I’d like to develop a handy tool for myself and anyone else getting into 3D printing. As we all know, the 3DP world is a tangle of rabbit holes that can be very confusing and difficult to navigate.
We have a group who are learning/teaching ourselves and each other how to 3DP. We are finding that once a person is past the very basics, they start seeing artifacts in the print that they’d like to eliminate or improve on. This step, without already knowing everything, is the tricky bit. Learning the cause and remedy to something we see in a print can be difficult.
I’d like to compile a diagnostic tool that is functionally similar to these diagnostics from the pistol shooting world:
Notice the circled vertical ‘line’. I am certain that each ‘point’ in the ‘line’ is the start/stop location for that layer. Making your slicer somehow spread these start/stop points instead of stacking them should eliminate this. Also notice how the eyebrow interrupted this.
I wish I had more control, but we only have Rep5’s so we are stuck with Makerbot’s software…
The lower horizontal like seems to be at the ‘waist’, where the diameter stops decreasing and starts increasing. Did it underextrude for some reason. What about the higher line? What causes these, and how to prevent them?
Why does the bottom layer from Rep5’s always look this crappy? Notice how the perimeter bead doesn’t follow the curves, but is sharply angled. Notice the general gappiness. What causes this, and how to prevent?
tl;dr: Let’s make a photo-based ‘dictionary’ of 3DP problems, with their common causes and fixes!
Wow! I remember when I just started with 3D printing , the first thing that I was looking for was something like this, but it was always difficult to pinpoint everything. Let’s collect them here!
This would be so nice! I’m not very experienced, actually I’m very much a beginner, but I’d love to help in any way that I can. I know I’ll be using most of your stuff myself! Thanks!
