Getting into 3D printing

I’ve been doing 3D printing for over five years. Designing and printing things for practical use gives you an appreciation for everyday objects and what makes them useful (or not)1.

Thinking of getting into 3D printing? Here’s some considerations:

Do you have a ‘serious’ use in mind or would it be a novelty?

I think a fair few people have bought a 3D printer as a novelty, printed off a few test pieces from Thingiverse, then left it to gather dust (or sold it).

Do you have a 3D printing project in mind? Are you going to design your own prints/parts with e.g. OpenSCAD? (You don’t have to design your own parts, obviously, but it definitely helps you to be more engaged!)

And also, do you have the spare time for a side project like this?

Cheap printers aren’t necessarily cheap (or very safe)

I started with a budget printer, the Anycubic Mega-S. Sure, you pay less £/$ up-front for the hardware, but then you need to account for all the time spent leveling the bed manually by turning those screws over and over, trying to a get a decent first layer for your print. The Marlin firmware can help here with its bilinear bed-leveling helper, but it’s still a lot of faff.

Was I just unlucky and got a budget printer with a bendy bed? I’ve no idea.

I will just say this: given the tight tolerances involved with getting an optimal distance from your printer nozzle to the print bed, leveling your bed by turning four screws which might then ‘adjust’ themselves (due to temperature changes or otherwise) seems a little… optimistic to me now2.

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Warning: cheaper printers can have very poor safety features in terms of thermal runaway detection/handling (fire risk!). If you do spring for a cheaper printer, please consider installing the Marlin firmware for its safety features (if nothing else). And I’d recommend always being close at hand when a budget 3D printer is running.

I wonder how many people try a budget 3D printer and give up after too much faff with bad prints?

Happily I didn’t give up, and after over a year with the Anycubic I bought a Prusa i3 MKS3+. What a difference! The crucial aspect was the PINDA sensor – no more messing around with the bed leveling, no screws to fiddle with: the printer automatically senses the height of the bed at nine points before every print.

Build it yourself?

Some printer makers offer the option of sending the printer as a kit so you can build it yourself (for a lower cost).

I did this with my Prusa. Putting it together (guided by the good quality colour instruction magazine) reminded me of building Lego models and you get a nice look into how your printer works.3 Plus, if you ever have to troubleshoot it, you’re more familiar with the various parts.

If you do put together a printer from parts:

  • Don’t rush! Take your time by doing it in several sessions over several days
  • Take some pics during the build for later reference

I assembled my Prusa carefully and was rewarded with a printer that worked without having to backtrack and tweak anything.

Your printing workflow

There’s a few options for sending jobs to your printer:

  • an SD card you ferry from computer to printer – very laborious
  • USB connection from printer to your desktop or laptop – again, laborious – do you want your computer tied to the printer for duration of a print?
  • USB connection from printer to OctoPrint software (or similar) running on a machine always close to your printer, e.g. a Raspberry Pi

The last option is great for managing and monitoring your printer. Some slicing software like Prusa Slicer can send your 3D print directly to OctoPrint. You can access OctoPrint via a web page to see your print in progress4.

Making your own designs with CAD

A 3D printer can really shine if you make your own designs. To do that you’ll need to learn some CAD software. Some of the many options:

Coming soon: a post on OpenSCAD best practices.

  1. a lot of everyday items are fairly reasonably designed, so you’re usually spared having to think about why something is awkward or “doesn’t work well for me”. Start designing your own practical objects and you can be the victim of your own mis-steps! But you learn things ↩︎

  2. another difference: my budget printer used a Bowden tube, which pushes the filament down a long tube before it reaches the hot end, whereas the Prusa has direct-drive extruder: a motor on the print head pulls the filament to it; this means less friction and potential snagging ↩︎

  3. a lovely touch: you get a bag of sweets in the Prusa kit. The instruction book tells you to eat some every now and then during the build! ↩︎

  4. OctoPrint has some great plugins such as GCode viewer , Exclude region , ArcWelder  ↩︎