How to Smooth PLA 3D Prints to Look Like Resin!

hey everybody Chris here from it's meademade and today I am going to show you how I process my fdm prints to get rid of every single layer line so let's go ahead and get into this video so I was browsing thingiverse and I saw this model come across and I was like oh my God I have to print it so I so I did and I actually printed it in fdm and I did it on my longer lk4 Pro as well as my Ender 3 Pros they didn't turn out too well because the supports just they held on too much and it just really needed a lot of cleanup and I wanted to do this model Justice because of what I've got planned for it when I come to paint it so I figured this is a prime opportunity for me to show you how I can process my fdm prints to be able to make them look like resin 3D prints the one disclaimer I will say this does not work for every single 3D print for fdm because if your model has crazy amounts of little fine details by the time you're done with this process you might lose a good portion of those details but this was a perfect example because it is a cartoon and it needs to be nice and smooth so if your 3D prints are supposed to be smooth and they just got too many layer lines or supports or something like that this will absolutely work for you as well as if you actually have certain parts and pieces that you need to have smooth in your 3D prints you can use this process as well and just to let you know I have all of my Amazon affiliate links down below for you but a lot of this you can also get just at a hardware store now the one thing I will say that this it takes a while to do so you just got to take the time and be patient with every step because I mean garbage in garbage out if you don't do a good job at it it's not going to give you good results it's the amount of effort you put into it so if you want your fdm prints to look like resin 3D prints it's going to take some work now all of those disclaimers aside let's go ahead jump to the table and I'm going to show you my processes of how I created this so to start out I just wanted to show you all the different things that I'm going to be using so I've got these sanding sponges and the nice thing about these sanding sponges is they actually have angles and that way I can get into cracks easy and try to sand as much as I can without actually having to go to the straight sandpaper now I do have sandpaper I have 80 120 and 220. and this is also 80 and you can see it also goes all the way to 320. and then I have a bunch of different types of sanding sticks at different grits now the one thing I will say is if you have a bigger piece with a lot of flat surfaces and stuff you can use like a palm sander and just using these different types of grits if you wanted to but you just have to be careful because sometimes those can take off way more than what you actually want them to take off sometimes with an orbital sander or a palm sander what you'll have is it will heat up the pla too much and it'll actually start to become gooey and actually deform your 3D print so just be aware of that if you're going to be sanding with anything like electronic like a palm sander anything like that so I have all of my printed pieces and I also went ahead and removed all of the supports because I figured I don't need to show you guys how to remove supports now the one thing I will say is having a good set of pliers and Snips are crucial to to be able to remove your supports easily you can use it by other methods but this is one of those things that this set right here I mean it helps me all the time to remove my supports and one of my favorite ones is this it is a flat piece where I can get right up against the support grab it and pull it off then having a really nice set of snips that is something that's crucial when you're 3D printing and you can really get in there and cut out all of those extra supports another thing that's really great to have is a Dremel and with deburring bits and these right here are just different shapes and sizes to be able to get in there and this is really great because it will help smooth out some of your prints and we're going to be using some of this to be able to smooth some of our prints as well for some of the rougher areas and I'll show you that in just a minute but a Dremel can help save you a lot of time sanding and snipping away at supports another thing you want to have is a respirator because you are going to be kicking up some plastic dust and you don't want to be breathing that in so having a good respirator is crucial because you want to stay safe while doing this so just always be safe and think about where you're actually doing this make sure that you're in a well ventilated area and you're also using some type of respirator to protect your lungs so now we got all of our pieces and some of these prints I actually probably would have resupported in a different way because especially the back right here of Mario I mean it it isn't a pretty print in any way but I wanted to actually have something where I need to really clean this up so you can see the difference so we are going to clean this up and make it just I mean glass smooth and we're going to fix every little defect but we still have layer lines and we're going to get rid of all of that because I want this to look beautiful when we're done with this I want it to look like a resin print that smooth to where you don't see any layer lines so let's go ahead and get started so it doesn't matter how you start I always like to start with the smallest objects first just because I like to feel a little bit of an accomplishment this guy right here it actually the support would not come off and I actually had to snip it all away but once again it doesn't really matter because when it's fully attached you don't see it in any way and I think that's the big thing that I want to just kind of get across is you only want to really work on the areas that you're going to see because there's no reason for me to work so hard and get all of this super smooth when I'm never even going to see it so we need to just focus on all of the areas you see now when it comes to the bottom of this there are a little bit of an area that I'm going to have to smooth because you could see it possibly and also if you notice that it doesn't fit good so I'm going to have to adjust this little Peg so it actually goes in there perfectly flat now when it comes to sanding I am going to start with an 80 grit and this is the thing about an 80 grit you are going to take off a lot of filament and you also have the potential to be able to make like grooves in your 3D print like scratch marks and you don't want to push super hard when you're using an 80 grit so I'm going to start you using the 80 grit on these boots first now one thing I will say about these sanding sponges it is a good little tip and hack to where when you're doing it you want to be able to mark this because most of the ones I've used do not tell you what it is so now I know that this is an 80 grit because when you get them all together especially with those finer ones you're not going to know which one is which and 80 grit is pretty easy to tell because of how rough it is so the bottom of his foot you absolutely see and I want to make sure we get this nice and smooth so all I'm going to do is start sanding this foot [Music] all right so I'm sanding the foot right here and one thing I want to note once again I could be sanding all of this but there's no need so I really just need to get this piece right here so only where I see it so I'm going to just start sanding this down a little bit so seeing that I've already realized that it will take forever and I'll probably go through this whole thing that's why I'm going to go ahead and use this Dremel and using this Dremel you want to be absolutely careful because you can gouge it and cause more problems than it's worth so you're just lightly brushing across the surface and also make sure that you're wearing safety glasses because little flecks can like pop out and you do not want to get this stuff in your eye so Safety First foreign picks these picks have really nice sharp edges and they're really good to just kind of pick out the edges and try to get a little more definition because they can do a little bit of cutting so I'm just going to be scraping it like that to really get that definition of the sole that way I don't lose any of my detail so now I'm going to just kind of sand a little more to get rid of some more of these layer lines then I'll get the rest of the boot because I do have a little Mark right here where the support did stick to it and what I'm going to do for that is it's actually a gouge so I am going to probably be filling this in with some Putty now I have a paper towel which is a little bit of water and all I'm going to be using this for is just kind of wiping everything away so I can get all that dust out of there and once I have all the Dust Away then I can get a better idea of how smooth I've gotten this and getting all of those layer lines gone because you can really start to see it show up especially through all of the sanding so you can see that I've gotten some of it but not all of it the back here I mean it feels smooth as glass even though it is rough because you can even see that Sheen right there and this is getting close to what we want because we're not going to get rid of every single layer line on this that is where our next step is really going to help fill in all of those cracks and then we're also going to be able to get it even smoother than this to where we're not going to see any of these layer lines so I'm going to move back to my 80 grit and start sanding that but the other thing is is I'm probably going to switch to some actual sandpaper to try to get this so I've just got a sheet of my 80 grit and then I'm just taking just a little bit I don't want this huge sheet I want to be able to have a little like small piece that I can manipulate really well so when I do that I literally just fold it in half and then I have a nice little triangle that way I can kind of grip it really well and to start sanding [Music] foreign so this is pretty much ready for primer so now that I have this all sanded and it looks really rough and it looks like it's in bad shape but this is what we want it to look like because that means all of our layer lines are gone you see some gouges and scratches from the rough grit and that's okay for this because the filler primer we're going to be using is going to be filling it in really well so I'm going to use this little clamp and let's take it to the spray booth and paint this thing so what I'm using is this Rust-Oleum Automotive primer it's a two in one filler and sandable primer now I'm just doing light passes and building it up I'm not trying to just hose it down and get like a ton in the very first coat all right so now I have the boot all primed and you can see a little bit more of these little NYX gouges and stuff from the Sandpaper and that's perfectly fine for right now because this is going to be a layered process so as a first pass it turned out really good and you remember how bad the back of the boot really looked and we got a lot of that taken care of now what I'm going to do is fill in this little Nick where that support really stuck to it and for that I'm just going to be using this plastic wood filler putty this stuff is great because it's pink and not because I like the color pink but it's pink when it's wet so when it actually dries it's going to be a tan and that really helps me out to know when this is fully dry now what I'm really just going to be doing is I don't want to apply a ton because I don't want to keep doing a lot of sanding so I'm just going to be taking a tiny bit with a stir stick so I'm going to take my stir stick and put just a little bit right there and immediately take a lot of it away and kind of wipe that off and all I'm going to do is just use my stir stick to just kind of apply it and wipe it away but I definitely need to have a little more on there than I want so right there would be perfectly fine then I actually just dipped this in water and I'm going to kind of tap it just to kind of get it wet I'm going to dip it in water one more time get a little water on the side here and then get it really wet now the reason for this is it'll just give me a nice smooth finish right here even though I'm going to be sanding it away but it's also getting it in that crack really well and now I can wipe away any access I might have by just scraping it away and I'll just use my finger to wipe away around the edges and there we go so now I'm just going to go ahead and let this dry and then I'll come back to sand it so now I'm going to go ahead and do the other Boot and I'm going to be sanding it the exact same way all right real quick I just wanted to say thank you thank you to all of these amazing people for supporting me on patreon this month if you want to join my patreon you'll get exclusive access to my private Discord servers where we talk about painting Printing and everything in between you'll also get access to all of my behind the scenes content where I show you what I'm working on what the upcoming videos are and you can have the opportunity to vote on the videos that I make if you're interested the links below other than that let's get back to the video now one of the areas that's different is for this part right here right at the very top where that gradation and I saw that you see that plateauing of the layering so I'm going to be really hitting that a little harder and just going to go through the same stuff but this time I'm actually going to start with the 80 grit sandpaper that is not the sanding sponge so I'm just going to get a really hard application of this to get everything smooth and we also have a little bit of where the supports were actually attached it just did not look that great so I'm gonna have to do some really heavy sanding on this but I will say this I'm doing it for the edges so one nice little technique that I use is I've got this little piece of wood and it's pretty thin and what you can do is kind of create your own sanding block so I'll just put it around the edge like this and now I can have a good Edge so if I wanted to just kind of fold it like this now I have this sharp edge right here that I can use especially on flatter surfaces like this it's not like I can set this on the table and just kind of go like this but I can hold this and go like that to be able to get a really nice grip on it and it's sanding it really evenly so on the edge of the shoe [Music] I can get a nice Edge on it like that because I don't want to round the corner of the shoe and the same thing on the edge of the shoe the sole of the shoe [Music] okay so now I've got his sole of the shoe all done and just to make sure when I put it on there I can see that I've gotten the edges really good now I'm just going to do the rest of it and this block method does not work really well on full rounded surfaces because if you're using this on something like the top of the shoe you can really do some damage because you can get flat spots so you want to make sure you're not doing that and either just using your hand or using a sanding sponge so I'm actually going to switch to my sanding sponge for this part and then kind of come back with this another thing is I don't go back and forth you want to make a circular pattern that way you don't get any like deep gouges Just One Direction and that's another way that you can get flat spots so always kind of keep a circular pattern when you can because obviously for the edge of the shoe right here I'm not going to be able to do a circular pattern very well so I there's no other choice for that but when you can you want to do a circular pattern so now I'm going to use a 120 grit and really start to bring down some of this roughness that the 80 grit brought now I'm going to go to a 220 to even get it finer foreign s that are just like a little bit frayed right here so I'm just going to take my Sharp pick and kind of scratch it away to really keep that definition because like I said I want to keep these hard lines and there we go so now we're ready for the hands so the boots were pretty easy because it's just a big smooth surface and now that I'm going to move to the hands uh right underneath and also like right here so like right here I'm gonna have to do a lot of sanding to get this nice and smooth and get this Edge kind of back to where it should be same thing with here this is where the supports all were and you can see there's just a little bit of areas that really need to a little bit of TLC so I'm going to be using the exact same process I have been using but the big thing with this specifically is I am going to be using a lot of different sanding sticks because obviously a sanding sponge and sandpaper is going to be a little hard to get into some of these cracks to really get them sanded well so I'm not going to be able to get in there but with a sanding stick I'm going to be able to just get right in there so that's where I'm going to really rely on these now one great thing about these sanding sticks so I've already been using this a bit and it's the sandpapers kind of worn away you can actually just use some Snips and snip it off like that and then you can get even more use out of it so I'll just keep staying like that until I'm down to like a little bit of a nub and that is one way that you can really get the most bang for your buck and really use this entire sanding stick so once it gets worn down all you got to do is just snip it off and now you got a nice clean Edge again another thing I found is if you actually snip this at a nice angle then you kind of have a point right there and the point does wear down pretty quick but you can get into some of those cracks a lot easier doing it this way so now I'm just going to kind of go through get a general sanding and then get into those cracks with my sanding sticks all right so now I have this now I'm moving on to the body and I've started sanding it down but I've got a lot of areas that need a lot of work because you can see how this is right where the supports were because I actually printed it upside down so I have some of these areas that I mean they're they're pretty rough looking they're not a really great print right there so what I'm going to do is I am actually going to take my Dremel and just start carving this away and shaping this and trying to get rid of some of these Edge lines before I even start sanding it thank you so there we go I've grinded off a lot of that already and I've already got it rounded off and just to see what it looks like with the hand on it so I've got a little more fix right here and this is still just a little too rough before I want to sand it so I'm going to bring down some of that and kind of shave that away with the Dremel but you can see how it's actually turned out pretty good even though how bad that was just a little bit of a Dremel can really do a lot of damage to uh your filament so it will chew it away so you got to make sure that you're staying really controlled and just using it really lightly thank you okay so now I'm ready to get the 80 grit and just start sanding this away so I got this arm really nice you can see there are some deep scratches from that 80 grit and that is the one thing where this fillable primer is really going to you know help us with that because this was just as bad and all of these scratches are very minimal and when we sand it a lot of it's going to go away so now I'm going to move on to the top of the leg and the back of the cuff of his uh overalls some of these cracks will be a little bit of a challenge but I think we can do it so I've gotten all of those edges that I really needed to get smooth smooth there's a few areas here and there that I can't really get too well but that's where I'm going to really rely on some of the filler primer and you can see that we've got everything sanded really well so now it's time to move to the Head now the print itself is really nice there's not a lot of layer lines or anything like that it's a very smooth print it's when I get to back here so the actual little Peg where it fits into the head as as you can see right here like it goes in like that now the issue was the support failed but it caught itself and printed it but this isn't going to be an issue because guess what we're not going to see it but you can see how rough this is and I've also got a flat spot because I printed it on the build plate like this so it has some stuff I've got to clean up so I'm gonna go ahead and start dremeling this and clean this up real good all right all right so I've got him all sanded and he is falling apart and looking good so he is all done I've gotten all the areas that I can really get to and I'm just going to be relying on the primer to see how these lines go because there's some areas up underneath that bill of the Hat I can't fully get to very well but also it's going to be like hidden in Shadow so I'm not too worried about it so I could put putty on this right now to fill in these gaps but I'm not going to because I really don't know what it looks like that well I know there's a lot of deep crevices right here but first i'm going to prime it because I want to see what it looks like first and see how bad it's going to be because the primer will fill in some but it's not going to make it look beautiful I'm going to have to actually put putty here so I'm just going to wait until I get primer on this and then we're going to really see it but we'll see what this looks like once I'm done so now that I've got all this I'm moving on to the Koopa the Koopa has some really rough patches right here I'm going to have to clean up with the Dremel and inside his mouth and up top here I'm gonna have to really clean that out but the rest of it is just going to be some simple sanding and it should be pretty easy this is a really clean print and there's not a lot of layer lines there's some but not a lot so it's going to be pretty easy to sand down so I'm just going to forward and do that now foreign day so I went ahead and took these in the backyard to go ahead and Prime them that way they could dry super fast for me and once again I just did really light sprays short Strokes I wasn't just holding down the nozzle and just trying to coat everywhere that's the key when you're using this primer you want to make sure that you're getting a nice even coat and you just build that up layer by layer after it dries all right now we have everything primed and this is the opportunity we have to see what we still need to fix now if we look at the fists they're looking actually pretty good you're going to see a little bit of texture and a little bit of grit and that is perfectly fine that is what this next step is for to get rid of all of that so if we look at other areas let's say this monster you can see how it actually filled in a whole lot more than I actually anticipated so what we're going to do is we're going to come back to this and sand this and get this with putty and things like that but the first thing is how I actually go back over for my first pass to make sure we've got everything so for the next step I actually use a 600 grit wet or dry sandpaper and the thing about this is we're going to use just a little bit at a time we do not want to use a whole bunch all right so we can see just this little bit of grit right here and it looks like we can see a little bit of layer lines a little bit right here but for the most part it actually got a lot of it so we're going to take our little tiny strip and this is all we're going to do I'm going to take advantage of this Edge in the very beginning and I'm just going to lightly sand this and I'm not putting a lot of force I'm just lightly doing it and we can see that we've got some dust and already got some build up on there so we're just going to go ahead and keep doing this until it really just fills up right there now the reason why you don't want to go with a very low grit sandpaper just for the sheer fact we don't want to be scratching into this primer if you see already we've gotten this this is actually like super smooth because we're really just kind of polishing this paint and this is going to get it nice and smooth without removing a ton we're relying on that filler to fill in all those cracks and we're just removing any excess and when we get a lot of build up on there we can just rip it off and then we've got more so I'm gonna go ahead [Music] and the key here is just nice and slow and you don't want to remove too much now if the filament starts to show that is perfectly fine it is not the end of the world if you can start to see your filament because once I start sanding things [Applause] it's it's going to show through a little bit [Music] and another thing I do is I will actually fold this then I'll have a little bit of a flap and I'll fold that then you have a nice little point right there that you can use so I can go in this crack and try to sand it a little better the other thing you could do is if you have a pick you can actually wrap it around that pick to be able to get a better point and then you can go in and sand it to get even more precision and just remember the key is I am not pushing super hard so you can see I've actually you start to see some of that filament shine through perfectly fine but it has gotten rid of a lot of those little ridges and things and this feels like glass now it looks like there's still little recesses and things like that but don't let that deceive you you really want to kind of look at it at an angle and see is there really hole still because right here I feel like it's very smooth and if we do another coat of paint that is going to just go away completely but right here I actually have some lines so that means I just have to sand it a little more and then also I've got a little bit here that I've got to take care of so I'm just going to go around and just take my time and sand this down that's the whole thing about this process you just want to take your time when you're actually doing this you're you are going to go through a lot of sandpaper so that's why I like to use just little bits at a time so I'm using 100 of the Sandpaper the other thing I like to do when we're dealing with sharp edges and details I'll go ahead and I'll take the pick and I will actually just kind of score the the creases and Corners just to make sure I still keep that definition because you can get paint buildup depending on how you spray painted it so all I'm going in and I'm just kind of scratching away to keep those nice hard lines and you can see how you get that build up on your pick and that's actually removing that to keep those nice sharp edges now I have the emblem all done and you can kind of see how smooth that's looking because it's almost polishing it now there are a few little areas like right there that I'm going to have to hit again with primer but this is done so you just basically need to do this to the entire model so now I'm going to go through do all of the face then we'll work on the back of the head foreign [Music] so now I have the face all done it's nice and smooth and it's looking really good now I'm going to move to the back and what I'm going to use is this 220 grit sandpaper and this is going to be taking away a lot of the excess and it'll sand away any of the bumps and then I'm only going to be able to see the holes that I have left and then we're going to move to the next step oh [Music] all right so now I have everything nice and sanded down and we can easily see where the holes are and what I need to fill so I'm going to take this plastic wood filler now and just kind of take a little chunk out and I don't need a whole lot I only want a little bit for this then I'm going to take a little water then I'm gonna mix it up real good [Applause] okay so now that I have this I am literally just going to be putting it on there like this a really nice thin coat of it just so we can fill in all of those cracks okay so now I have this filled in nice and I don't see any recesses I've got it all covered with this nice thin coat because I don't want to just go like crazy on the coverage because I'm going to have to sand this so the thinner the coat the easier it's going to be and then I can go back over it and see if I need to add any more but it looks like this will probably take care of everything then I'm going to move on and start sanding the rest of the pieces so I've got everything sanded down and Mario's Body is looking fantastic so if you see we've got some blue showing through because you know it's just sanding them down but then those layer lines I mean they're they're pretty much gone um and it looks really nice so the next part we're going to work on is the Koopa so the Koopa has a lot more issues with it than I could see and that was my own fault because I printed it in yellow because I just thought it would be cool and I've got a lot of fix up to do on this because the primer really just showed that through and what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to be sanding this with a higher grit because I know this is going to take another maybe one or two passes of primer and sanding so I'm going to take that 220 grit and just sand this guy down and get him as smooth as possible so the putty is dried and I've already started sanding some of it and if you see here it is already filled in all those cracks and it's looking really nice and smooth and all I'm using is this 220 grit sandpaper and the key to this is I am not trying to push hard I mean I am just dragging this across it to just remove what is needed if I have a little more that is perfectly fine because there was some dips and things like that and this is just getting it nice and smooth and I've also helped with that flat spot we had so it's more rounded so I'm just going to continue to just lightly sand this and just get all of the excess that I need off and if I leave any that's great and the other key is I'm going in circles I don't want to go straight because I'm not wanting to gouge any out of this once I had everything sanded I went to the backyard again and did a really nice thin coat over all of the puttied and sanded areas and I also did just an extra coat on all of the other pieces as well just to make sure everything is going to look beautiful thank you so I went ahead and re-primed him and now I've just got a few little snicks and things like that that I've got to sand down but if you look at this back look at that that putty did an amazing job but I think we might have to add just a little bit right here but I'm going to sand it first to see what we can do with it but I mean this turned out really nice now this hard line right here isn't as hard as I'd like it but it's smooth and that's the important thing for me so you can see how smooth that is and the front of this I mean this has turned out really nice I've got everything else primed again as well and you can see how beautiful this is looking I mean you cannot tell that this was an fdm print so everything's looking good in here we can just put his head on there too like this is I I'm very happy with how it turned out but the one thing about this is it just takes a ton of work so it's really what how well you want your prints to turn out I also re-primed the turtle and he is looking a lot smoother I still have some layer lines that I'm going to have to take care of and his face and mouth is looking pretty good there's a few little Nicks in here that I got to take care of and sand down so I'm gonna go ahead I'm going to sand this and then we're gonna go re-prime it again and then come back and we should be done foreign I got these both sanded down really well and now I just have to take it back out and do one final coat of primer and then we're ready for the final reveal so here's what we started with we started with an fdm print and now here are the final results now this thing took so much work but it looks phenomenal now the Koopa still has just a few areas that I just fully couldn't get to which I it's it's honestly bothering me but it looks phenomenal I mean all of the places that you are going to see naturally I mean they're perfect and by the time I do get paint on this you're not going to be able to notice any of those little imperfections in those areas so I I'm just being a little hard on myself but Mario I mean come on he looks so good the amount of like smoothness that back of that head I am just I am so happy of how this turned out this looks genuinely like a resin 3D print now keep in mind this won't work for every single type of 3D print because if it's a lot of texture you're gonna lose it as you saw how much sanding we did but that being said no one said that you can't do part of your model with this technique and get some of it super smooth because if they have some smooth like pants or something like that on a figure you're painting you could absolutely use this just on parts of it so just keep that in mind so thanks a lot for watching I hope you have a great day and I'll go ahead and see you in this next video

Channel: ItsMeaDMaDe

Views: 167,062

Keywords: how to smooth 3d prints, smoothing pla, sanding 3d prints, successful way for smoothing pla 3d prints, how to sand 3d prints, processing 3d model, 3d printing, 3d printer, smoothing 3d prints, sanding pla, how to prime 3d prints

Id: 1AW098PLi0o

Length: 39min 49sec (2389 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 06 2023