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I just looked up your printer and it looks extremely similar to the one that I have, which is the Creality Ender 3. Both appear to have an identical stock plat

I just looked up your printer and it looks extremely similar to the one that I have, which is the Creality Ender 3. Both appear to have an identical stock plate, which makes me think your base adhesion problems will almost certainly be addressed by switching to a spring-steel PEI plate. Although I didn't start having problems after only a few prints, the stock plate on the Ender 3 actually worked too well for me which often caused me to need to use a tool to pry and scrape prints off which resulted in damage and reduced adhesion. I switched to the PEI plate and all my problems related to adhesion went away. It's smoother than the stock plate but somehow PLA sticks pretty well to it, yet not so much that I can't easily remove prints with my fingers. No glue stick or hair spray needed so far. 3D printers really aren't good toys in and of themselves. They're fun for a little while and then you realize you don't need that many plastic doodads. But mine's been very useful for certain projects where I need to build custom parts. People sometimes forget that these printers are just tools like anything else. Fortunately they've become so cheap that it's not really that much of an expense to find that out for one's self. EDIT: Seriously, anyone with adhesion problems should get a PEI plate. I have had nothing but success with mine and I don't know why these printers don't just come with them in the first place.

jimnotgym 5y ago
All Good tips, thanks. I think I would get more use out of it if I acquired some basic CAD skills!
- ravenstine 5y ago
  If you can code, OpenSCAD might be the best place to start. I have 3D modeling experience, but CAD is sort of a different beast and a skill of its own. Most of the free tools that exist are pretty complicated (FreeCAD makes me want to claw my eyes out) and the professional software packages are outrageously expensive. Once I found OpenSCAD, which is basically just modeling by code, I got way more use out of my 3D printer without just relying on other people's models. There's even an extension for VS Code that allows you to use it as an IDE for it with previews. This isn't to say that you can't take the time to learn more standard CAD software, but for what I'm doing I haven't had the time for that and I imagine you probably don't either. After a few hours of learning OpenSCAD and reading the cheat sheet, a whole world of possibilities was opened to me.
  - varelse 5y ago
    OpenSCAD's biggest problem appears to be that it is single-threaded. I learned this from a guy printing parts for my RV. Is there an open CSG package out there somewhere that does operations like Minkowski Sums as convolutions so that they can be expressed as multiplies in frequency space and then brought down to real space for tessellation? Not only could you take that multi-threaded but you could potentially run it on a GPU hundreds of thousands of times faster.
  - OJFord 5y ago
    I would love to use OpenSCAD, just seems to have a really steep learning curve that I can't get up. Even though I write code professionally and have no professional CAD experience, Fusion360 just clicked in a way that OpenSCAD didn't for using my 3D printer (Prusa Mini). I agree about FreeCAD, lacks a lot of polish, but there's a big update coming from it seems basically one maintainer that looks pretty promising. I found it looking for a way to save in a git-sane format (which this branch/fork has). Main problem with Fusion360 (for me) is the lack of Linux support.
    - ravenstine 5y ago
      I haven't used Fusion360, but I have to say the screenshots of the UI make it look appealing and pretty straight forward (more so than say Solidworks). My assumption is that it and other standard CAD packages would have a greater learning curve for a programmer who mostly wants to print simple but custom objects. Granted, I have a background in non-CAD 3D, but OpenSCAD was incredibly fast for me to pick up not just because it relies purely on code but that it eliminates a lot of concepts that you are forced to learn otherwise. In OpenSCAD, there are no units (though STLs seem to come out in millimeters), no object hierarchies, no sketches, no key combos, etc. All you have is code, in a domain-specific language, that describes what is being built. This can be difficult or unappealing, especially for someone who isn't a full-time programmer, but it can also be freeing to just deal with code and not have other things potentially get in the way or cause confusion. Of course OpenSCAD probably doesn't scale the more complicated a project gets. But for Arduino/RPi boxes, replicating parts, screws and bolts (given a 3rd party module), it's a powerful and handy tool. However, it might be horrible for someone with limited coding skills.
mdorazio 5y ago
+1 for PEI base, although it doesn't have to be spring steel. I ran a print farm years ago and used PEI sheets on top of the stock beds. You can buy them cheaply on Amazon with adhesive tape, cut them to whatever size you need, and adhere them right to your existing base plate. Although I fully agree with the second part of this comment as well - these days I only print a few things a year for custom projects and generally find that making items primarily out of wood and metal with a few plastic parts is a lot more satisfying and useful.

jimnotgym 5y ago

All Good tips, thanks. I think I would get more use out of it if I acquired some basic CAD skills!

ravenstine 5y ago
If you can code, OpenSCAD might be the best place to start. I have 3D modeling experience, but CAD is sort of a different beast and a skill of its own. Most of the free tools that exist are pretty complicated (FreeCAD makes me want to claw my eyes out) and the professional software packages are outrageously expensive. Once I found OpenSCAD, which is basically just modeling by code, I got way more use out of my 3D printer without just relying on other people's models. There's even an extension for VS Code that allows you to use it as an IDE for it with previews. This isn't to say that you can't take the time to learn more standard CAD software, but for what I'm doing I haven't had the time for that and I imagine you probably don't either. After a few hours of learning OpenSCAD and reading the cheat sheet, a whole world of possibilities was opened to me.
- varelse 5y ago
  OpenSCAD's biggest problem appears to be that it is single-threaded. I learned this from a guy printing parts for my RV. Is there an open CSG package out there somewhere that does operations like Minkowski Sums as convolutions so that they can be expressed as multiplies in frequency space and then brought down to real space for tessellation? Not only could you take that multi-threaded but you could potentially run it on a GPU hundreds of thousands of times faster.
- OJFord 5y ago
  I would love to use OpenSCAD, just seems to have a really steep learning curve that I can't get up. Even though I write code professionally and have no professional CAD experience, Fusion360 just clicked in a way that OpenSCAD didn't for using my 3D printer (Prusa Mini). I agree about FreeCAD, lacks a lot of polish, but there's a big update coming from it seems basically one maintainer that looks pretty promising. I found it looking for a way to save in a git-sane format (which this branch/fork has). Main problem with Fusion360 (for me) is the lack of Linux support.
  - ravenstine 5y ago
    I haven't used Fusion360, but I have to say the screenshots of the UI make it look appealing and pretty straight forward (more so than say Solidworks). My assumption is that it and other standard CAD packages would have a greater learning curve for a programmer who mostly wants to print simple but custom objects. Granted, I have a background in non-CAD 3D, but OpenSCAD was incredibly fast for me to pick up not just because it relies purely on code but that it eliminates a lot of concepts that you are forced to learn otherwise. In OpenSCAD, there are no units (though STLs seem to come out in millimeters), no object hierarchies, no sketches, no key combos, etc. All you have is code, in a domain-specific language, that describes what is being built. This can be difficult or unappealing, especially for someone who isn't a full-time programmer, but it can also be freeing to just deal with code and not have other things potentially get in the way or cause confusion. Of course OpenSCAD probably doesn't scale the more complicated a project gets. But for Arduino/RPi boxes, replicating parts, screws and bolts (given a 3rd party module), it's a powerful and handy tool. However, it might be horrible for someone with limited coding skills.

mdorazio 5y ago

+1 for PEI base, although it doesn't have to be spring steel. I ran a print farm years ago and used PEI sheets on top of the stock beds. You can buy them cheaply on Amazon with adhesive tape, cut them to whatever size you need, and adhere them right to your existing base plate. Although I fully agree with the second part of this comment as well - these days I only print a few things a year for custom projects and generally find that making items primarily out of wood and metal with a few plastic parts is a lot more satisfying and useful.