OK, there are many things that can go wrong when 3D printing. Here is my current list of problems I have in the past 4-5 months after printing hundreds of miniatures. But which one is the most common?
When it comes to a failed print..... its time to do some investigating on where the failure took place. Sometimes its a combination of factors. Most often not and spending just a couple minutes is going to tell you a lot.
Here is the countdown of my personal failures!
6. Bad Resin.....yep. It did happen once! A bad bottle of resin which was a real problem to figure out. However Anycubic took it back for a refund and I purchased a new bottle. I determined this by having a bad weekend of prints using the same resin type I had been using with the same settings. The bottle had a weird marking on it as well. Something was definitely up with it. I even tried to adjust settings several times and releveling everything to making certain everything was correct. Even going back to printing a small previously successful print.
This should not happen often. This should be very rare in fact if not unheard of.
5. Table Bump! While this seems obvious........ it happens. Worst case scenario your print completely fails at that point, moderate failure.... get some green stuff out.... and if you are lucky, nothing happened.
This is completely avoidable, but hell... life happens.
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| Yea, I bumped that table. Green stuff can help here though. |
4. Ran out of Resin!- OK, especially on large prints check your resin vat. Hit pause and carefully refill your resin vat if you are even close. On a long print I like to make certain its got enough resin there about 3-5 hours into a print.
Especially when doing printing tanks.......... Check your resin.
This happens, hopefully only that one time.......
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| Resin ran out. My bad. |
3. Crowded Build Plate- Ive had this happen several times. My build plate is pretty full and a part of a print fails or ends up looking weird. Id say 98% of the time or better I have no overcrowding problems even with prints right up next to each other.
I have begun to think that with larger items you need more space between other items.
Most things can be almost right up next to each other. However this practice will occasionally result in errors. Doesn't mean I wont stop doing it though.
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| Small Error due to overcrowding. Small part too close to some Big ones. |
2. Failed Supports... Now this one happens and sometimes its a mystery. I generally use pre-supported stl files from very solid Patreons. I have ran into problems though.
The most common thing to do is to just add a couple additional supports in the program. Add these supports at the location where the failure started and or at the very beginning of the print (closest model location to the build plate.)
On non-supported miniatures make certain you get a 30-45 degree angle and then use the auto add support functions in your programs. This gives you the best chances of success.
Bases!- yes these are a common failure for me. Titan Forge so far does them extremely well (and the best in my opinion). I will do an article on printing bases in the near future. Ive tried it all. Non-supported bases can be a problem.
Supports can be an entire set of article on their own. Its one of the more complex parts of 3D printing. Luckily for us though almost everything can be handled on auto where the programs sets up the supports for you.
1. Build Plate not Level! This is by far the biggest reason for a print failing. Ive read it online, seen it in videos, and experienced it myself.
What does this look like? Empty build plate with nothing on it or just part of the platform left on the build plate usually with striations.
Maybe your last print was hard to get off the build plate and in doing so slightly moved the build plate. Perhaps the lock down bolt was not tight enough. Whatever the reason I have had this happen more than once. Fixing it just takes a little bit of time (about 10 minutes). Don't rush it, so that you wont be having to spend the extra time to do it again. done that been there.
The best video for leveling your build plate I have found is this one.
Conclusion: By far I have far more successes than failures. In fact I am printing out a tank now from Cyberforge and am most of the way done with it and should be by tonight leading me to assembly hopefully later or in the morning.
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| currently be printed! |
Personally I would estimate that 9 our of 10 prints have absolutely no issues, even the more complex files. The ones that do have errors could have been easily prevented most of the time.
When I think I may have done something wrong.... do a quick low resin using test print that takes an hour or less to do. Check it and then go back to printing.