For Beginners

All 3D printers are made up of the same basic components. In my opinion the only difference between certain printers are the frames everything is mounted to. There are printers that use aluminum extrusions to build their frame and there are printers with entire enclosures made of plastic or metal panels of their own design. For example, QIDI and Flashforge are designed for the consumer to just set it up and print.

All 3D printers are made up of the same basic components. Whether you have an aluminum extrusion frame printer like an Ender 3, or a printer with a proprietary design like the QIDI and Flashforge printer. Learning all the different parts and what they do is extremely important. Sad to say, but 3D printers are kind of an unreliable machine. There are so many things that can go wrong and will go wrong the further you get into this hobby. So troubleshooting is inevitable, but don’t worry cause there are a lot of communities and resources that help you figure out even the most difficult problems you might come across.

Motherboard

The motherboard is like the brains of a 3D printer. It controls all the working parts of the 3D printer like the stepper motors, fans, hotend, endstops, and more. This is also what takes the GCODE that you created in you slicer and translates it into your printers movement. There is not much that can go wrong with the motherboard. So if there is something wrong with your printer this will probably be the last place you will check.

Power Supply Unit (PSU)

This is the power supply unit or PSU is the name that you will hear from people on forums or other websites. I would consider this the heart of the 3D printer. It’s where everything gets its power from. The power supply takes the AC voltage that comes from your wall outlet and converts it into DC voltage that your printer runs off of. Typically you’ll either find a 12v or 24v unit that comes from the factory. It’s important to know which of the two your printer is using to replace certain things like fans or heater cartridges for your hotend. Using a part with the wrong volts could lead to bad things happening.

Stepper Motors & Stepper Drivers

Stepper motors are like the muscles of your printer. You’ll have a minimum of 4 stepper motors of various sizes. One for the X axis, one for the Y axis and one for the Z axis. The forth stepper motor is what moves your filament through the hotend to be extruded. There are multiple different sizes of stepper motors like the Nema 14 (35x35mm) motor on the BIQU H2 extruder and the Nema 23 (56x56mm) on some fully built custom 3D printers. Other than a few rare occasions, printer companies only will use the Nema 17 (42x42mm) stepper motors. The height of the motor is what determines the amount of torque it can handle.

Stepper drivers are like the nerves that send instructions to the muscles, or in our case the stepper motors. These are located on the mother board of your printer and can be either built in like the Creality 4.2.7 board or interchangeable like the BIGTREETECH SKR board. They can also be classified as silent or non silent stepper drivers. This is where you’ll be able to set your adjust your Vref.

GT2 Belts & Lead Screw

The GT2 belts are what translate the rotational movement of the stepper motors to linear movement of your hotend or build plate. These are usually used when dealing fast moving parts in the X and Y axis because its a direct correlation between the diameter of the gear and the length the parts moves.

Lead screws are always going to be found on the Z axis because of its slow presice movements. They give the stepper motors a mechanical advantage by acting like it has a lower gear ratio. It also has the added benefit of being a little more accurate than belts. The only downfall to using lead screws is sometimes you’ll get one that’s has a little curve to it which can cause something called z wobble. There are fixes for this by installing a flexible coupler.

Extruder

Extruders are what feeds the filament either through a bowden tube or directly into the hotend to be turned into molten plastic. They use one of your stepper motors with a toothed gear to grip the filament and push it forward (feed) and back (retract). There are so many different types and style of extruder on the market, it can start to get really confusing. It’s mainly broken into 4 different types.

Hotends

The hotend is where the filament gets heated up and turned into molten plastic. They are one of the parts that are attached to the “X carriage.” I’ll go into that a little later, but let’s stick to just the hotend. There are 6 main parts that make up a complete hotend, the heatsink, heat break, heat block, heater cartridge, thermistor, and the nozzle. You’ll need to understand all of these different parts. So lets break this down…

Fans

You’ll have a minimal of 4 fans on your 3D printer that all have different jobs. Hotend fan, part cooling fan, motherboard fan and a PSU fan. There are 2 types of fans that are use, axial and blower fans. Axial fans are used to cool the heatsink on the hotend and controls tempurature of the motherboard and PSU. They move high volumes of air but at low pressure. Blower fans are used to cool the plastic after coming out of the nozzle. They move a lower volume of air but at a higher pressure. That makes it perfect to focus it directly at the tip of the nozzle. Part cooling fans are highly important to solidify the molten plastic quickly when printing overhangs and bridging.

Build Plate/Bed

Build plates, or what most people call it, the “bed.” This is what your models print on. 3D printer almost always come with a heated build plate now days because some filaments absolutely needs to heated bed for your first layer to stick. They are comprised of the same parts as the heat block. There’s a heating element and a thermistor but these are built into the plate and are not removeable. The build surface is something you are able to upgrade or replace.

There are a multitude of different build surfaces. For example there are glass, carborundum glass, spring steel, PEI coated, garolite and so on. But all of them have the same purpose, and that’s to keep your model stuck to the bed during the entire time it’s being printed.

The first layer of your print makes a big difference whether it comes out perfect, or at worst, doesn’t even finish at all. You’ll hear from a lot of different places that leveling your bed will get you a good first layer. While that is true, it’s a lot more complicated than that. I’ll first explain why having a good first layer is so important for having great-looking prints. Then everything that’s associated with getting that bed level not only with the hotend but with the whole frame of the printer.

So, why is having that perfect first layer so important? Your first layer is the foundation of your whole print. If you get this wrong, it could cause a bunch of problems later in the print. The biggest problem that this will cause is bad bed adhesion. If your print comes loose from the bed, it could either ruin the following layer above the area that lifted off the bed or could come completely off. This usually happens when you print with ABS or other filaments that are prone to high shrinking. (insert photo of shinkage) Another problem that will happen is the first layer will have gaps in between the extrusions if the nozzle is too far away from the bed. Some will think this is under extrusion. (insert photo of nozzle to far away) On the other hand if the nozzle starts too close to the bed this will cause something called “elephants foot.” This isn’t so much of an issue because you can fix this in post process using a razor blade to trim off the corners. (insert photo of elephants foot)

So you bought your first 3D printer and just finished assembling it. If you haven’t assembled it yet and need help with that click here <=(insert 3D Printer Assembly link here). Now you want to print your first model but you are having a hard time getting started. I’ll show you step by step what you need and how to get from finding your first design to holding that 3D model in your hands. Now let’s get started…

Let’s start with what software you will need and which ones I recommend will be the easiest for you to understand. 3D printing starts with a digital 3D model which is called an STL file. It’s called that because the file type is a .stl like your photos are .jpeg and so on. There are two ways for you to get an STL file. The first and the easiest way is to download a model that somebody already designed. You can find these models on a bunch of different websites. Some you can download for free and some you pay for the STL file you want. Since you are just beginning and you still need to get used to the process and knowing how your printer works, then let’s just stick to the free sites.

Probably the most popular one is Thingiverse. Here is a link to my profile if want to take a look at some of the models I designed.

You don’t have to create a Thingiverse account to download the STL files but I would recommend you do. With an account you’re are able to message the design if you have any questions like what filament they recommend using or if you need to print with a certain setting. You will also be able to start a collection of files you want to print.

Another website you can get your STL files from is Thangs. This site is a collection of models from a bunch of different websites. A majority of them are from Thingiverse but there are some that come from other places. With Thangs, you need to create an account to download straight from the site.

Eventually, you will you’ll come across the problem of not finding the exact model you are looking for. Maybe you find a model that you want but you want to modify it to fit your style. This brings me to the other option of obtaining STL files. Designing them yourself with CAD software…

CAD design is something that may look extremely complicating but with a little time and practice, you will be able to create simple 3D models that you can print. There is a handful of different CAD software ranging from beginners to expert, free or paid. Let’s stick to the free software for beginners. That’s Tinkercad…

If you ever played building blocks as a kid you will have no problem learning simple CAD design with Tinkercad. It’s as simple as picking the 3D shape you are looking for, cube, sphere, pyramid, cone, then dragging and dropping it on your workspace. Combine multiple shapes to create the shape you are looking for. It may look like a software made for kids but don’t be fooled by its appearance. With enough creativity, you’ll be able to make really complex models. Even some seasoned veterans of the 3D printer world still use Tinkercad to design their models but if you want something a little more advanced then you should take a look at Onshape.

Onshape is CAD software comparable to what the experts use. They offer a free account for personal use but also have paid subscriptions for businesses if you choose to start selling your designs. It’s a little more difficult to use. When I first started learning CAD I jumped straight into Onshape without knowing anything about it. It took a handle full of YouTube tutorials to understand sketches and extruding but it was worth the time. You will be able to design replacement parts for broken things that are hard to find or something that you can’t buy.

Now that you have an STL file that you like, you have to convert it into a file that your printer can read. A Slicer is a software you download to create what’s called a GCODE file. 3D printers stack layers of melted plastic on top of each other to form a 3D object. GCODE is just a roadmap for the printer to read layer by layer. All 3D prints come with a copy of the slicer that they recommend you use but that’s not your only option. CURA is probably the most used slicer software that people use.

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This is the slicer beginners might find easier to learn with because of how much information is out there explaining how to use it. CURA has a wide range of preset printer files from the most popular brand. If you can’t find your printer, then you can create a custom profile with the dimensions and settings for whatever you have. After uploading your STL file to your workspace, there are a couple of settings you need to choose from before generating the GCODE. First is the filament you’re printing with like PLA, PETG, ABS, TPU. They all print with a different nozzle and bed temperature. The second is to choose the nozzle diameter which will most commonly be .4mm. This will make sure the width of the line being extruded is correct. The third is the quality of the model being printed. Think of it as similar to photo quality. The size and amount of the pixels determine how much detail is in the photo. Same with the size and amount of layers printed in the model. You can choose from “Super Quality” that has .12mm layer heights, “Dynamic Quality” with .16mm, “Standard Quality” with .2mm, and “Low Quality” with .28mm. Standard quality is perfect for almost all models you will print. After you slice the model there will be a preview of what the print will look like with each layer.

There’s just one more thing to do before you hit print. Add the GCODE that you just created to the SD card that it came with, transfer the SD to the printer, select the file and PRINT.