OUR EXPERT
Alastair Jennings happily shares his home with 3D printers hanging from the rafters and spare parts strewn across the filamentlittered floor.
Fine-tuning your printer setup is by far the most important thing you can do when you buy a new model. Don’t just settle for the fact that it works directly out of the box, bar a little assembly. You must check that the base is level, the belts tightened, and everything is bolted in good and tight.
After careful setup you’d hope that the 3D print process would always be simple and carefree. If only this were the case! A 3D printer has many moving parts and so you should expect to carry out a little maintenance along the way. Usually, this is as simple as dabbing a little oil on the axis, a slight tightening of a belt and, on occasion, replacing a bearing or nozzle. Hopefully, by the time you have to replace a component on your 3D printer, you’ll be an expert and making major repairs will be a breeze – or more likely, you’ll use it as an excuse to buy the latest and greatest model!
An accurate 3D printer setup will result in greatquality prints. But taking the long view, it’ll also ensure that your printer will experience minimal strain and wear and so hopefully you and your printer will have a long and happy life together.
While we focused on the mechanics of the printer in last month’s tutorial, this issue
