Man, I can’t even tell you how much I’ve learned since I picked up my first 3D printer. It was encouraging to have my very first print take off and just look beautiful at the end. It wasn’t until subsequent prints that I began to learn limitations and methods of overcoming those limitations.

Hairspray is a game changer for bed adhesion. Throw the glue sticks away, they’re comedically useless by comparison.

It also turns out that temperatures play a huge role in a successful print. Finding the right temperature for your material is ideal and requires some experimentation. Get yourself a benchy model and run it off with various settings. Try a few and change the temperatures higher and lower in five degree increments. You’ll learn a lot, that’s for sure.

Lastly, the slicer matters. My 3D printer comes with a copy of “ELEGOO” branded Cura.

The version my printer came with was an old MacOS edition of Cura, 4.8 specifically. It’s absolutely trash for supports. It’s literally so limited.

I’ve also tried experimenting with other slicers. PrusaSlicer in particular. So I essentially stole the temperature settings from the stock slicer my printer came with and plugged them into PrusaSlicer. Bam, we’re in business, and I can basically print anything I want, within reason. It was like a fucking revelation, I swear.

One of my print failures was a fucking error. The G code that the ELEGOO branded slicer put out caused the printer to crash. That crusty old slicer they deploy this thing with is really a handicap. I tried using Ultimaker Cura 5.8 and it honestly didn’t impress me.

So that’s where we are. I’m also starting with PETG in particular, which I’ve heard is a pain in the ass. Realistically, it prints like a dream if it’s dry. So buy a dryer and turn it up to 65C and dry your filament for around four hours before you start your print. If you can run your spool from the dryer, that’s really optimal. I tried, but unfortunately the rubber grommet and angle of approach all worked against me and it essentially caused the printer head to lift and not actually end up laying down layers. Not sure if I can mitigate that. Would love to, honestly. Especially with these longer prints and the fact that I keep the printer in the basement because it’s noisy as fuck.

Overall I think it’s really fucking cool to be able to run anything I want off. I love it. This is an awesome hobby to enable my other hobbies. It’s also useful that I’m finally able to print a wide variety of objects within reason, just with the little bit of information I’ve been able to figure out since getting it.

Supposedly the “game-changing” mod for my printer is to replace the print bed springs with silicone grommets. I’ll have to take that mod on eventually and report back here as to how much of an improvement it is.