Book of the Week: 3D Printing Failures 2019 Edition

This week’s selection is “3D Printing Failures: 2019 Edition: How to Diagnose and Repair ALL Desktop 3D Printing” by Sean Aranda and David Feeney.

Everyone who has used an inexpensive 3D printer knows the truth: they fail very frequently. The machine can break, or you can set up a 3D print job incorrectly, resulting in a print fail. Either way, a good portion of your print attempts will inevitably fail.

When faced with a failure, some will diligently attempt the fix by adjusting parameters and retrying, or perhaps fixing the machine if broken. But unfortunately others may simply give up and leave the machine. Those that persist in seeking solutions do find they know a lot more about 3D printers when they’re done.

I know many people like that, those who have enormous experience running these machines. They know instinctively how to print any given object in an arbitrary material, and know immediately what’s wrong if a machine is broken.

But if you don’t have that experience, you’ll need to get some help. One way is to read this rather dense book. It’s written mainly by Sean Aranda, who apparently has over 75,000 hours of 3D printing experience on over two dozen different machine types. He sounds like one of those experienced people I know.

And like them, Aranda knows all the trivia needed to successfully 3D print. That’s the basis of this book: it’s essentially a dump of everything he knows, up to 2019. What’s covered exactly? There’s an incredible list of troubleshooting scenarios that are covered, including:

• Bed adhesion

• Build plate not heating

• Build plate not reading correct temperature

• Built up material in nozzle

• Extruder stepper skipping

• Filament snaps

• Ghosting

• Hotend can’t reach or maintain temperature

• Hotend not heating

• Hotend not reading correct temperature

• Layer shifts

• Control panel blank

• Model errors

• Not finding home and inverted prints

• Nozzle clogs

• Over / under extrusion

• Parts being knocked over

• Parts not mating together

• Poor layer adhesion

• Print pauses mid-print

• Running out of filament

• Settings

• Stepper motors overheating or malfunctioning

• Stripped filament

• Unleveled build plate

• Warping

• Z-axis wobble

• Z-height calibration

And much more. If that isn’t a comprehensive list of everything that could go wrong, I don’t know what is.

One caveat here, though: Aranda’s book covers issues only on filament-powered 3D printers, and does not cover, for example resin or powder machines. Those would inevitably be a second and third book for Aranda if he were to write them.

The book is written in a very easy to read style that I am certain everyone would appreciate, especially those new to 3D printing who need easy answers quickly.

If you are new to 3D printing, this is an excellent choice for a companion book to keep you operating successfully.

Via Amazon