3D Printing - The beginning

Time to buy, install and use a 3D printer.

What exactly should be done before to buy a 3D printer ? What is necessary to know ?
How to choose a printer ? 

My experience.

There are many questions that should have an answer even before to choose a printer.

What do you need it for ?

Seems a stupid question but is actually extremely important, because the answer it impact what kind of printer you should buy and where you should place it.

In my case the reason to have a 3D printer is to print small boxes for electronic circuits or small supports to be used in a research lab for my wife.

And probably to print out some prototypes of small comics characters for my daughter.

For this purpose is not necessary to have a very high quality printer, maybe the characters printing would require more details but a final print can be done via some 3D print services, so is only to have an idea about a final result, using not too expensive material, meaning the PLA filament should be enough, no need to have a printer capable to print in high quality materials.

This translate in the end for a not-top-the-edge printer, reducing the price and needs.

Looking around and browsing the market in the end I decided to go for an Enders 3 Pro printer.

Where install it ?

3D printers can be placed almost anywhere in the home, however the print process can generate some smell and release some microparticles, potentially harmful on the long run.

There are not yet big studies on the effect on human health but common sense is telling me that the place should be ventilated.

In my case, also for other reasons, the better place should be in garage.

What do I need to install it ?

The 3D printer is of course the main thing but there are other things that is necessary to have in the installation place.

• a big enough flat area
  The 3D printer need to be placed on a flat, sturdy and leveled surface.
  A well leveled table is important to obtain decent results.
• power
  Well, the printer need to be powered, so an electric outlet is the minimum.
  But actually is better to have a dedicated UPS to avoid abruptly interruption of the printing in case of blackout
• WiFi or wired internet connection
  Many printers just need an SD card containing the file to be printed (the Enders 3 Pro can do that), however having a connection to internet allows to use other ways to send data to the printer and monitor remotely what is going on.
  A 3D print can take up to two days, so having a way to monitor what is going on is often very important.
  So I'll add later a Raspberry Pi connected to my network running OctoPrint.
  The chosen printer should supports that.
• enclosure
  the traditional 3D printer technology works melting some kind of plastic.
  Melting and cooling down the material used to print is a very important phase of the print and more the temperature around the printer is constant, more is easy to replicate a good result.
  In other words, is important to avoid big changes in temperature in the environment where the printer is placed.
  The best way, especially keeping the printer in garage, is to have some kind of enclosure, even better with the capability to heat or cool down in order to maintain the same temperature.

Basically the ideal system should be something like that :

The 3D Printer in an enclosure with temperature (and maybe humidity) sensors, LED lights, a camera to see what the printer is doing and a fan, controlled by OctoPrint (eventually with an eRPOf to easily turn on and off the system), powered from an UPS unit to reduce the risk of outage.

What software to use ?

The printer of course need to be associated with some software.
As stated before, the printer can be "not connected" to a computer since it can read an SD card containing the file to be printed.
Or it can be connected via USB to a computer so that the computer can send to it the file to be printed.
However, "the file to be printed" need to be prepared.

The file the printer understand is a file in a format called G-code and this file needs to be "tailored" on a specific printer. Plus there are many options you can embed in this file to obtain the final result.
So it is needed a software capable to generate the G-code file.
This software is called "slicer" and it takes in input another type of formatted file, usually an STL file, produced by a CAD or download from some 3D Print archives.

To sum up, two software are needed to play with a 3D printer :

• a CAD, to design what you want to print or modify something you download, capable to produce an STL file
• a Slicer, capable to have an STL file and transform it in a file to be used directly by the 3D Printer.

In my case I want programs capable to run on Linux since Linux is my main platform.

The CAD initially will be ThinkerCad, that can be also only online, i.e. via a browser.
I did use it time ago, not too much sophisticated but at least for the beginning should be OK.

For the slicer I will use two different ones.

Initially Cura, good for the beginners but with advanced capabilities, capable to run on all the main platforms (Linux included).

Then I'll try OctoPrint since is already in the plan to be used.

What next

Ok, I decided what printer to buy, what software to use and where to place it.

Of course it means I need now to clean up the garage and make space for the printer.
When it will arrive will be construction time, the Enders 3 Pro arrives semi-built, some assembly is required.

Then I'll add an UPS and the OctoPrint stuff and then I'll try to build some kind of enclosure.

More posts will document this experiment :)