Beginner’s guide to 3D printing from a non-expert
This post aims to save you time, so you can quickly get started with 3D printing.
I always loved watching those 3D printing time-lapse videos on Youtube, I found them to be mesmerizing and awesome, but I wanted to see that in real life and maybe create my own 3D models for my DIY projects. I wanted to get into 3D printing so bad. I bought my first 3D printer an Ender 3 pro in December 2020, and It was a steep learning curve. In this post, I want to share my experience, tips, and advice that might be great if you do not know how to start with a 3D printer. There is so much information out there and it is overwhelming because 3D printing is a world itself. So in this post I tried to answer questions I had when I first started, questions like: what kind of 3D printer should I start with, what is a filament, do I need to master the art of 3D modeling, what software do I need, what is the budget, etc. I just got into 3D printing so I know what it is like to be lost, I did a lot of research and I documented everything along the way, I summarized everything in this post, so the aim is to save you some time and get your idea printed as soon as possible.
What is 3D printing?
As defined in Wikipedia, 3D printing, or additive manufacturing, is the construction of a three-dimensional object from a CAD (Computer-aided design) model or a digital 3D model. The term “3D printing” can refer to a variety of processes in which material is deposited, joined, or solidified under computer control to create a three-dimensional object, with the material being added together (such as plastics, liquids, or powder grains being fused), typically layer by layer.
You can see in the video how the printer is working layer by layer and it takes some time, time to melt and solidify the plastic.
3D printing is essentially when you have an automated machine and it will extrude melted plastic into a pre-programmed pattern, it squeezes the plastic filament out of its nozzle to build a 3D model, it builds it up layer by layer. An older version with no automated machine is the 3D pen, and it was the closest I got into 3D printing years ago when I tried my first 3D pen. It was like sculpting and the principle is simple, a string of plastic is melted through an extruder into the nozzle and you shape it the way you want.
As you can see in the video the output is pretty ugly, I’m sure there are people out there who can make cool stuff with 3D pens but you will never get the full experience or the potential of a 3D printer.
There are many parts to 3D Printers, and it’s important to know the names of those parts when upgrading or replacing components, and for general troubleshooting. The filament which I will get more into later enters the extruder to the hot-end where it’s melted, the axes of the printer move according to a predefined pattern to start printing/melting the plastic on the heated bed.
The printer has three axes that it moves through, and those are the number of axes you need to create a 3D model in space.
On the display screen in most printers, you will get information like the temperatures, the position of the nozzle, the feed rate or FR, and other feedbacks …
What do you need to get started?
All you need is a 3D printer and a filament. But which ones to get.
The 3D printer: Many choices to pick from but it depends on many factors that you might want to consider, the price, the size of the print you need, how user-friendly it is … let me explain. As mentioned before a 3D printer has three axes and these also represent the space that the printer can work on. The build volume (the surface x, y, and z) can be taller, wider from one printer to the other, if you want to print little things like small figures you probably don’t need to worry that much, but if you want to build tall models let’s say plane body you need to consider a taller printer to support that. And when considering a big printer you need to also consider the space it will occupy in your house or workplace. Now for the user-friendly factor or the plug and play, it depends on how are you willing to tinker, change and play around with different settings to get the print right. If you want something right out of the box and fully assembled, you are probably also going to pay extra money for the transportation.
But I personally think that Ender 3 is the perfect gateway printer to get people into the Hobby. It’s relatively inexpensive, and it’s got a great performance out of the box. And the community is huge, so if you ran into some troubleshooting, you will find a lot of resources to fix your problem or answer your questions. I’m not an expert in printers, but I can tell you that ender worked pretty well for me. So I highly recommend it.
When I got my Ender, it was easy to assemble (trust me, if I can assemble it so do you) and if the manual that comes with it is not clear enough, you can find plenty of tutorials to walk you through it in detail.
Now the other component that you are going to need is the filament. The filament is the plastic that your printer is going to use to print, think of it as the ink that the digital printer uses to print on paper. the filament is just a string of plastic that usually comes wrapped around a bobbin. There are types of filament, the most common one is PLA, a type of plastic that is very strong but not necessarily intended for structural purposes, since it does not hold up to heat well. It is the most available filament and relatively cheap. So it’s ideal to start it.
There is also a filament called TPU, it’s the flexible stuff, a squishy material, and challenging to print. And then there is the ABS, a strong and more heat resistance than the PLA but it is more difficult to work with and has bad fumes. Last but not least a filament called PETG is like the middle ground between PLA and ABS. As a beginner, I recommend that you start with PLA then you can move to others if needed. When you buy filament, it usually comes with instructions like the print temperature needed to melt it and also the bed temperature so make sure to respect that.
Setting up your printer
The thing that tripped me the most at the beginning is the bed leveling of the printer. Let me explain, in 3D printer, the print head travels side to side in a straight line on the x-axis, we have two aims when we level the bed, first, we are trying to adjust the angle of the bed not to get it parallel to the ground but rather with parallel with the plane that the printhead travels.
Secondly, we need to get the bed at the right distance from the nozzle so that the first layer is extruded with just the right amount of squish to help it stick to the bed.
The coordinates x, y, and z as displayed in the LCD screen are not set yet, let’s first reset them to 0, go to the menu in your 3d printer and choose ‘Prepare’ then choose ‘Auto Home’. Your printer will move to the point (0,0,0). I was really excited when I saw the printer move for the first time haha.
Now get a piece of office paper, go to your 3d printer menu click on ‘Prepare’, and choose ‘Disable steppers’, so you will be able to manually move the bed without damaging your printer. Under your printer bed, you have four leveling wheels, turning them one way, lift them up and on the other way, lowers them down. We can manually move the bed and nozzle now, put the piece of paper in between, and move the wheel till the nozzle touches the bed, once get close start moving the paper back and forth, the aim is to have the nozzle close enough that the piece of paper just gets pinched. so there is a little bit of friction in between. then repeated the same thing for the other three corners of the bed. Make sure to double-check again and again all the corners till you have that level of friction across the bed.
Now we are going to test our leveling by printing our first trial. To do so we need what is called a slicer. A slicer converts your 3Dd model (usually an STL file) into a language that your printer can understand, it's called a slicer because it slices up the 3D model into flat layers that are built up on top of each other to produce the final object.
3D model (STL file) => slicer (.gcode file) => 3D printer
By far the most popular free slicer is Cura by Ultimaker, it’s popular because it supports a wide range of 3D printers.
Go ahead and download the software to your computer. Once installation is done, add your printer to Cura by going to ‘settings, then ‘printer’, and then ‘add printer’, you should able to see the ‘Creality Ender 3 pro’ in the list, choose it, and add it.
Next, change the width and depth to 235, this is optional, you can skip this part and leave it to the default configuration, will work just fine. With that, you actually set up the profile of your printer.
Now your first print is going to be the one to help you test your printer level. A very known website for 3D design (like GitHub for code) is Thingiverse, I added a 3D model that you can download, go to this link and download the STL file.
From Cura go ahead and open that file.
Then click on slice, you can preview the print on different layers. Now save it into a .gcode file. Put it into your SD card and insert it into your printer. you should get a message that says ‘card inserted’ on your printer screen.
Now we need to feed the filament into your printer, you can use the filament that comes with the printer, it is not the best quality but it will do the job. Preheat the nozzle and the bed, a step you need to do before adding any filament. go to the menu in your printer and choose the ‘Prepare’ then ‘Preheat PLA’ and finally ‘Preheat PLA’. You will notice on the home screen that the temperature started to increase towards 200° for the nozzle and 60° for the bed. Once heated you should be able to insert the filament through the nozzle into the tube, till you feel pressure at the end. a little bit of resistance towards the end. then you can hear and see that the filament is coming out from the nozzle at the end.
We can now start our print, choose ‘print from TF’, and pick your file. When everything is up to temperature the printer will start with an intro line on the side to make sure there is plastic in the nozzle.
This print aims to adjust the dials in each corner to get the right amount of squish between the nozzle and the bed.
From the images you can see the errors, when you have gaps between individual extrusions and they are too far away it means that you have a big gap between the nozzle and the bed, so you need to raise the bed in that area. and When the extrusions are too close and the plastic doesn’t have enough room between the nozzle and the bed, it squeezes out sideways which causes little vertical ridges that pop up. and you can feel them by running ur finger over the top. When you’re even further too close the filament will be soo thin and translucent, and you will have a hard time removing it from the bed. You know that the leveling is just right when the plastic is squished just enough that the individual extrusions overlap just a little bit, which means it will be smooth when you touch it with your fingers, with no gaps, and no ridges.
In this picture, you can see the difference when adjusting the bed of the printer. And still, it is not as perfect as it should be. I had to run a couple of more prints and adjust before getting the result I want. Don’t pull your hair over this, It just has to be good enough, not perfect! plus some printers don’t have a 100 % flat surface so you might never be able to make it perfect in each inch of the bed.
There are other prints that you can run that helps you diagnose your printer, these are two very known prints within the community, so you get to compare your prints with the expected results. And if it doesn’t match will be easy to detect the reason thanks to the huge community and documentations. The calibration cube and the benchy boat are the most known ones. So go ahead and print them.
Don’t expect to get a perfect print from the very first time, especially with a budget printer it will require more setup, expect to have print fails, I came across a lot of problems like strigings, precisions … and every time I was able to make my print better, I learned a tone in the process.
Turn your idea into a 3D model
Well, creating a 3D model is basically designing, if you are not into design or you don’t want to bother yourself with it, then you can simply use free or paid models created by others. Websites like Thingiverse offer endless free designs that you can choose from. Just find the STL file, slice it and print it.
But if you couldn’t find what you want and you want to create your model from scratch, you will need modeling software, a CAD to build the 3D model. Tinkercad is a free software modeling that uses basic shapes that you can connect and do a lot (it’s designed to be kid-friendly so I believe it will be a great start, easy to pick up on, and intuitive so you should give it a try), if you felt that Tinkercard is too easy for you then you should jump to Fusion 360, I personally found it overwhelming since I have no experience with design, so I’m still using Tinkercad and it is working just. The good news is that both software can be downloaded for free.
Converting an idea into a 3D model then a 3D print is a process, and like any process, it’s going to take time to master and you will make a lot of mistakes, discover new tricks. Just be patient and enjoy the process.
Create a timelapse video
One of the things I enjoy doing is record the print that usually takes hours and resume it in seconds. I’m not a professional video maker but I managed to do it with a simple setting. Just a camera, a light source, and a camera holder. The camera should be able to record time-lapse videos and for a long time.
Here is my first time-lapse video that was very proud of.
I’m sure you can find better settings and technics to make better time-lapse videos.
Questions I had
- How much time does it take to get the printer started? I was able to assemble it, configure it and run my first print in a couple of hours.
- Can I stop a print / pause it? YES, this is very important, because I personally cannot leave the printer running while I’m not around. So I find out how to pause and resume the print.
- Is it too loud? NO, you can hear it but it is not bothering, at least for me, it is just the sound of the fan cooling down electronics
- Is it dangerous? NO, there will be some fumes from the melted plastic but if you run your printer in a well-ventilated room there is nothing to worry about.
- Is it fast? NO, it takes up to hours for big prints. You should get an estimation of the time from your slicer before running the print.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask!
Enjoy 🖖.
References:
- Youtube channels: maker’s muse, make anything, CNC kitchen, 3d printing nerd, CHEP.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OomRF6pKh2k
