Wow, we’re already at the last video of this series… I’ve produced these over
the course of almost two months, and yeah, it has been crazy. I’ve got to get used
to a routine again that isn’t “eat, sleep, produce, repeat”, and you’re probably
wondering what should be the next steps for you. Do you really need to buy your own machine?
How should you go about starting to use it productively instead of getting stuck in “novelty”
phase? Yeah, let’s looks at that today!
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So where do you go from here? Great question, but that really depends on you. I’ve tried
to stress in this series that you should think about what you’re going to do with a 3D
printer before you grab one. Now, I know usually 101 or “basics” series have an “examples”
section where they just go through the things we just learned and apply it to a “real”,
fake project, but you know, there are plenty of videos or writeups on my channels and on
others that are either full-on 3D printing projects or just make use of 3D printing where
it makes sense. I’ve linked a few up here. If you’re unsure about whether a 3D printer
is the right tool for you, maybe check out your local makerspace first. Right now, a
lot of them are still closed, unfortunately, but maybe you’re watching this video a year
after I uploaded it in what is now July 2020 and maybe things are different by then. Or
maybe not. I don’t know. Anyway, having a “known good” machine
that you can try printing your ideas on is really valuable and you’ll get a much better
feel for what’s doable and what actually printing something entails than what I can
show you on video. Whatever you do, start small. Pick a small
project or a simple design to get going on, and just take things one step at a time
And that can be as small or as insignificant as this little piece. This is an adapter my
mom needed so that she can directly set her coffee filter onto her mug in the morning.
Perfect for making just one mug of coffee!
You know, stuff like that, useful, not too much of a time investment if it doesn’t
work out, but still with plenty of learning opportunities along the way. For example,
for this to be dishwasher safe, I printed it out of PC-ABS, because PLA is obviously
just going to warp. And with those learning opportunities comes
the temptation to start upgrading thing. My suggestion: Try to understand what is going
on first before you dive into a potentially frustrating and costly upgrade bonanza. Sometimes
just a better slicer profile can make heaps of a difference for print quality and reliability.
What I also always find super useful is being able to print different materials. PLA is
totally fine for a lot of things, but knowing how to print with PETG, ABS, Polycarbonate,
and maybe flexibles and Nylon really expands what you can do with that same skill set of
knowing how to print parts. When trying a new type of material, start with a known-good
filament first, so that you can learn how it behaves and how to work with it without
having to worry about the material just being bad. And once you’ve figured out how to
print it, you can then always step down to a cheaper brand if you want to and if you
run into problems with that, you’ll know whether it’s bad filament or just an an
inherent shortcoming of the type of material you’re using.
Once you’re comfortable with your machine, there are plenty of good causes that you can
use your 3D printer for. For example, in the early months of the Covid-19 outbreak, there’s
been a huge demand for printed faceshield, in fact just the small headbands that you
clip an easily available transparency sheet to. That has worked fantastically well in
places where regular supply chains just weren’t able to keep up, so I guess you can expect
a lot more like that in the future, now that we, as a 3D printing community, have proven
that yes, these machines are able to make real, functional parts, fast, and that people
are able to self-organize to make it happen. So, thank you to everyone who has contributed
to that cause. If you want a big project, there’s e-nable
that you could join, printing low-cost prosthetic limbs, but you know, even just helping out
friends and family and printing the little nick-nags they need is, I think, something
that already makes the world a tiny bit better.
Let’s check out some of my subscriber’s comments and questions from the rest of the
series! Mario is saying “great content, please don’t
forget Tinkercad!”: Yes, you’re totally right, I should have mentioned that. Autodesk
used to have a lot more “simple” tools, like 123D Design, which was a Fusion360 “light”
version, basically, but all those 123D tools are now gone, but Tinkercad survived! So Tinkercad
is a really simple, I guess actually “playful” way of designing 3D parts; it’s all about
starting with a few basic shapes and combining those with each other, cutting away bits,
adding bits here and there. It’s not the most powerful tool in the world, but it’s
definitely an easy start if you or your kids have never used a CAD tool before. So definitely,
Tinkercad is worth a look. It’s free and I guess Autodesk are seeing it as a “soft
introduction” to eventually sell you a subscription to their bigger products.
Adam is asking “should I use a 0.45mm first layer height on a 0.4mm nozzle and will that
a loss of detail?”: I’m not a fan, unless you go real wide on your extrusion width as
well, as a general rule of thumb, you do lose quite a bit of control over how that extruded
filament sausage ends up looking, and as a rule of thumb, if you go above ¾ of your
nozzle size, or I guess more accurately, of your extrusion width, it’s going to start
squirming out towards the sides and isn’t going to make great contact with the bed,
so you end up with the opposite of what you’re trying to get. Now, you’d think the extra
width would be an issue with small details, but modern slicers like PrusaSlicer actually
compensate for that and will fill those small spots as well.
MC is saying “Newbies should know about thermal protection!” - and yes, I totally
agree, but it’s impossible to find out if the manufacturer has correctly implemented
all the safety features that are needed for a reasonably safe use their printer, so definitely
look at some reviews that test those features.
Tom is asking about the resolution of the Z-axis, which I’ve super briefly touched
on in one of the videos, but basically, every axis has a “natural” step size, and on
most printers, you don’t have any guarantee that the microstepping between those positions
is reliable. Now, Prusa do something where they let you calibrate that microstepping
interpolation on their Trinamic drivers, but on most printers, the microstepping positions
can be pretty far off. So on those, in the best case, you can only get reliable position
on every half step, so with a common setup, every 0.02mm - and 0.15mm layer heights aren’t
divisible by that. So yes, 0.16mm layers would be a better choice, but as soon as you introduce
auto bed leveling, all that goes out the window and basically, you can use any layer height
you want because you get dithering of those steps throughout the layer. But that’s a
topic for another video.
Vorname wants to know where I get my shirts: On the internet! It takes a lot of scrolling
to find these!
Anyway, I hope that answers some of those burning questions, and I hope this series
helped you get into 3D printing - or if you already knew everything I was talking about,
share it with a friend that could use the info.
A massive thank you goes out to my Patrons and YouTube members for the help with deciding
which topics to cover, I’ll try to do a lot more direct voting on future video topics
there, so if you’re interested in that, there’s links in the description. We also
do Q&A Hangouts there! And lastly, I couldn’t have taken the risk
of spending the better part of two months just working on a series like this, so thank
you to the sponsors that made it possible. And thank you to you for watching! I would
encourage you to get subscribed and then to comment below what you would like me to cover
next. Anyways, that’s it for this series, keep on making, and I’ll see you in the
next one!