla those first few layers of plastic will be at around 50 degrees however as you move up and away from the print bed uh you're basically at room temperature so now what's happening is that the extruder is extruding plastic at the nozzle temperature which is then really quickly cooled down to room temperature and that can cause severe shrinking in some plastics and this is a huge problem for 3d printing but fortunately with materials like pla we don't have to worry so much about that so with pla we have a nozzle temperature of around 200 to 230 degrees celsius and a print bed temperature of 50 degrees let's talk about the pros and cons of pla pros of pla as i already mentioned the low shrinkage upon cooling basically makes it really easy to print next up is that it's readily available okay you can buy pla pretty much anywhere in any color it is probably the most common material next is the strength okay pla under standard conditions is actually really strong like a lot stronger than you probably think you can make totally functional parts with pla it is absolutely not just for prototyping that is a total myth okay now let's talk about some of the cons because there are indeed some serious cons with pla the biggest con being temperature okay pla basically gets destroyed by hot temperatures typically around 55 degrees celsius or 130 degrees fahrenheit pla gets super weak so for example if you had a black pla print sitting outside in like the hot california sun and maybe it was holding up some tools on the wall something like that that's a bad idea okay it will probably warp and eventually fail over time it'll basically just melt so we see this probably most commonly when people print something for cars they'll print something like a cup holder they'll leave it in a car on a hot day and then basically they come back and it's just like a pile of plastic um so basically if you're making a part that is going to be subject to any sort of heat simply just don't print it out of pla next con is that pla is actually pretty expensive relative to other materials okay you'll figure this out when you shop around for different materials but pla is pretty often never the cheapest even though it is the most popular the next con is with post processing okay you can't sand pla very well so for example if you wanted to print something sand it prime it and paint it then pla might not be your best option overall uh pla is number one it is fantastic it's easy to print and that is why it's so popular basically if your the part that you're making is gonna be subject to heat just don't use pla which brings us to next up we have petg okay i love petg we use it a lot probably maybe 40 to 50 percent of the things that we print are in petg so what is petg well i'm not even going to try and pronounce the name but the best way to think of it is that p-e-t-g is a great alternative to pla when temperature is a factor in the function of your prints now yes that is just a generalization but when you're just starting out that's a good way to think of it if you do some research on petg you'll see that things like water bottles and liquid containers are commonly made from petg or another derivative of p-e-t basically pet g or p-e-t-g does not get soft at that 55-ish degree celsius like pla does instead petg is good to about 85 degrees which helps us cover that wide range of applications when we just can't quite use pla unfortunately though petg is not quite as easy to print with it tends to be a little bit more stringy and is sometimes tougher to get perfect layers and overhangs but let's just jump right into the pros and cons so pro number one like i mentioned that it's not affected by heat as much as pla is that is probably the primary reason why people use petchey pro number two petchey is really strong it's actually stronger and more durable than pla in most cases pro number three petchey is really cheap now this probably depends where you live a little bit and i assume that don't quote me on this but i assume it's because in large scale manufacturing they probably use so much petg pellets they melt them down they turn them into lots of different things and we probably use those same pellets for petg manufacturing for printer filament that's just my guess don't quote me on it but because of that p-e-t-g is often available for pretty cheap now the cons okay patchy is tough to post process there are not a lot of options when it comes to post-processing your prints like pla it's not good to sand you can indeed use some special finishing products on it but like i said if you want to just print something sand it prime it paint it p-e-t-g is not the material that you want to use likely if you start sanding it it will actually delaminate or basically all the layers will separate from one another the next con with printing petg is printing patchy supports they typically actually end up fusing to the object so printing supports with patchy is just not a great option it is 100 possible to do but it is just not ideal okay con number three is that when printing pet g the bed and the nozzle temperature are actually significantly higher than pla so a it uses more electricity b it probably puts some more wear and tear on the machine however c honestly just the failure percentage with patchy prints is a lot higher than it is with pla which brings me to probably my favorite material which is abs so let's talk a little bit about abs now abs although it is not really considered a specialty material if you are a hobbyist printer i would consider this a specialty material because as the operator of your machine as a person who's handling all the materials you need to be aware of the difference between them and there are some significant ones for abs number one and this is extremely important is that abs creates toxic fumes so you cannot or at least you should not leave your printer printing abs indoors without proper ventilation now when i say proper ventilation i don't mean just like crack a window and go ahead and print i mean like an actual duct and a fan that is actually taking up the fumes and exhausting them outside something like that if you're curious i've linked my setup below in the description but now it's probably a good time to mention if you are interested in a very in-depth course on 3d printing i'm in the process of making one i'll link it in the description when it's ready however don't worry this video here that you're watching right now has absolutely more than enough practical information to get you started and cover all the basics if you are just a hobbyist the course is more for people who are really looking to take their 3d printing to the next level maybe do it commercially or for people who want to learn how to do things like take literally any idea and turn it into something that you can print or for printing really fast or printing really accurate specialty things like that now back to abs so pros and cons obviously con number one is those fumes okay that is a huge con it's kind of a pain to actually set up the ventilation system it's just one more thing that you have to do um but yes you need to be aware of that con number two is the temperature is even higher than pla and etg now you need a nozzle temperature of between about 240 and 260 degrees as well as a bed temperature of around 100 degrees not all printers can even heat the bed to around 100 degrees that is just a reference value you can get away with less than 100 degrees but it is a good reference value and now con number three call number three is that if you don't have a heated chamber for your printer or at least an enclosure what's likely gonna happen is that your prints will actually shrink so much that they may even crack if they're big 3d prints a heated chamber is by far the best solution and an enclosure is okay so i know what you're thinking with all of these cons what could possibly be good about abs and well there's tons and tons of parts that are manufactured and made out of abs here's why pro number one is the heat resistance is better than pla and better than petg uh using abs you're good to around 100 degrees celsius for the part actually degrades okay pro number two is finishing methods okay you actually can sound uh abs so that's great for people who want to make things like props or really anything that you do want to paint pro number three is that it's really strong when it is printed right now it's not even necessarily stronger than pla which most people think it is it's actually not but it is certainly durable pro number four is that it's mass produced which means it's usually pretty cheap again basically i just want to reiterate that with no enclosure and no venting system it's probably not worth printing abs petg is pretty good okay now that we understand some materials if you're interested in other materials like dissolvable supports carbon fiber composites pc tpu etc check out the links in the description but for the vast majority of cases pla p-e-t-g and abs probably got you covered now what do we have we have a machine we have some materials and we have a basic understanding of how they all work together what exactly are we missing oh yeah we're missing something to 3d print now why i love 3d printing is because you can take an idea and you can turn it into a physical object within a couple of hours which is absolutely unbelievable i'm still amazed every time we do it so let's talk a little bit about that process of taking an idea and actually turn it into an object the process pretty much always looks like this what we need to do is we need to create a 3d file then we convert that 3d file into something that the printer can read this is called gcode and then what we do is we give that g-code to the 3d printer so that it can just follow the instructions and actually go and make our 3d printed objects so in more detail step number one to create the file now this can either be done by you from complete scratch using a software like fusion 360 which is my number one recommendation i'll put a video here or here wherever it goes on that i recommend checking that out you could also use something like tinkercad nonetheless step number two is to convert that file into something that the printer can read this is done by using what's called a slicer the most common of them being both cura and probably prusa slicer i highly highly recommend prusa slicer but i will go through them both and finally from the slicer comes out our g-code okay that's what we export that's what we put on the sd card and that is what we feed to the printer now if you don't want to actually go through step one and make the file yourself what we can do is kind of skip that process by using websites like thingiverse um colts3d etsy pretty much anywhere that you can just download or buy 3d files for example if i wanted to print this 3d benchy here what i could do is download the 3d file in stl format from thingiverse import it into my slicer slice that and then export it onto the sd card simply put the sd card in the printer and hit print it is a pretty easy process so if you've gotten to this point chances are that you probably already opened up the slicing software on your computer and when you did for the first time you probably went whoa what are all of these settings so let's talk about some of the most important ones the first of which is layer height okay this is a huge determining factor in the speed of your print it is probably the biggest factor in determining how long it will take to actually 3d print that object so what it is is it is the height at which the z-axis moves up every single layer of your print now i will say that i recommend for the first probably 10 to 15 prints that you do just use the stock profiles that come with whatever slicer you have that is always the best way to get started and get familiar with the machine as well as the setting the next important setting that i want to talk about is infill okay we can't just print everything as completely solid objects or it's going to take a really long time and we're also going to waste a lot of material so what we do is we print it with a infill value that's expressed as a percent this is essentially that honeycomb design that you do see in your prints by doing this what we can do is control the strength as well as some other properties according to the function that we want our 3d printed object to have now this also lets us control the quantity of material used as well as the actual print time to make that object the last important setting that i want to discuss is our perimeters as well as our top and bottom layers those numbers correspond to the exact number of layers of material that will be on the top the bottom and the outside of the 3d print that we are making now when we look at this we also have to take into consideration the orientation of the object on the print bed the top is always the top bottom is always the bottom and the perimeters are the rest however we don't always print objects right side up so when you slice your object check on the sliced view of it and make sure that it is going to be sufficient quality and strength wise like i said in the beginning pretty much just use the standard profiles that come with your slicer and once you get those down you got your printer going then we can start really tinkering around with them now for the good stuff okay if you're still watching yes let's talk about supports this is extremely important and it's one of the skills that you have to learn if you want to be able to print things here is the general rule essentially you cannot print something if there is no material underneath it now what this means is that if you look at the geometry of your object it always must have material underneath it if there is no material underneath it we need to add supports or your print will probably fail let me explain with the classic y and t example okay so you see the y here essentially this y is going to print absolutely fine it's at 45 degrees or over you're pretty much good there's no support required however if we look at the t here it's basically at 90 degrees or zero degrees essentially it's just horizontal so we do indeed need supports for the printer we'll end up just spinning out filament into mid air i'll show you what i mean on the screen here as you can see uh the print material here with the t is extruding but it will literally just fall to the ground because it doesn't have material underneath it honestly chances are guys you're going to learn the hard way eventually what you'll do is you'll print something and it will fail and you'll go oh i definitely needed supports there that's why it failed don't worry we've all done it i still occasionally do it when i'm doing something really fast so i recommend so my last recommendation is that i recommend learning how to use manual supports basically what this is is where you yourself have to go in and click on the object to add in those supports manually if you use the automatic supports in your slicing software it will likely use a lot more material and a lot more supports than you actually need again if you're interested in learning uh pretty much the specifics of support optimization check out the links in the description okay moving on so now we have a printer we have materials and we have software let's do this thing let's actually hit print but wait most important probably of all is bed leveling and z offset i repeat this is probably the most important thing at all if you're about to stop this video you're bored you're sick of listening to me we'll probably listen to this one more thing now's a good time if you do like this video if it's helping you out go ahead do hit that subscribe button and that like button as that helps me out but nonetheless let's talk about the leveling and the z offset the goal is essentially to have a print bed that is 100 level meaning if we literally took a level to it it would be perfectly level in the x and y directions then what we want is for the nozzle to be the perfect distance above that print bed so that some of the plastic comes out and it's extruded and just pressed into the print bed a little bit so that it does adhere and create a solid foundation for the rest of the print basically if this first layer is not perfect or within some sort of range of perfection what might happen is that at some point in time through our 1 to even 200 hour prints our print could actually fall off and cause a print failure and yes i'm not kidding i have done 200 hour prints so how do we accomplish this well i'm going to be using a prusa here so it's a little bit easier because you don't have to adjust the height of the bed these are definitely my favorite machines but i have or at least i used to have about 20 enders that literally ran 24 7 and i always had to manually adjust those so let's do this the easiest way to do it is to actually unscrew all of these screws at the bottom of your bed and then just turn them all about five rotations at a time which will level up or down all of the corners evenly basically just repeat this process until the bed is almost touching the nozzle and then at that point in time grab a sheet of basic 8x11 paper put it under the nozzle and make it so that the tip of the nozzle is just lightly touching that piece of paper you should still be able to slide around that piece of paper but there should be a little bit of friction i'll show you in the video here now what we want to do is go to the top left corner do that exact same thing then go to the bottom right do the same thing then go to the top right do the same thing and then the bottom left now that order doesn't actually matter that much before anyone gets all crazy in the comments saying you should do it this way or that way let's keep in mind here that we're adjusting by about one tenth of a millimeter so just go ahead make sure that all uh four corners as well as the middle of the print bed have that friction between the piece of paper now people all day are going to be arguing this on facebook just ignore them the best way to tell if you've done it right is if your first layer looks something like this now if it looks like this that means that the nozzle is too high off the bed and if it looks like this that means that the nozzle is too close this part of 3d printing will likely be really frustrating at the beginning but i promise you like within a couple of weeks you'll be able to level the print bed in like 20 seconds or less and you'll do it perfectly now we can finally hit print let's actually make this benchy okay i'm gonna do a cool time lapse here using a raspberry pi and octoprint so i'll show you that now again links in the description so you can make your own time lapses too so the file right from thingiverse then into prusa slicer or cura using a standard profile not changing anything at all i know the bed is level and that's why this print is perfect so if you just printed your own then welcome to the world of 3d printing if this is just your first item that you printed i know it's a really cool feeling to transform that idea into an object this is the exact application that actually completely changed my career path and if you're interested in learning in great in depth about 3d printing and things like optimizing prints for speed or for strength or using specialty materials creating supports fire safety etc all of that is in the course linked below or it will be linked below when the course is done if this video helped you and you love 3d printing or maybe you're just about to throw your printer off a roof because you couldn't get it to work but now perhaps you have a benchy sitting in your hand then do consider subscribing and i'll see you guys in the next one bye for now

Channel: Austen Hartley

Views: 178,970

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Id: 1Q7YO5svZtY

Length: 24min 3sec (1443 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 06 2022