This week’s selection is “3D Printer Troubleshooting Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Fix all Common and Uncommon 3D Printing Issues!” by Johannes Wild.
Desktop 3D printer operators will be familiar with failure. In spite of continuous technological advances with the technology for over a decade, prints still fail regularly, and often with the same underlying root causes.
Most 3D printer operators simply learn by doing. As each failure occurs there is a research process to figure out what happened and how to resolve it for next time. However, while effective, it’s also a very tedious and time consuming approach to learning how to avoid failures on a 3D printer.
Another approach is to use this book, which covers forty different typical failure modes seen on FFF 3D printers.
Some of the failure scenarios covered include:
- The hot end does not heat
- Clogged nozzle
- Printing does not start
- Poor print bed adhesion
- Filament issues
- Under-extrusion & Over-extrusion
- Curling
- Stringing or Oozing
- Blobs and Zits
- Pillowing
- Vibration & Ringing (Ghosting)
- Warping
- Elephant foot
- z-axis wobble
- Layer- Gaps (Layer Cracking / Separation / Splitting)
- Layer Shifting
- Missing Layers
- Scars on the print
- 3D printer knocks over parts
- Poor bridging of gaps
- Printed object cannot be removed from the print bed
- The z-seam is clearly visible
- Dimensional deviations between print and CAD model
- Problems with the infill
- General problems with the support structure
- Support structure falls off
And there’s more in the book. As you can see, these are the most typical failures that occur on FFF devices, and knowing in advance about them could be key to avoiding them entirely.
Note that the book covers each scenario using Ultimaker Cura software, but remember that these problems can all occur regardless of which slicing software is used. However, learning about them in one tool will greatly help in diagnosing and fixing them in any other software tool.
If you’re new to 3D printing and want a head start on troubleshooting, this book could be for you.
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Via Amazon
