10 worst things which can happen during 3D printing

Recently I published an article about 10 biggest disappointments with your 3D printer which was very popular among our readers. That’s why I decided to create a list of 10 worst things which can happen during 3D printing. Everyone who used a 3D printer has learnt it the hard hand.  Sometimes you can avoid them, sometimes it just happens… Here you’ve got a list of the most frustrating things which can happen during 3D printing.

1. A print goes off on the first layer with an accuracy of 0.1 mm and you have to tidy a heating bed –   it’s no big deal but but it’s frustrating and time consuming. It’s not so bad then the bed is perfectly calibrated with a nozzle and a path has an ideal height – it’s much worst ig the first layer of plastic has pressed strongly in the bed and we have to tear it off from the surface. It’s O.K. when the bed is smooth and made from glass, it’s horrible when it had been covered with any agent increasing an adhesion, you had put BuildTak on it or it’s perforated…

2. When you print one fragment shrinks and peels off from the bed – the feeling then after a few hours hours your printout begins to go off  and you wonder, if it’s better to stop printing or to print till the end and than try to fix it? Unfortunatelly, gradual peeling off your printout from the bed can have very unpleasant consequences… Your printout can completely peel off from the bed and cause that the nozzle will extrude the nexy layers of plastic in the air – or even worse, your printout will stick to the nozzle…

3. When you print a few elements at the same time and one of them peels off the bed – co what’s the worst in a small production? -When one of a few – several elements printed at the same time rolls up and starts to peel off and when it’s possible that it will completely peel off from the bed. Printing of the rest of your models goes normally… Switch off or wait? – That’s the question.

4. A filament gives out or breaks during 3D printing. O As far as the siuation with a giving out filaments is quite obvious, breaking of filament is one of the most frustrating aspect of 3D printing.  The problem concerns composite materials to a great extent which structure is responsible for their weaker resistance and they’re quite fragile and delicate.  It happens with popular Laywood and Laybrick, so PLA composites, wood and chalk.

5. During printing a filament stucks on a roll -W trakcie druku 3D filament zacina się na rolce – when your material is not reeled correctly, it can block, loop and ruin a pintout. An extruder can’t pull a filament and a jagger starts to groove a hole in it. Rests of filament soil the inside of the extruder which requires cleaning. Of course, when we hadn’t noticed it before (because we had started the printing at night), our printer will still “print”  but in the air.

6. During 3D printing a filaments block a nozzle – a problem as old as  RepRap… A cheap filament from unreilable producer can be impure or have a floating diameter. In some way or another,  it blocks a nozzle and stops printing. In the worse case you will have to unclog the nozzle manually.

Photo  Krzysztof Matusiewicz
www.3dwpraktyce.pl

7. There’s a power cut during 3D printing – the next well-known problem – a nightmare of companies and people who print in this technology several hours. A power cut means the end of printing.  A solution for this situation can be autosave function, f.e. in Monkeyfab PRIME but it works only when you use particular materials and BuildTak sticker. In another cases a power cut means the end of printing, starting one more time and a lost of the material.

8. While 3D printing it turns out that generated supports are to weak to bear an element of a printout, they break and your model is printed in the air – some models are that complicated, that printing is possible only after after implementing of special supports. In the best case a saturation of supports has to be that big, that even if you print out your model, removing of it’s parts will be complicated or impossible… It can happen that to weak support breaks and the rest of the model is printed out in the air.

9. You can’t remove supports after printing – when you want to print a model with complicated geometry, you need plenty of supports… which can’t be removed afterwards. Next time, an experienced user will think it over and wonder how to put his printout or how to cut it into parts which will be printed out separately and stick together after the whole process… Or he will give a miss with this kind of models.

10. You can’t fix your printout – it’s the hardest decision. Theoretically, everything goes flawlessly, the layers are distributed as needed, your print sticks to the bed perfectly, the supports have been generated in the best possible way. Although something goes wrong. Maybe it depends on the speed or to low temperature? Maybe on to small or to big”flow rate” for the nozzle, maybe you should have put your model diferently? Maybe your printer is not advanced enough for this kind of models? Somehow or other, it’s to late for changes and your model is printed in one half or in 2/3. Do you want to switch off or wait till the end?