Revised: 3D Printing - 13 Things I Wish I Knew When I Got Started

hi there my name is Nils and in this video we're going to be covering the revised and updated edition of the 13 things I wish I knew when I got started with 3d printing so stick around we'll be right back on the 3d printing zone now Before we jump into the 13 things I want to give a little bit of a background just so you know how I came up with these and why I produced this video I actually produced a very similar video to this on my other channel called learn to DIY and in that video I went over these 13 topics but I had some audio issues and the video got really lengthy but it's got over half a million views at this point maybe more by the time you watch it and a lot of people really responded to that and and had comments and had lots of good things to say they just wanted an updated version that didn't have audio issues and maybe it was a little more concise this is the revised edition of that video and I'm hoping it covers some of the things that you may take a little longer to learn if someone doesn't share these with you these are things that I just took several months or in some cases years to learn about and had to learn them on my own it took way too much time I wish I knew about them early on so to come up with these thirteen things I actually conducted a poll with some of my friends who are 3d printer users as well as some online forums for 3d printing I got some great feedback there's probably more that I'm gonna do so stay tuned for a follow-up video that you'll have a link to at the end of this video that shows you the next probably seven things just to get myself up to 20 so I've been 3d printing for several years now I started out with a small little Printrbot simple metal printer it cost me about $700 three or four years ago and now you can get these much larger printers like this one or this one for quite a bit less money in the three to four hundred dollar range and they have a lot more features and they're a lot larger and they can do a lot more but that's because as with all technology it comes down in price over time so nowadays is a great time to get into the 3d printing field but there's a few things you need to know about it so that you don't think that it's going to be just like Xerox printing or something like that and that leads us into number thirteen the 13th thing I wish I knew is this is a hobby and you need to be patient so because this is a hobby you need to treat it like such I had a friend at work who actually got a 3d printer that he put together with his son and he said I'm going into this with the attitude that I know my prints are gonna come out great they'll come out okay and I'll get better over time all tweaked things I'll learn more about it and I'll treat it like a like a craft that I'm gonna get better at little by little and I thought that was the best attitude you can have really about 3d printing this is not at the point where you buy a 3d printer and it's plug-and-play and you're ready to go right off the bat that is not the case with this there's gonna be some failures some struggles some frustration and so you have to go into this knowing that that's the case but if you have that mindset and you're ready to try and you're ready to accept some occasional failures in the process of getting better then you're gonna really enjoy this and come out with some really cool stuff so it's important to remember this is a hobby if you're doing this professionally you have to have that same mindset honestly you have to really put the time into it just like any other hobby or any other craft and get good at it and so if you have that mindset you're really going to enjoy this and I think you're gonna get the most out of it tip number 12 is slicing matters what I mean by that is slicing is the process by which you have the software prepare your model to be sent to the 3d printer there's all kinds of settings you can get into we're gonna cover a few of those in these tips but just remember that how you slice things and what software you use and all those settings those all play into a successful print you can't just leave everything at the default factory settings and expect that you're going to get a great print off of your printer there are different printer profiles which we'll get into and there's just so many settings so feel free to tweak the speed that the printer is moving at for example both when it's printing the object itself as well as maybe some supports or bed adhesion or different things like that you're gonna want to tweak things like the resolution and try out what works and what doesn't you're gonna want to tweak the fan speed and make sure that you're getting good bridging and there's all these cool little things that you can get into and adjust but that slice that you do makes all the difference if you don't slice something well if you don't have your settings primed and tuned for your printer and for the print that you're working on at that time then you're gonna have some frustrating times and you're just gonna have to keep trying until you get that right and figure out what went wrong now just a moment ago I mentioned print profiles and that's number 11 is print profiles which are basically a set of settings that you can save it's a batch of settings that you can save for a particular type of print that you're going for so for example you may have a print profile that you're going to save off for working with a flexible material like TPU and that's my the different temperatures different speeds different things like that based on that material and what works well with that you're also probably going to want to have some different settings of quality in your print profiles most slicers like cure for example has draft quality and fine quality and so it has a few different settings there and basically it's 0.3 resolution resolution point two and point one and we'll talk about a little bit more about that in just a moment but what that means is this group of settings that you're saving off you can save that so you don't have to tweak all of those things and go in and manually adjust them all later you might want to have I'd say at least five or six different print profiles that you're using on a regular basis so just think of print profiles as a really easy way to save a set up that you've got maybe you did something that worked really well and you liked that resolution you like the speed the heat settings all of that worked out really well you got your print to come out the way you wanted it make sure you save off that print profile so that when you want to come back to that particular batch of settings that it's already saved it's right there ready for you you can usually export your print profiles as well so if you want to use them on a different computer or if you upgrade your computer to something else you can still save those print profiles off particularly for that specific slicing software so don't be afraid to use print profiles they will save you a lot of time in the long run tip number 10 and a lot of people don't know about this one is ironing ironing is the process of running the hot end over the top layer of whatever whatever it is you're printing to smooth it out basically what it's gonna do is it's gonna leave that hot end heat it up to full temperature and it's going to just smooth everything out it's basically melting right across the top and what that does is it tends to give you a nice glossy smooth surface on the top just like you expect to get on the bottom for the part that's attached directly to the bed especially if you're using a mirror or a glass bed so ironing is really cool it's just a little setting you can enable in your settings for your different slicing profile and you can check check that on or off be aware though that will add quite a bit of time because it's gonna slowly go over it can't do it really quickly but if you want to do something where you want a nice clean top on it and that really shiny surface then ironing is a great way to go tip number nine is have a help from your friends what I mean by that is that there is a huge community of 3d printing nerds out there like you and me people who are either getting into this just now or are really advanced in doing some really impressive stuff so for example I've got a TiVo tornado right here it's one of the printers I use the most and with that there is a Tebow tornado users group on Facebook and I'm on there pretty regularly I see that in my Facebook feed and I'm seeing these cool things that people are printing and then they'll share the STL file or the model that they're using to print that they'll share the profile settings that we just talked about earlier they'll share you know just all the different things that make that made that successful a lot of times it's a great way to find out about different upgrades that you can get for your printer no matter what kind of printer you have and different things that you may or may not have considered there's a lot of times where we're covering products and different things that have helped to get a better result in your print and things that we've learned along the way and hopefully as you frequent those types of forums and group discussions you'll get to the point where you you'll be that one who's able to help a lot of people out when they're having some troubles with their prints so I'll throw some links down in the description for some of the forums and groups that I participate in and you can definitely check those out I'm sure there's a lot more there's probably hundreds and hundreds of 3d printing groups out there but be sure to check those out don't feel like you have to do this on your own there are a lot of great and talented people out there who are willing to share and help you get better at this all right so tip number eight is materials matter there are lots of different materials and we call them filaments what we're using on the 3d printer here so lots of different filaments that you can use when you're 3d printing the most common one that you'll see and what most prints that you're going to see around are made out of is called PLA it's basically a plastic type material that's meltable at a certain temperature PLA is great for most things in fact that's what I print just about everything out of unless I have a special reason to not use PLA so for regular around the house type of things it works really great it's also pretty affordable you can buy a spool of PLA which typically comes in a spool of 2.2 pounds or one kilogram and that's roughly about 300 meters of PLA and that runs anywhere from about 12 or 13 dollars on up to 25 30 or 40 dollars depending on what you're going to get most of the that I get are 15 to 20 dollars each and that will last you quite a ways you can print a lot with one spool of PLA so PLA is great for most things like I say but some of the reasons you might want to go with a different material are if you need something flexible so for example there's a product called ninja flex or there's this stuff which is TPU you may have heard the term TPU it's used in a lot of phone cases if you're buying these kind of soft squishy flexible phone cases that protect your phone pretty decently you can actually print your own phone cases with the 3d printer and almost every 3d printer can handle TPU pretty well it's just a matter of adjusting some settings and getting it tuned so that it's gonna optimally work for TPU material another really common material to print with is called ABS ABS I would guess is probably the second most common material to use for a filament ABS has some qualities that are really great about it which are it actually has a higher melting point over melting temperature and lasts longer when it's outside so if you're gonna be printing something that you intend to use outdoors abs is likely the way to go it's not biodegradable it's gonna last a little bit longer and while it'd be nice if it was biodegradable you actually want that longevity or that durability that you can get from ABS if you're using something that's meant to last one of the things that you need to be aware of with ABS however is that it is a little bit more brittle than PLA it's not crazy difference or anything like that but just something to keep in mind but the bigger thing is it's more difficult to work with a lot of times you need to have an enclosure around your 3d printer in order to print successfully with abs and that's because it's very sensitive to any temperature changes it's very sensitive to any drafts and so if you're printing in an area that has any draft whatsoever even an air-conditioning vent or a heater vent you do not want that draft getting on the ABS print as it's printing what happens is it will peel away from the bed that's the second thing you want to keep in mind with ABS is you need to create a better type of adhesion that's specific to ABS and if you want to learn more about that do a quick search on ABS slor' SL u R and you'll find some great information on how to use that you can make it yourself and it will actually have a great impact on how well ABS print stick to the bed one last one I wanted to talk about that I think is really cool is what filament and wood filament is not actually wood I've heard that they actually put sawdust or some material some actual wood material into it I'm not sure if that's true but the fact is it looks a little bit like wood it looks really kind of like a beige Brown PLA but it actually can sand and it can accept some stain a little bit and it has a cool look there are profiles that you can use where the temperature of your hot end will go up and down to create a little bit of a grain look I've never found one that I think looks amazing but wood PLA in general is pretty fun to work with and if you do use PLA then you have to print the obligatory rite-of-passage Groot not sure why that is but it seems like every time someone gets wood PLA they print a group so here's my group check it out try one yourself so what PLA is pretty fun stuff to work with I actually used it to print my learn to DIY logo for my other channel and printed this piece here and I think it came out pretty cool I have yet to actually stain and sand it but hopefully I'll get to that one day but it looks pretty cool as is which is why I haven't really gotten around to it okay tip number seven is keeping an eye on things this is a hugely important one and one that really impacts my workflow with 3d printing because it gives me visibility into what's going on at all times so you'll see right behind me on my Tivo tornado I've got this little web camera here that's hooked up to a Raspberry Pi we'll talk about that in just a second and on this I'm able to keep an eye on things no matter what process or what part of the process I'm in for 3d printing whether it's that first layer right away and I've walked away and just need to keep an eye on it remotely or whether it's three days into a print so this is a cheap camera it's eight dollars actually I'll put a link to that in the description I've got another camera coming in the mail right now that I'm really excited to get that I think will give a higher quality better resolution image just better optics on it because I'm at that point where I'd really like to make better videos of the prints themselves so keeping an eye on things is really handy because for example not too long ago I printed a ukulele and I started the print right before I left town knowing that I could actually remotely control my printer which we'll talk about in one of the next steps but I was able to keep an eye on things because I'm really glad for because after about two days of printing I got pretty far into this ukulele something went haywire and the thing just exploded I had it was basically printing out filament all over the place into midair and causing this big creating this bigwig looking thing and luckily I did catch that after several hours I wasn't checking on it all all through the day but when I did catch it I was able to remotely stop the print so I didn't waste any more filament so definitely consider the minimal investment that it takes to keep an eye on things another thing you can use as an IP webcam something where you can just keep an eye on it no matter what it's not connected to the printer necessarily but it's just a way to keep an eye on things I love this little guy right here the Y's cam and I don't know if you can see that here these are wise cams are twenty or thirty dollars and they have their full HD quality and they have a cloud storage app and they're very easy to work with I'll put a link to each of these cameras in the description below so be sure to check those out but these are really cool products that definitely make 3d printing a lot more convenient number six is octopi or octo print to the rescue this is a huge one for me in fact I don't know if I'd be as excited about 3d printing as I am if I didn't have the option to manage everything remotely so on this printer that I've got over here my Tivo tornado I can actually I've got a Raspberry Pi which is this little $35 computer that you can buy and you can actually buy them even cheaper nowadays they're very like incredibly capable little machines HDMI Wi-Fi bluetooth USB all this stuff in this little $35 package you can load and the what's called the octopi image onto that and then you can leverage the power of octo print octo print is software that runs on your octopi on your Raspberry Pi connects directly to your 3d printer and via USB and then with that you can control just about everything you want about your 3d printer from anywhere in the world using a web interface now typically this is restricted to your local network but there are some workarounds that you can use to make that open up either open up the port or use a third-party software to be able to access that anywhere in the world which is what I do so I'll put some links down in the description to setting up octopi and octo print but this allows you to do so many cool things you can pause your print you can stop it you can cancel your job you can start a print you can upload things to it from anywhere you can do all these the impressive things just by having this $35 computer hooked up to your printer so for me I'd say hands-down that is the best upgrade that you can buy for your 3d printer is a Raspberry Pi loaded with octo print one of the other things that can do is you can watch exactly where the placement of the hot end is as it's going you can preview what the each layer-by-layer printout will look like you can control your webcam so I've got this webcam hooked up to octopi or octo print and then it automatically creates a time-lapse video of each print for me I don't have to think about it it just does it every time it exports it and I'm ready to download that anytime I want to of any job I've ever done so super super handy to use you don't have to use an SD card the alternative I don't have this one over here hooked up to octo print and with that I have to load everything onto an SD card on my front my computer then take it down pop the SD card in select that file and print not a huge deal but it's 2018 we don't need to be using SD cards to transfer things back and forth so get yourself a Raspberry Pi and load up octo print you will thank me number five on my list is understanding support now what I mean by support is this is material that gets printed and the slicing software determines this but it prints out some material that when you're we have something that's in midair essentially it can stand on top of this little material that you've printed typically in a line or a pattern of some sort so that it can actually successfully print rather than with gravity of course you can't just print in midair for the most part there's there's some caveats there but support gives you the ability to print things so you imagine Darth Vader for example with his chokehold out there if you want to do that arm and the angle is pretty much straight like this or especially if it's down there's no way to actually do that without some support underneath for the hand for example to print on so with that you print these little supports and they're made to be removable that you actually just take them right off when you're done and you have several options for support you can print you can do support everywhere which means that for example in that Darth Vader case if there's a little stand that he's on like this guy here then you can actually have it go from the stand up to his arm in that case which is what how this one came out or you can actually just say only do support if it's touching the build plate the bed itself and so that's another option so usually you can determine by looking at something if it's going to need support in some place if you're downloading a file often they'll say whether or not they recommend using support and as you get to know your 3d printer then that will help you understand when you should and don't do not need to use support I definitely recommend that you don't use it if you don't need it but it's important that you understand when to use it and basically that's anytime you feel like the 3d printer is not going to be capable of printing something unless it has support if it's got nothing underneath it to hold it and the angle at which its printing so in the arm case again if I'm printing like at this angle here I know my 3d printer can do that that's a slight enough angle that I think it'll be okay but as soon as I go down here it's not going to be able to print straight out like that successfully and that has to do with what's called bridging so again if you want to learn a little bit more about that just do a quick search on 3d printing bridging and support and you can learn all about that alright we're getting down there we're on number four now and number four is rafts brims and skirts so these are three types of bed adhesion options that you can use with your 3d printer and again just like many of these things that refer to the print itself or what gets printed this is something that is determined in the slicing software so you these are options that you can select you can say I want to use a skirt I want to use a brim or I want to use a raft or nothing at all so let's start with the skirt and what a skirt is in 3d printing is it's a series of lines and you can specify how many that go around the 3d print before it starts printing the the objective of this is really to get rid of any guck that's on the end of your hot end and then also make sure that it's got a nice good flow coming out before it starts on the 3d print itself so this is kind of a precautionary measure just like with most of these things once you get things really tuned and tweaked you may or may not ever need to do a skirt but if you just want to be sure that it's going to get a good print and if there's anything on the hot end like little globs for example or some that you've extruded just to keep things clean you can use a skirt to make sure none of that gets on to your 3d print itself the second thing is a brim so a brim is similar to a skirt but he mentioned that skirt comes all the way into the object itself so it makes several passes around until it gets to the actual 3d printed objects so if you're printing a can for example it'll do circles around until it gets into the can itself and will start printing now that serves two purposes first is the exact same thing as a skirt which is to get a nice clean flow of filament before you start printing your object but the second is because it's attached to the object it's gonna add heat adhere to the bed a lot better if you are trying to print for example a marker let's say so something that's tall and thin and it doesn't have much of a base on it then you'll definitely want to use a brim because it's going to be a lot easier for that thing to fall over or to skip or get knocked over if you don't have that adhesion to the bed but by adding that brim to it you're going to give it a lot more surface area on the bed itself for that object to stay in place as you print now the third option that you have is a raft now a raft is something I've used several times but I honestly have not used it much at all in the last year or so I just don't see a lot of reason for it but what it is is it prints a whole body of filament out underneath your print you can see here I've got these little drawers that I made and I used a raft on those that was what was recommended because it has these little waves it doesn't have a flat bottom on these drawers so that they can interconnect one of the things I did notice however is that you tend to get kind of a poorer quality of smoothness I guess on the bottom of the print when you're using a raft because it's trying to have the bottom of your print kind of float on top of the raft so that the raft is easily detachable from the object itself in general if you've got some comments below on times when a raft was necessary or really worked for you feel free to leave that comment for the most part I haven't found it to be all that useful so those are the three types of bed adhesion you can use and in many cases you really don't need any of them if you've got a standard object going back to that little Darth Vader for example it's got a base on it already it's got plenty of area it's not super tall compared to its width and so I didn't need to do any sort of a bed adhesion no skirts no brains no rafts on that and it works out just fine and I think you'll find that's the case with many of you prints especially once you get the bed nice and clean and you get things nailed down now number three originally was get sticky and what I meant by that was making sure to apply some sort of sticky adhesive stuff to the bed of your printer I'm gonna have to recant that somewhat because I actually don't do that anymore I don't actually put anything I used to use Aqua Net or a glue stick or different things like that on the printer bed I don't find a need for that anymore because what I found that works best is actually printing on my glass mirror tile here and I just keep it clean I just make sure that that temperature is at the right temperature and you don't need that I will say however that there are times when having that glue stick for example or sometimes Aqua Net if you are having trouble getting good at heejun then that's when it makes sense to put something sticky on there especially if you've got a situation where you've got something that's having a hard time staying on the bed or that gets knocked off or it's just for whatever reason just not staying quite as you think it should with a clean bed then maybe you can try some of the adhesives like Aqua Net and hairspray or a glue stick and sometimes you can get these really big glue sticks I've got one right here and get these really large glue sticks so you don't have to spend quite as much time spreading this out if you are going to use this stuff I recommend a with a hairspray that you cover up your the fans and that kind of stuff so you're not spraying into your fans and if you're going to use glue then probably just put it on the areas of the bed that you know it's going to be printed on you don't need to cover the entire area of the bed if you're just printing in a little area this big so that's a good thing to use if you need it but even better than that just don't use it keep your bed nice and clean and number two I'm actually going to update as well on the original video number two was print on glass and the reason I say that is because I've had really good success with using this little mirror this is a mirror that I got a pack of them six of them from the hardware store for ten dollars then using this one near tile for over a year now and it's worked great and it gives the bottom of my prints a really beautiful smooth finish it's like looks like reflective surface that's how nice it looks on the bottom so they look great I've had friends who have been using the this dock bed that came with her printer the entire time they had it and then they eventually got a glass bed or a mirror tile and they say oh my gosh I wish I would have done this years ago because this looks so much better and it's just it works really well so I like to keep a nice clean bed on the mirror I keep some Windex and paper towel around and keep that mirror really shiny clean and it sticks really well I don't have to do anything else for the most part so shortly after making my last video I realized that I don't have to do that actually I think it was from one of the comments that I got in the comments section of the video so I would recommend just keeping that clean but the other caveat with that is glass is a great option it is not the only option there are some really high-quality well-functioning beds that you can get on the Internet then I'll put some links to ones that I that I know work well whether I've tried them myself or I've worked with people who have used them there are some beds that people swear by and say there's no other you know type of bed that you can use for your 3d printer that will work as well so the gist of number two really is get a good bed sometimes the one that comes with your printer isn't the best option so if you're having troubles with adhesion make sure that the bed that you put on there and you can usually just put them right on top of the existing bed is the best one for your printer okay folks you have made it we're on finally to number one and you deserve a pat on the back or a Snickers or a cookie or something so treat yourself you did good you made it through this long video we're at number one and the reason I left this for last is because this really is the most important thing as far as the success rate of your prints if you can get this one part nailed then you're going to have a much higher success rate with each of your prints it makes all the difference and when that is bed leveling and the first layer squish oh that's what I like to call it so bed leveling the first layer squish the what bed leveling refers to is the distance that your bed is away from the hot end and that could be any portion of the bed that corners the middle and anywhere on the bed itself so you want to make sure that's just the right space away so that that first layer goes down nice and smooth it makes contact that's not too far away but it's not squishing way far down and not allowing the material to actually come out the end of the hot end so one of the ways you can accomplish the bed leveling technique is to actually take a piece of paper and put that underneath the first corner and you their settings on your printer to allow you to go to each of the four corners and so you put that paper under there if you can pull the paper freely and move it around in between the hot end and the bed then you need to raise the bed up just a little bit using these little knobs here and everyone's a little bit different but most printers have these little knobs that you can adjust these little dials and so you want to raise that up to where it's just taught you want to be able to pull it a little bit and it should the paper should be able to move under there but it should be fairly tight and then if you've got it so tight that you can't move the paper then you need to lower the bed down a little bit what that represents is the thickness of the filament itself that's coming out of the hot end so if you get that distance just right then you're gonna get that first layer to squish onto the bed just nicely but not so much that it's actually gonna preclude the actual filament from coming out of the end so that's what I mean by first layer squish is that ideally when you're putting that first layer down you want that bead of filament to make good contact with the bed and not be too high not be too low but you want it to squish just a little bit so that it has that good adhesion to the bed itself and that kind of refers back to the other other tips that we've talked about so if you have to air on one side or the other I typically recommend airing on the side of squishing it a little bit too much because if you do too little then it might just spit out the string and drag it around and not actually make any connection with the bed and that's going to be an automatic failure if you're a little on the low side you'll still be okay if you're too flat then nothing can come out and that means that your first layer there really isn't one it's just going to be kind of just a thin paste of filament on there and then by the time you get to your second layer it might not have enough to actually grab on to to be able to extrude the filament there so those are really important once you level a bed you typically don't have to level it all that off and you're not gonna have to level at every print for example but over time and especially if the thing gets moved around or on really long prints or multiple prints you want to just check to make sure that that setting is still good that your loved your bed is nice and level and that distance between your hot end and your bed is just where you need it to be and with that your success rate for prints is gonna go way higher as compared to having kind of a an uncontrolled setup basically with your bed leveling congratulations you did it we made it through all 13 things there's a lot of information that we covered in here so be sure to check out those links in the description I've got an article on my website that covers a lot of the same stuff and it has kind of some different details on it though sometimes people prefer to see the written version instead so be sure to check that out all of the links that I talked to I talked about in the video are in the description below for different products and different forums and groups and websites and things like that so check those out there's a lot of useful information in there and then you can find even more of it on the website like I mentioned now if you're into 3d printing or you're wanting to get into 3d printing I hope you'll subscribe to this channel I hope you found this video useful enough to merit a subscribe and also I hope that you will check out some of my social media stuff a lot of times I'm just printing a cool little file here or this little gadget or gizmo there and I'll just put those updates on my Instagram or Facebook feeds so be sure to check out the 3d printing zone on Instagram and Facebook and if you've got comments please do share those there's gonna be hopefully lots of comments in here on my other video that I did about 3d printing we ended up with hundreds and thousands of comments and it's awesome so if you're here for the first time check out those comments maybe you'll see some cool tips in there things that will help you with your 3d 3d printing process so again thank you so much for watching thank you for joining me in the 3d printing zone and we'll catch you next time

Channel: The 3D Printing Zone

Views: 1,792,514

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Keywords: 3dprinting, 3dprinter, maker, 3dprint, 3d, print, printing, 13 things, tutorial, how-to, getting started, 101, 3d printing, 3d printer, 3d print

Id: LvGKfevdf_Q

Length: 30min 37sec (1837 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 01 2018