You learn and improve with every print.
Some blog post
This was either in a review or a comment, but it’s stuck with me since the beginning of my descent into the 3D printing world: “You learn and improve with every print.”
I’ve learned a lot about 3D printing and a lot about painting miniatures in this past year, so this info might be helpful for those of you interested in either purchasing a printer for your own minis and hobbyist interests, or if you’re a librarian/educator wanting to use a 3D printer in your workspace. (See also my reviews for the printers I’ve used so far.)
Short hand list:
- Slicer settings are important
- Filament can make a (small) difference
- 3D printing is very DIY
- Buy band-aids because you will destroy your hands
3D Printing and Making Minis
As you may know, my numero uno goal with 3D printing is making miniatures and terrain for D&D. I want the minis and terrain to be functional and look good. Since I’m using them to play D&D once or twice a week with a bunch of teenagers, I don’t need them to be extra fancy. If an arm breaks off, I don’t wanna cry about it. For me, that’s the beauty of having a 3D printer; I can just print another mini and move on.
The issue I face is quality and quantity. I need a machine that can print nice, reliable prints that I can clean and paint to look like passable miniatures, and I need it to print lots of them. I want my kids to be able to design their own character tokens, print them out, and be happy with how they look.
Slicer Settings
The slicer program I use the most and I’ve grown fond of is Ultimaker Cura. It’s free and somewhat easy to use. There’s a bit of fiddling to get all the settings to come up to change things, but once you get them up, there’s a lot you can mess with. The program recognizes an amazing amount of 3D printers and with each new update, it adds more its list.
What I do, and what I recommend, is that you look up “cura profiles” that other people have made and tested to print their minis. (Just be careful that the profile matches your machine. So use Ender 3/5 profiles on Ender 3 or 5, not on your Flashforge.)
Lately, I’ve tested a couple different profiles. One came from Fat Dragon Games. You can download their profile for free. And the other came from 3D Printed Tabletop, which is also free.
So I tested these two profiles on my Ender 3 Pro with PLA+ Pro filament, and I really liked the results of both. You really can’t see the differences too much in the photo above. The 3D printed tabletop, to me, felt a little stronger with slightly less visible printed lines and sturdy body parts.
In terms of settings, they are very different. The Fat Dragon profile uses taller layer heights (0.1mm), very little jerk, fast print speed, and keeps the infill (at about 35%). The 3D Printed Tabletop profile goes with the popular miniature settings: no infill (instead, it’s all top layers, meaning it’s completely solid), lowest layer height (.08mm), and very slow print speed.
My preference? I agree with a lot of arguments for the Fat Dragon Profile (no weird blobs from radiating heat off the nozzle, faster printing, less filament waste), but when you’re printing something very tiny and thin, I’m won over by the 3D Printed Tabletop’s profile; it’s shown great results so far. Sadly, it uses up a lot of filament, so I’d only recommend it for smaller prints. I use the Fat Dragon profile for anything bigger than a medium-sized creature.
Fat Dragon also has a great profile for printing terrain without wasting filament, which I use almost religiously on my Ender 3.
Small note about filament: I’ve started trying PLA+ Pro filament from eSun and yeah, I really like it so far. It’s not a huge difference from good Hatchbox filament, but it’s enough that I can see it. It’s not all much more expensive, so if you’re willing, go ahead and try it.
3D Printing is very DIY
But there is help to be found online! If you want to get good 3D prints, you have be willing to grapple with the machine and do a lot of online research. I’m no electrical or mechanical engineer, so I’m just as overwhelmed as the next guy when I read a post that says the best way to fix an issue is to pull out a soldering tool or flash a bootloader with an arduino board. This is where Youtube and lots of walk-through instruction manuals have saved my ass. I couldn’t do it without them.
For the most part with 3D printers, everything is great and smooth until something breaks and then you’re going to hate everything until you fix the issue… and once you fix the issue, you’ll feel like a mechanical genius! It’s a win-win. It takes patience, meticulousness, and some trial and error. (This is why I buy the cheaper machines, because I can afford to mess up a $200 machine as opposed to a $3,000 machine.)
Since 3D printing is so DIY, the big question you’ll ask when something goes wrong is WHY? Why are you printing like this? Why are you making that noise? The computer on these machines will only rarely give you a clue. It’s not like a paper printer that tells you it’s out of ink or there’s a jam. Oh no. Most 3D printers are not so advanced.
Personal example: The Mystery of the Layer Shift
After I replaced the magnetic bed on the Ender 3 Pro with a glass bed and PEI sheet, I noticed my terrain prints having a layer shift issue. It would print okay to a point, then shift, and continue printing but slightly off from the original layers.
The print was plenty stuck to the bed, so it wasn’t sliding around due to lack of adhesion (a common issue); it was something else. I watched the print as it went (a long, boring task that some people solve with cameras), and I noticed it would happen when the bed jerked around a little too forcefully. I added more clips to the bed to hold the glass firmly, but it still kept happening.
I looked online and discovered in a post on reddit that this was a normal issue with heavy glass beds and that I should change the jerk settings in Cura. I did and, what do you know, no more issue with the layer shift. Problem solved.
Another issue I had was leveling the bed after adding the glass. The glass was real thick and I couldn’t get the bed to level, but again, someone online suggested unscrewing the z-axis stop and raising it a couple millimeters and that definitely fixed it. Simple as that.
So, with any issue you have with your printer, someone else likely had the same issue and fixed it, so be sure to scrounge around on the internet before giving up.
Buy Bandaids
What a lot of 3D printing posts and videos don’t really talk about is how often you will hurt yourself. My god! And no, it’s not the hot bed or the nozzle that’ll do it to you. (I’ve burned myself only once on a nozzle and I was being very stupid. The bed only gets to be about 140° Fahrenheit (60° degrees Celsius) so you really gotta set your hand on it for a good minute before you seriously hurt yourself.)
No, what’s gonna get you is removing the prints from the bed and removing supports. You use a sharp spatula to pop the print off the bed after it’s printed. I’ve gored myself with this thing about a hundred times. I’ll be as careful as I can and still skin my knuckles. You also use a sharp set of flush cutters to remove supports from the prints. I’ve sliced, snipped, and gored myself plenty with these as well.
I remember finding a video on fixing a filament jam and the guy in the video had incredibly butchered hands–bleeding and bruised and covered in band-aids–and I felt an intense wave of empathy for him. Those hands were 3D printer hands.
So please, if you buy a 3D printer, invest in band-aids and Neosporin or a really good set of thick gloves.
