As an artist with an aerospace engineering and programming background, I was fairly confident that my foray into 3D printing would be absent any major surprises. I even had some experience with 3D design, so I certainly didn’t consider myself a total neophyte in the space.   

And yet, over the last two years of building a business that prints 3D models of cities and other landscapes, I learned some valuable lessons that I (perhaps naively) had not anticipated.

I hope the following 10 nuggets will help other aspiring 3D printing artists navigate this fascinating and intricate landscape, while avoiding some of its pitfalls.

1. Affordable printers are not turnkey solutions

You can either buy a $10,000+ printer, or you can buy a cheaper printer, which will force you to learn a lot about the physics of melting plastic and the intricacies of robotic hardware. There is no middle ground. Because, at the end of the day, your 3D printer is just a device for precisely and repeatedly pushing melted plastic through a very tiny hole, and is subject to the vagaries of physics, the environment, and very likely tiny, invisible demons. A sub-$1,000 printer will force you to become an expert.

2. Don’t be afraid to DIY

If you have the time to assemble a 3D printer from a kit, you should embrace the challenge. 

The process takes anywhere from ten to twenty hours, and you will make mistakes (oh, so many mistakes). But the experience will give you loads of insight into solutions to the inevitable problems you will encounter as you embark on your 3D printing journey. You’ll gain confidence and familiarity with the many moving parts, tolerances, and design of your new machine, which will prepare you to solve future challenges.

3. Expect Murphy’s Law

Now you’ve got a printer. Do you see those 500 parts, all working together in a carefully-orchestrated dance? Given enough time, every single one of those parts is going to break or loosen or vibrate or otherwise ruin your print. 

And it’s not just the machine parts that will cause prints to fail: a change in the airflow in your room, a change in the cleaning agent you use on your build plate, a glitchy power cable, even extra dust in the air--any of these external factors can wreak havoc on your print. In fact, some of these failures might happen in the first thirty seconds of the machine’s life. 

And yes, I am speaking from experience. My very first 3D printer had an improperly aligned x-axis limit-switch, so my first auto-home action -- the very first thing you do with a printer -- caused an immediate, loud, and scary failure. 

This was the first of many failures. But even after thousands of hours of printing, your beloved printer will find a way to surprise you almost every time it malfunctions. “There is no way that could have failed,” I used to say. Now I say “what is it this time?” I admire the machine’s ability to innovate new ways to fail.

4. Momentum is paramount

Despite what you just read above, if you encounter a “sweet spot” of reliability (e.g. nozzle seems to be working, first layers are nice, final print quality is good) then print like hell - milk that opportunity and run as many jobs as possible, 24/7. 

When completing big jobs in the past, I’ve had printers run without any adjustments for over a thousand hours with only two 10-minute breaks a day. I kept the same cadence, didn’t move the printers, didn’t change filament types, wiped the build plates the same way between each print, and lubricated the rods once per week. It was beautiful.

5. Knowledge is power

Know your printer inside out. Become familiar with the sight, sounds, smell, and feel of a successful print job. My desk is in the same room as the printers, and now I get a “spidey sense” when something needs attention and can rectify or abort before things go seriously wrong.

6. Embrace the unknown

Don’t be afraid to remove parts to study them, especially the hot end. If you print enough, (see #2) you will eventually realize that you need to disassemble the hot end to fix a problem. 

It’s scary and potentially time-consuming, so it’s easy to just move on to some other project (you’ve probably got a lot of them); but the time spent and experience gained from tinkering are worth it. You’ll learn a great deal about the printer and the process, enabling you to identify and solve future issues. Be confident - you can do it!

7. Embrace complexity

Because 3D printers are so versatile and there are so many filaments to choose from, people use them to print a wide variety of things. 

Every 3D model is different, every filament has different properties, every setting in your slicer does something important, and there are complex interactions between the print and the filament and the slicer settings. 

There’s no easy way around this, so embrace the complexity. If you’re fortunate enough to only print objects with similar physical characteristics and size from the same filament (material and supplier), you may only need a handful of settings. But most folks aren’t, so, like them, you’ll be performing lots of experiments to get the right settings. 

8. Trust but verify

There is no shortage of knowledgeable experts and bloggers who offer valuable advice about 3D printing, slicing settings, and printer repair. And you should seek out all the wisdom that’s at your fingertips. 

But note this caveat: much of the advice you’ll read won’t be appropriate for your printer or the types of objects you want to print. And, let’s be honest, for every solid piece of advice on the Internet, there’s information that’s just plain wrong. You’ll have to use your 21st century information-validation skills to sort through it all.

9. Learn by failing

If you’ve read this far, you probably think I’m a cynic. With so many things that can (and will) go wrong, how do you get anything done? Here’s where I implore you to think like a scientist. When something goes wrong, think of it not as a failure, but as an opportunity to learn something. 

As Thomas Edison once said, “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” 

So, first assemble the evidence, think about possible solutions, and then test one thing at a time.

Every test should be preceded with a question that you can articulate on paper or out loud: “Is the set screw loosening after a few minutes of printing?” “Will lowering the z-offset prevent the edge of this print from pulling up?” “Will speeding up my top surface infill lower the shine on the top of my prints?” 

Don’t expect questions like “how do I reduce stringing?” to generate results, focus more on actions than problems: “will increasing my retraction distance reduce stringing?” You can climb a mountain with little steps, but they have to be in the right direction.

10. If you’re not having fun, it’s not worth doing

Finally, and I wish more 3D printing experts emphasized this, 3D printing is fun fun fun! 

It’s remarkable to see a machine build a 3D part right in front of you, and it feels amazing to have dialed-in your machine and slicer settings to be able to consistently produce high quality parts. The rewards come fast and furious as long as you don’t let the inevitable failures keep you down.

There you have it, 10 things that I wish someone had told me before I embarked on my adventure in 3D printing. I encourage you to try it out, be bold, and have fun!