when 3d prints come off the printer, moreoften than not, they are not really finished yet. so here are a few things that you can do toget your 3d printed parts looking and working even better. aprintapro reached out to me for this sponsoredvideos series to be featured on their printaguide
abs 3d printing material properties, platform, home to 3d printing tips, tricksand guides. check out aprintapro and the printaguide siteat the links in the video description below! before we start, a few safety tips: when usinga knife or other sharp object, always cut away from your body and any fingers you’vegot holding the part.
yes, that’s going to make gripping the parta bit harder, but it’s better than slicing off a fingertip. use a vice to get the part held in place properly. also a good idea: gloves with a bit of resistanceto getting poked and some safety glasses against bits that might fly off.. next up, chemicals, we are going to coversome solvents like acetone, and while these aren’t super toxic, you should still takecare not to get them on your skin or breathe the vapors. most of them are also flammable.
what’s definitely no joke, is epoxy - whileit’s a very common structural adhesive, if it gets on your skin or you breathe dustfrom sanding it, it can quite easily sensitize your immune system to the resin and hardener. and after that, good luck ever using epoxyagain when you end up with an allergic reaction every time. so make sure you don’t let it come to that,wear gloves when handling uncured epoxy, a respirator when sanding it and just avoidany exposure. it’s really easy to do and it can save youa lot of headache - literally - for the rest of your life.
so starting with the part right off the printer,the first thing i’ll often do is just to give that area where the print made contactwith the build plate a bit of attention. if you’ve set the zero position a bit toolow on your machine, for example to get a bit extra adhesion, you will end up with athis tiny lip or burr on the bottom of your part. this lip can end up quite sharp and, mostimportantly, keep your parts from fitting well together. or you might have used the brim feature onpurpose. what i’ve found to work really well witha bit of practice, and particularly for concave
and inside parts of your print is just tograb a boxcutter and use the back of the blade to guide it around the contour. for convex shapes, this doesn’t work thatwell and while abs and copolyesters cut really easily, if you are using a pla that is particularlybrittle, then cutting just won’t work at all. so for those, i simply grab a file and givethem a quick pass. protip: these small needle files always comein handy for finer details and aren’t even that expensive - links in the video description! when using files on pla, always go a bit slowerthan you think, since pla will easily turn
into a gooey mess if you get it too hot. next up, functional geometry. obviously, if a part doesn’t fit then youcan always file them to size, and most 3d printed plastics can also be milled and sawedif you really have to. drilling and reaming also works, but you shouldn’tjust take a plain surface and make a through-hole or screw a wood screw into it when you don’thave the proper geometry in your file already. not having the extra material from the extrawalls will really limit how strong those connections are going to end up. what you can definitely do is using machinethreads with your parts.
first off, what a lot of people don’t realizeis that you can actually tap printed parts and create reliable connections with that. just give it bit more thread length to engage,about twice your screw’s diameter is a good start. you can find tables to the tap drill sizesonline - just design those into your parts and you’ll be able to tap a good threadinto it right away. as always, keep an eye on the heat you’regenerating, as pla and copolyesters can easily soften up and melt during tapping. if you’re not confident with plastic threads,you can also grab a few of these brass inserts
and melt them into your part. again, you should have a suitable bore inyour printed part already and then you can simply grab a soldering iron, set it to alow temperature and press the insert into your part, preferably from the opposite sideyour screw will be pulling from. so what if you’ve got multiple parts tojoin and don’t want to go with screws? well, adhesives are always an option. so pla and abs-like filament are incrediblyeasy to adhere together. pretty much anything works, including ca glueaka. superglue, epoxy resin or contact cement. pet and nylons are a bit trickier to adhere,and while many adhesives will sorta stick,
they often don’t have the same strengthas with other materials. for decorative purposes, it’s probably ok,but roughing up the surface with some medium grit sandpaper often helps as well. what you can also do for abs and quite a fewplas is solvent-welding the parts with acetone, as i show up here. that creates extremely strong bonds and youcan even get specific welding agents for pet if you want to. but what if you’re not going for mechanicalparts? i know, sorry, i just have that engineeringbackground and that’s sorta what i do, but
there’s definitely potential for modelmakingand art pieces. by the way, if you want to get your mind blownon what you can do with 3d-printed and non-3d-printed models, check out punished prop’s channel,they’re pretty awesome. so what to do to get 3d prints looking evenbetter? well, if you have the option, start with afiner print setting with lower layer heights, that’s going to save you a bunch of workalready. then i’d recommend giving your parts a lightsanding, it doesn’t have to be perfect yet. next up, if you have the option to vapor-smoothyour part, that’s always a good idea and really simple to do as well.
while you can get some nasty chemicals forpla and pet, i’m not going to name or recommend those to you, but acetone for abs, asa, hipsetc. always works. so at this point, you either have a roughlysanded part or one that is already slightly smoothed. let’s get that perfect. almost all materials can be painted. nylon, again, being the one that sorta sticksout, and pet won’t give the paint that much grip, but as long as you’re not hammeringthe part, you should still be ok. starting with a filler/primer, the standardautoparts rattlecans are actually a pretty
good choice here. after each filler pass, you should give itenough time to cure and then sand it down until you can see the base plastic pokingthrough. wet sanding is a good idea to help with coolingthe surface and to a better surface finish. repeat until satisfied and then move on toyour regular painting process. if you’ve got larger blotches to cover up,or want to do a bit of sculpting, a two-part filler compound will give you a hand thereas well, but as always, you will need to sand it down afterwards to get it perfect. so if you do it right, you might just getyourself some parts that really don’t look
like they were 3d printed at all, or, usingthe tips for mechanical parts, massively improve the usefulness of your prints! if you thought this video was helpful to you,give it a thumbs up, if not, let me know what i can improve,also consider subscribing tothe channel, and because youtube is still being weird about it, remember to also clickthat bell next to the subscribe button or you might end up missing some videos altogether. also check out the affiliate links from thevideo description to shop on amazon, ebay,
matterhackers and igo3d, those don’t costyou a single penny extra, or if you want to support this channel with a spare dollar ortwo, head over to patreon and get access to
monthly q&a hangouts and more. and that’s it for today, thanks for watching,and i’ll see you in the next one.
