Don't Know Where to Start? 🥺 3D Printing Crash Course for Beginners

so you want to get into 3d printing well that's fantastic because 3d printing is awesome but you're not sure where to start you're like oh my gosh there's so much information out there you know what kind of 3d printer do I get how do I get the software do I design stuff do Oh what well I'm here to help because I just got into 3d printing and I have researched a lot of this stuff and so I had a bunch of questions when I was first getting started like you know what kind of 3d printer should I get and blah blah blah all this other stuff and I did a bunch of research and so what I want to do in this video is put all that information together and all those questions that I had and you probably have a lot of the same questions so watch this video it's gonna save you a lot of time if you want to get into 3d printing hey everybody welcome back to rc with Adam my name is Adam let's get right into it first of all what is 3d printing well 3d printing is essentially where you have an automated machine and it will extrude melted plastic into a pre-programmed pattern and it it just kind of squeezes it out this nozzle and it basically builds your a model or through your design it builds it up layer by layer which is just incredible and these are very thin layers most of the time so it can take a while basically just have to sit there and watch the machine do what it does I mean you don't have to sit there but it is very mesmerizing you'll probably just be watching it for the first few prints because it's it's pretty cool needless to say this is an amazing tool for creators and makers and people that need to design prototype parts for other parts and parts and things and stuff and already then now you're wondering well how do I get started well you're gonna need a 3d printer you're gonna need filament you're gonna need a computer you're gonna need slicer software and you're gonna need CAD or computer-aided design and modeling software or you're going to just need to download these files these printable files from the internet so things that you want to print and we're going to talk about all that right now okay so first of all what is a good 3d printer well that's a huge question because there are a lot of them out there and fortunately now they are very accessible to the consumer and price has gone down a lot but what I'm gonna say is the it seems like the to like most popular ones like most popular beginner ones are the Cree ality under 3 which is around $200 and then the Cree allottee CR 10 which is around $400 now I would just seriously consider either of those because they have been around a while and they're they're well document again I'm not a 3d printer expert I don't review 3d printers there are plenty of great channels on YouTube that you can find all kinds of reviews but I decided to go with the Cree ality CR 10 which actually you can see in the background right there and the reason for that is because it is well documented there's a lot of tutorial videos a lot of helpful videos about the the CR 10 it's also in a budget price range so it's it's a right around $400 and the reason why I went with the CR 10 instead of the Endre which is another very popular but 3d printer is because it's a little bit bigger and it just I felt like if I went with the end of 3 I might need to upgrade sooner than if I went with a CR 10 but basically to keep it simple if you are looking for a beginner 3d printer definitely check out the Cree ality Ender 3 and the Cree ality CR 10 there are some other models but those are probably the most popular Cree allottee printers and they have a good reputation and if something doesn't work very well on them you can bet there's a video out there explaining how to fix it and make it better so maybe you're still looking around and trying to find a 3d printer that is right for you and you're thinking what do I even what am I supposed to look for like what actually matters and what are some of the factors to think about when looking for a 3d printer well the biggest one is going to be the build volume and what that is is essentially the the area of the build plate the surface on which the 3d printer is going to print the model and that's multiplied by the height that it can print and so you essentially have basically like a you know an imaginary rectangular volume and the build volume is really just going to matter depending on what you want to print if you want to print little tiny things figurines are sort of like flat parts or something you don't really need a printer that's very tall but if you want to print something very tall you're gonna need a tall printer and if you want to print a lot of flat things and a lot of things at one time you're gonna want a printer that has a larger build area so the build plate itself is actually larger which means that the actual footprint of the printer is going to be larger and it's gonna take up more space in your studio so that is going to be a factor there another really big factor is how plug-and-play do you want this printer to be are you willing to take some time to kind of tinker around with it and test out different different settings to get it to print just right or do you want something that's like right out of the box you don't have to do hardly anything with it or it's fully assembled you're gonna pay more money for something that is ready to go and requires less kind of tinkering most budget options will come partially assembled or you might have to like assemble kind of the whole thing sort of as a kit another big question that I had is how do I start designing 3d prints like what is what's that process like well what you do is you get an idea in your noggin and then once you have that you get a computer-aided design or CAD modeling software so that you can actually build this 3-dimensional model and then what you do is you take it from there and you export it and usually when you export it it'll be like a dot STL file and you import that into a slicer and then in the slicer you export it from the slicer and it's usually a dot g-code file and then what you're gonna do is put that on an SD card and then take that SD card and stick it in to your 3d printer and then you go into your 3d printer little settings menu thing and then you say print from sd card and then you select that file and then you go and then it just prints it like magic now you might be wondering well what software do I use to actually design the thing that I want to design well that's a great question I would start with Tinkercad Tinkercad is this free modeling software that uses basic shapes that you can like connect to each other and move around you really do a lot of different stuff with Tinkercad even though some people say oh thank god a card is only for babies and that's kind of true it is sort of designed to be kid-friendly and something that that it's very easy to pick up on and very intuitive which is why I like it and I think you should give it a try unless you're just like a genius and then you should just jump right into fusion 360 because that seems to be what that what is the go-to CAD modeling software for like real-deal type of stuff fusion 360 cut there's definitely a learning curve like a much bigger learning curve into fusion 360 so I would say start with Tinkercad and just try out some try out some different stuff and see you know test things out with your 3d printer just start with some simple you know simple designs and Tinkercad and fusion 360 can be downloaded for free what the heck is a slicer a slicer you'll hear people talk about a slicer very often and it does that mean you slice something like vegetables no it's not like that at all a slicer is a type of software that you that you take your 3d you know model your design that you create it and you put it into the slicer you import it into the slicer software and the most common one is gonna be cure a cure see you are a and what that does is it allows you to change all of the different parameters for your 3d printer so you can change how dense you want the print to be you can change basically how it's going to print you can make duplicates of the of the print if you want to print multiple things in in one you know printing session so you can change so many parameters and change how the model is printed and not only is this very handy but a lot a lot of times it's critical because if you're printing with a different type of material you'll need to print at a hotter temperature you might need to print more slowly and so what this does is this is where you change all of the settings for your 3d printer and you tell your 3d printer how to print the model that you've created now you're thinking okay well that's cool but like there's a lot of software to learn how to use and like I don't know how to use this stuff well that's okay take a look at the description of this video I'm going to have links to the other channels and videos that have really helped me because I'm nowhere near the level that these guys are at because this is just what they do they do 3d printing stuff so some really popular channels are going to be makers Muse make anything chip or Chuck hella bucks channel in those videos you can learn how to use Keira you can learn how to use Tinkercad fusion 360 all kinds of different stuff so definitely check that out but Adam what if I don't want to design my own prints what if I just want to print stuff that other people have designed well no problem all you need to do is go to a website like Thingiverse Thingiverse has a bunch of things that people have designed and uploaded into the Thingiverse website and you can just find whatever you need maybe it's a gopro mount maybe it's a flowerpot maybe it's I don't anything just anything you can go in there and you can download it and then usually you'll get like a STL file and there might be several different types of files that you know come is like the whole package because maybe somebody broke up the print into different sections or whatever but basically then what you do is you take that file and you import it into your slicer software because you still need to you get a g-code file for your printer so what you do is you import that file that you downloaded into your slicer software like Keira and then you can change all the settings that you need to for your specific printer and then you can export it from your slicer into that dot g-code file put it on an SD card and then put it in your printer and you are ready to print well this all sounds pretty good but does this take a lot of time and trial and error to actually get good 3d prints well basically yes but it depends again if you're getting a budget printer it will require a little bit more setup maybe a little bit more you know oversight on your oversight expect to have prints fail especially your first ones when you're kind of getting your 3d printer dialed in the good news is there's a lot of videos out there that are very helpful in diagnosing certain types of printing problems once you get it dialed in it's gonna work for you very consistently afterwards so for me in my case with my CR 10 it took a little bit like I printed a bunch of these little test prints before I actually got to the settings that I kind of liked and seemed to work for me do 3d printers have fumes well that's a good question it depends on what you're printing with it depends on the material because essentially what you're doing is you're taking this plastic each type of material this filament and you're heating it up and so when you heat stuff up like it tends to you know kind of release gases and that sort of thing with some prints either definitely will be fumes that you want to avoid like abs so PLA for the PLA that I've been printing not I don't really notice anything you know and I'm not dead so I think everything works fine I think it would depend on how hot you are printing but whatever room that you're keeping your 3d printer and you want it to be you know well ventilated and you probably don't want to be like you know sitting over top of the 3d printer breathing the whole time our 3d printer is loud or how loud are they well I haven't used a decibel meter on my CR 10 but it's actually quieter than I thought that it would be based on what I seen between YouTube videos it's fairly quiet it's mostly just a fan you know cooling down all the electronics what makes it loud it's loud enough to be annoying but quiet enough to be ignored now that's the 3d printer but you can't 3d print unless you have something to print with and that my friends is called the filament and there's a few things to know about filaments so let's get into that right now what is filament I hear people talk about filament filament is just like plasticy type of stuff it's whatever kind of material that you're going to be using to print with and it comes on a big spool and it kind of looks like spaghetti noodles or something like that and that is what you feed into your 3d printer goes down to the nozzle down to the hot end what they call a hot end the part that heats up the plastic or the material and it melts it and that is the filament now let's briefly discuss some of most popular type of filament materials out there and why you might want to use them or not use them and also like what are those PLA is the most common material it's basically just like a plastic e type of material it's pretty strong but it's not necessarily intended for structural purposes it does not hold up to heat very well and it does not do well under sustained loads it tends to kind of bend and flex when under sustained loads even though it is very rigid but after a while it will just kind of Bend under a load but it is very easy to print it is commonly available it's relatively cheap and it's very forgiving to print with and it's really plenty strong for most applications but if you want something that you're going to keep like in a hot car like on a dashboard or something probably should not print it with PLA because it will melt is what I'm told I haven't actually tested that out but everybody says it's just gonna melt TPU what the heck is TPU stand for I don't know but I'll tell you what TPU is the flexible stuff if you want to print like a GoPro mount or a soft soft mount your quadcopter motors or anything that is that requires like a squishy flexible material you want TPU and TPU comes in all kinds of different hardness levels so like from like SuperDuper squishy to where like you just squish it but just like like nothing to where it's like mostly rigid but like it'll still flex what I'm using is same smart TPU that seems to work very well and actually drone mesh has a good video talking about the properties of the same smart TPU and why he likes it and that's actually the reason why I bought the same smart stuff but TPU and flexible filament sard are generally more difficult to print than a more rigid filament like PLA and the reason is because like it's all just kind of like flexible and noodley so it's harder to to feed that into the hot end and then a lot of times you'll also get like really bad stringing depending on how your settings are for your slicer setting because it just kind of wants to use all over the place so generally like the more squishy the filament is the more difficult it is to actually print well and so you're really gonna have to tweak around with the settings the the same smart brand TPU that I've been using has been super great so far it's like I've gotten a little bit of stringing but generally it's very very easy to print with and I've only had to change a few settings specifically for the flexible material in the slice in my slicer in Kirra abs you probably are familiar with ABS plastic oftentimes it's used in like injection molded ABS is good because it's strong it resists heat well but basically it's really durable the thing is it's not very easy to print and it needs to be basically like in an enclosed kind of box in order to keep the the overall air temperature higher because what it will tend to do is kind of split and and warp if if one part doesn't cool evenly with the rest of the the print it also has bad fumes that you want to avoid my understanding is that abs is actually being phased out with for a material called a si and ay si is like ABS but it's I guess a little bit more forgiving to work with to print with and I think a little bit less of the fumes so it's basically like a new and improved version of ABS and lastly PE TG or pet G is it's sometimes called is a really cool material and actually as of right now I have not printed with it I have a spool sitting right here that I need to test out but what's cool about PE TG it is kind of like a middle ground between abs and PLA so it is more heat resistant than PLA but it's much easier to print than ABS or a si so it's more durable than PLA it tends to bend rather than snap right away but maybe not as durable as ABS or a si so I think I'm going to be trying this out and it's probably going to be my go-to for when I want something that is stronger than PLA but still easy to print with so now you're wondering well what kind of filaments should I use so I use hard filaments I use flexible filament you know what should I use well let me just tell you basically start with PLA PLA is the most popular type of 3d printing filament out there it's very forgiving it's easy to print with it's cheap so I would start with PLA and then do a bunch of test prints on your printer and just kind of get it get a feel for it to get a feel for how that handles and then once you get comfortable with that maybe move on to the other stuff that you want to print like flexible one flexible materials or structurally stronger materials what size filament do I need and does it need to be a specific brand well no it does not need to be a specific brand usually you'll find a brand that you like or that works best for your printer and that's what you'll use as far as the size 1.75 millimeters is the most common type of filament and you can check your 3d printer manufacturer specifications and it will say what type of filament you should use for your 3d printer but 1.75 millimeter is going to be the most common so how much filament should I buy like does this stuff get get used up super fast or like what's the deal well it's like I said it's sold in like one kilogram spools usually and that's probably gonna last you like quite a while so like for example the little test prints that I've printed out that a very very common test prints the little bench e-boat they call it the bench boat that weighs about 10 grams and so for a 1 kilogram spool you would be able to print about a hundred Bengie boats with that so that's quite a bit that's quite a bit so it's gonna last you a while so how much does this filament cost well filament is usually around like $25 for about a kilogram it's sold by weight so it's usually around $25 in that air in that range and that's for like PLA but if you want a specialty type of filament then you might be paying twice as much usually about half a kilogram for that same kind of twenty five dollar range but atom what should I print first there's so many options here's what you should do you should go to Thingiverse or someplace like that and download a test print something like the the Benjy boat the the bench boat is very common thing and the reason why this is important is because you want to test out your your what your slicer settings and you want to test out the operation of your printer before you move on to your piece de resistance and you know because you don't want to be like designing something and then you know trying to print it and then you're not sure like is it my design or is it my printer or what's going on and so when you print a known item like the bench boat it allows you to compare yours to what other people have and so you might be getting some sort of common issue that other people are getting and then it will be much easier to figure out what is going on with your printer and in seeing you know what prints well what doesn't print well and that sort of thing then once you get good results with a test file then you can move on to your piece of resistance that you have designed so lovingly and carefully alright well I hope this was helpful to you if you are just getting into 3d printing because let me tell you it is totally worth it I have waited years I think to actually get into 3d printing because I was like looking at it I was like aw man that looks really cool but you know and blah blah blah well finally did pull the trigger and I bought the cree ala TCR ten and some filament and now I'm gonna be testing out different types of filaments and I am just so excited because it is such a cool tool where you can take an idea that's in your noggin and then you can create something basically 3d printing is the future so if you're going to get into 3d printing welcome to the Future this has been fun thanks for watching leave me a comment with any questions that you have about 3d printing or your 3d printing tips for beginners we'd love to hear them thank you for watching we'll see you again very soon alright then see you next time this is gonna take a long time to edit I just have to remind myself of that this is gonna take this could take a while [Music] you

Channel: RCwithAdam

Views: 270,536

Keywords: rcwithadam, rc with adam, quadcopter, drone, airplane, model airplane, RC, flight, race drone, freestyle fpv, aircraft, STEM, hobby, learning, education, positive, development, skills, foam board, DIY, 3d pringing, 3d print, cr10, creality, ender 3, which 3d printer to buy, best for beginners, beginners guide, help for noobs, crash course, filament, slicer, cura, tinkercad, autodesk, cad

Id: OomRF6pKh2k

Length: 22min 18sec (1338 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 27 2020