All memos tagged #3d-printing

Benchy — formally 3DBenchy — is a small tugboat model released by Creative Tools in April 2015 as a calibration and benchmarking print for 3D printers, and the most widely printed object in the...

Protopasta Conductive PLA is an electrically conductive composite 3d-printer-filament from Protoplant that compounds conductive carbon black into a PLA base, letting printed parts carry low-voltage...

The parts worth printing in a new machine's first week — the ones that make the printer easier to live with, for someone who just unboxed one. Part of Getting Started with 3D Printing. Print for the...

What to buy alongside a new enclosed FDM printer — for someone who just ordered one and would rather not spend money they do not have to. Part of Getting Started with 3D Printing. Buy it with the...

Getting print emissions out of the room you sit in — for anyone running an enclosed FDM printer somewhere they also live or work. Part of Getting Started with 3D Printing. Decide between filtering...

How to store filament so a spool opened today still prints six months from now — for anyone whose collection has outgrown the box it arrived in. Part of Getting Started with 3D Printing. Store an...

Getting started with 3D printing on a current enclosed machine is a purchasing decision, a storage decision, and a ventilation decision — not a tuning project. Printers now arrive calibrated and hold...

Quick-reference for the everyday Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) filaments — what each one is genuinely good at, where it fails, and the printer conditions it demands. Specialty and novelty materials...

A heated bed is the temperature-controlled build platform of an FDM 3D printer that warms the print surface to improve first-layer adhesion and reduce warping as the plastic cools. The heated bed...

Layer height is the vertical thickness of each individual layer a 3D printer deposits or cures, measured in microns or millimeters, and the primary setting governing the tradeoff between print...

Warping is a 3D-printing defect in which a part's corners and edges lift away from the build plate as the plastic cools and contracts unevenly, pulling the print out of shape. Warping is a common...

Supports are sacrificial structures a slicer generates beneath overhangs and bridges of a 3D print, temporarily holding up material that would otherwise sag or collapse, then removed after printing....

The extruder is the motor-and-gear assembly of an FDM 3D printer that grips solid filament and pushes it into the hotend at a controlled rate, forming the machine's cold end. The extruder controls...

STL (STereoLithography) is a widely used 3D model file format that represents an object's surface as a mesh of triangular facets, serving as the standard input a slicer converts for 3D printing. The...

Retraction is a slicer command that briefly pulls filament back from the hot nozzle before a travel move, relieving pressure to prevent oozing and the fine strings it leaves across a 3D print....

PETG (polyethylene terephthalate glycol) is a glycol-modified polyester 3D printing filament that balances the easy printing of PLA with strength, toughness, and moisture and chemical resistance...

The nozzle is the small metal tip at the end of an FDM 3D printer's hotend, with a precise bore—commonly 0.4 mm—through which molten filament is extruded onto the build surface. The nozzle sets the...

G-code is a plain-text machine-control language — the sequence of movement, temperature, and extrusion commands a slicer generates from a 3D model to drive a printer's motors and components layer by...

Slicer software converts a 3D model into the layer-by-layer instructions a 3D printer follows, dividing the digital object into horizontal cross-sections and generating machine-readable G-code. A...

Infill is the internal lattice a slicer generates inside a 3D-printed part, set as a density percentage from hollow to solid to balance strength, weight, material use, and print time. Infill is the...