My First 3D Print in Over a Year

Yesterday I posted my 2021 Christmas List and it got me thinking about my 3D Printer. I have not printed anything in over a year and I have a number of projects I wanted to print. So as soon as I finished the post, I walked over to my 3D printer and started it up. The year has not been kind to the filament I had loaded in the printer and it became incredibly brittle. The first thing I needed to do was to clean the old filament out and put in some brand new PLA. That actually took a bit of work but I got it cleaned out.

My son sent me some STL files for Christmas-tree ornaments that he designed and printed last year. One is an open ball with the Salt Lake Temple inside. It is a prominent building here in Utah and holds special significance for a lot of people in the area. Seeing as that is where my parents were married and they expressed interest in receiving one, I decided to print that first.

 

My 3D printer cannot just print an STL file and so I needed to run it through a slicer program that converts the file to GCODE. Unfortunately my slicer program would not load on my Mac. I'm not sure why and so I downloaded the latest version of Ultimaker Cura. That loaded up fine and I just dropped the STL file into the program. I clicked the "Slice" button and it spit out some GCODE that I sent to the printer. I didn't expect the first print to go smoothly and about 5 minutes into the print, it came unstuck from the printer bed and started turning into a spaghetti mess. I stopped the print and sent a text to my son asking if it should be printed face-down. It turns out that I needed to rotate the ornament 90 degrees in one direction. I did that inside Cura and then generated a fresh set of GCODE. I then sent that to the printer and waited the 13 hours for it to complete. The picture above is the final result that I saw this morning.

Those that do a lot of 3D printing will note that it is not a very clean print. I consider it a huge success because I didn't even bother to level the print bed which is something you should do before every couple prints. The first thing I noticed was all of the spider-web strands and wondered what settings I need to adjust to get rid of that. To salvage this print, I used a pen knife to remove some. That got to be tedious work. When I sent my son this picture, he told me to just carefully use a heat-gun and they will shrivel up and melt into the print. I tried it and it worked like magic.

There are several other things that are wrong with the print. Notice how you can see the print layers on the side of the ball. My printer could use a good nozzle cleaning and that should blend the layers together better. I also need to do a bit of calibration work. This is what I am working on today. My hope is that I can fine tune the printer so it creates good results. We'll see how it goes.

There is a lot you can do with a 3D printer but unfortunately it is not as simple as printing a document. There are quite a few adjustments you can make and understanding what each does is vital to a quality end product. Should you wish to get into 3D printing, remember that it can be more like a hobby than simply click and print.

Some Things Require Practice

This week my youngest son and I have been running the 3D printer almost non-stop. We have some PLA filament that needs to be used and so we are printing a bunch of fun little toys. As I type this, I am printing a spinner for my grandson. It may sound like a waste of PLA but there is a reason for doing the print other than just using up material that has a finite shelf life: practice.

Several weeks ago I volunteered to use my 3D printer to make some personal protection equipment for a hospital in California. I originally signed up to help and was asked a number of questions about my experience with my 3D printer. The organizers of the service project didn't want me getting in over my head and not be able to deliver on my commitment. Once they felt comfortable with my help, they sent me the assignment. Ultimately, did I have enough practice?

This past week I got a new computer for my home office. I will be using it for a number of different things and one of them is to help create 3D prints. I loaded up Ultimaker Cura which is used to prepare 3D models for print. In the past, I have sent models to my son and had him prepare them. Now I need to learn how to do it and so that is why I am practicing. It is not as simple as dropping an STL file into Cura and having it prepare the model. There are seemingly hundreds of parameters to tune. I think I have them pretty well dialed in based on some help from my son and so now it is time to give it a shot. Naturally I am starting with something small that only takes about an hour or so to print. If it doesn't turn out then I haven't really lost anything because I learned from the experience and can make adjustments.

I know I have lots to learn about 3D printing and so I will continue to print things. Practice is one of the best ways to learn something new. Remember that as you try to pick up a new skill: it may require practice. Don't let that scare you as it is just a part of learning.