1st post, I just recently purchased the printer and its being shipped to the house. So I’m super excited and just browsing a bit I caught on some neat things such as the plastic nut adapter that prevents abrasions to the electrical wires. Any other tips/upgrades I need to know for my first time printing? I’m fluent using Autodesk on campus but at home I’m limited to using 123D from Autodesk too since I have some background with it plus its free. So I hope I won’t run into issues with it.
Tip 1: The golden rule for the FFCP is to ALWAYS remember to LEVEL your Build Plate. When you wake up in the morning and turn it on, before you have your first pot of coffee, before you start any print, level your build plate. You will save more prints that way than any other… plus you won’t damage you build plate by having your head plow into it and scratch it all up or worse.
Tip 2: Blue painters tape and glue stick for PLA printing, 190-210 extrusion temp, only up to 60 bed temp (you can leave the bed off.) Blue Tape and ABS Slurry (a mix of ABS scrap filament and acetone) for ABS, 220ish extrusion temp, 110 bed temp ENCLOSED with a constant and even heat (also keep the printer in a well ventilated area since ABS produced more fumes than PLA when melted.) With a glass build plate use aerosol hairspay (like aquanet) for PLA and Slurry of ABS, nothing else changes.
Tip 3: Ask lots of questions.
Required Upgrades: Three upgrades you should use (all found easily on thingiverse) are Active Cooling Duct for your print heads (best for PLA printing but I have used it for maintaining air flow within the enclosure for ABS and it helps;) a filament tube holder (moves the filament out from the machine body, helps reduce tension on the filament;) and an extruder cable support clip of some kind. If you are going to get a glass build plate for your bed a shim and edge clips are nice to print out before you install the plate so when you go to use it you can keep your printhead for smashing into the plate and breaking it.
Just to append what I already added is this. I am a terrible self promoter, but I started my own blog about 3d printing a little bit ago. I made a page that can be useful to you (since I wrote it as the page I wish I’d had when I started.) It’s my “useful links” page, it has links to several things on it but the links for Modeling and Slicing are worth looking at → Useful Links | Fabricating Reality: A Blog 2
Of special interest to you would be OpenScad and Blender for modeling and then Slic3r for Slicers… I still need to add GPX and install info for it too. I plan on getting to that soon.
