The 3D Printing Glossary is a collection of terms used in 📝3D Printing, spanning the core processes, filament and resin materials, printer hardware, slicer settings, and common print defects that hobbyists and makers encounter.
Glossary
A
- 📝ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene) — A tough, heat-resistant petroleum-based thermoplastic prized for durable functional parts but prone to warping, requiring an enclosure and good ventilation.
E
- 📝Extruder — The assembly that grips and pushes filament toward the hotend, in either a direct-drive (motor on the carriage) or Bowden (remote motor feeding through a tube) configuration.
F
- 📝Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) — The most common 3D-printing process, building objects layer by layer from melted thermoplastic filament extruded through a heated nozzle.
G
- 📝G-code — The plain-text machine-instruction language a slicer outputs to tell the printer exactly how to move, heat, and extrude for each layer.
H
- 📝Heated Bed — The temperature-controlled build platform that keeps the first layers warm to improve adhesion and reduce warping.
- 📝Hotend — The heated end of an FDM printer that melts incoming filament and drives it out through the nozzle.
I
- 📝Infill — The internal lattice inside a printed part, tuned by density and pattern to trade material and print time against strength.
L
- 📝Layer Height — The thickness of each deposited layer, the setting that most directly governs the trade-off between print resolution and speed.
N
- 📝Nozzle — The interchangeable brass or hardened tip at the end of the hotend whose orifice diameter sets the extruded filament width.
P
- 📝PETG — A durable, water- and chemical-resistant filament that prints more easily than ABS while being tougher and more heat-resistant than PLA.
- 📝Photopolymer Resin — The liquid UV-curable polymer used in SLA and DLP printing, cured layer by layer by light into high-detail solid parts.
- 📝PLA (Polylactic Acid) — A plant-derived, low-warping thermoplastic that is the easiest and most popular filament, best for prototypes and decorative prints.
R
- 📝Retraction — A slicer setting that briefly pulls filament back into the hotend during travel moves to prevent oozing and stringing.
S
- 📝Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) — An industrial process that fuses powdered polymer with a laser, building strong, support-free parts inside a bed of loose powder.
- 📝Slicer — The software that converts a 3D model into the layered G-code toolpaths a printer executes, setting layer height, infill, supports, and temperatures.
- 📝Stereolithography (SLA) — A resin process that cures liquid photopolymer layer by layer with a UV laser to produce smooth, high-detail parts.
- 📝STL — The standard triangle-mesh file format that represents a 3D model's surface geometry for slicing and printing.
- 📝Supports (3D Printing) — Sacrificial printed structures that hold up overhangs and bridges during a print and are removed afterward.
T
- 📝TPU (Thermoplastic Polyurethane) — A flexible, rubber-like filament used for phone cases, gaskets, and other parts that need to bend or absorb impact.
W
- 📝Warping (3D Printing) — A print defect in which corners and edges lift from the build plate as cooling plastic contracts, most common with ABS.