When someone sends you a file to print on your printer, or when you download a file from somewhere, or if you want to print something from a web page, the chance you'll get what you expect out of your printer on the paper is fairly high these days.
A long time ago there wasn't such a thing as PDF files. There wasn't standardization in print formats and communication between you, the software you were using, the data you wanted to print and the printer was much more complicated. I don't even think about it today, I just press Command+P, the print dialog box opens and I press enter and thirty seconds later I have a paper in hand that looks just as I expected it to.
3D printing is more complicated. We are perhaps still in the infancy of 3D printing from a configuration standpoint. There are similarities, but there are also differences. For paper printing, there is just toner or ink. For 3D printing there are all sorts of materials you can use from plastics to rubbery substances to carbon fiber or metal-infused filaments. You can choose to print the same model with any of those materials.
Printing a document is two-dimensional. 3D printing has a Z-axis in addition to the X&Y axes, and that can cause all sorts of problems. To start though, the printer prints the first layer of the model. That first later is the most important, because everything else builds on it. If the first layer doesn't stick, your printer will keep trying to print, spewing out melted filament, but the prior layer(s) aren't there for the next layer to land and dry on. And you just can't deposit melted plastic in the air and expect it to stay where you want it to—it has to have something to adhere to, which traces back layer after layer to the initial layer.
There are just so many ways for a print to fail. I had heard about this from the videos I'd watched before we got our printer. Typically, when something bad happens enough times, I just want to step away and be done with the thing for a while. In the case of 3D printed models, you can have things happen like stringy plastic all over the place, a gummed up nozzle, a plate bed that's gone out of alignment, filament that doesn't seem to want to print no matter how you tweak the settings or a situation so dire that the entire print head has to be taken apart, cleaned out and disposable parts replaced.
All of those have happened to me, plus some others. And yet only once have I wanted to walk away for a while. I let a print go for a while without checking on it. My thought is at this point, that one area of the print bed had gotten misaligned when I had accidentally put pressure on it while cleaning the bed up between prints. That misalignment had prevented that initial and crucial layer from adhering to the plate bed because when the nozzle had extruded the filament, it was too far away from the print bed to land on it and stick down. What happened next was two full hours of filament coming out of the nozzle and sticking to the bits extruded just before. A massive ball of melted and subsequently hardened plastic surrounded the hot end of the extruded head.
It was so much filament it had melted up into the workings of the extruded, causing me to take the whole unit off the machine and try and get the plastic out from around delicate wires and other parts. I had to put the unit back on twice, reconnect it, have it heat up, and then disconnect it so I had a chance to pull away some of the plastic that was now partially melted.
But for some reason, none of it bothers me. It's like a puzzle, figuring out what settings are needed for the various filaments (there are hundreds). Discovering what nozzle diameter and layer height produces the best models and what filaments look the best in different situations.
I keep failing, but unlike the typical me, I'm not disheartened by it. I suppose I'm looking forward to figuring this out—knowing what I need to do to get a quality print every time (or most of the time.) My husband hasn't been that interested in printing much but tonight he has a model that's going to take over three hours to print. I got it set up with the settings I think have the best chance for success (it's a difficult model to print because there are a lot of overhangs with no support in mid-air). I kicked off the print before writing this post and I am happy to have just checked on it and it hasn't failed yet. I think it will print successfully based on what I learned from the past two prints. The question is, will it look good when it's done?
There are a lot of ways to fail in 3D printing, but when you get something right and the resulting model is in your hands, looking beautiful or doing something interesting, it's all worth it.
The Big Boy Update: I had been working in the basement on kicking off the next 3D printed model and was leaving to go back upstairs when my son called out from his computer with this single statement, "I just had an idea: what if I had an army of girlfriends?!" He was playing Minecraft. Hopefully, there is something in the game that explains this statement from my son.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: my daughter loves Nana's next-door-neighbor, Susan. Susan has an elevator like my parents do in their house in the mountains. My daughter can work their elevator and loves going up and down in it, she told me. Apparently, both my parents and Nana's neighbor's elevator need braille numbers on the buttons so when my daughter visits she can know which button to push without asking.
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