Failed 3D Prints

There are many reasons why a 3D print can fail. As a beginner, I’ve made many mistakes while learning to print 3D models. Here are some reasons why my 3D prints have failed.

Bed Leveling. Even though my 3D printer has an automatic bed leveling feature, sometimes I get lazy and make many successive prints without leveling the bed. I hear from many experienced people that it is not necessary to level your print bed before every single print, but eventually it may be necessary to level the bed. I haven’t heard of a magic formula to determine when you should level your bed, but I’ve experienced print failures due to not leveling the bed after a long print job (e.g., 48 hours).

Z Offset. Sometimes after bed leveling, I don’t correctly adjust the Z-axis offset. This is often due to my laziness when performing the “paper test” where you want a piece of paper to be gently grazed between the nozzle and print bed. You see, I usually don’t bother removing all the filament from the nozzle before the paper test, so this results in me setting the Z offset too high which results in insufficient bed adhesion. The photo above illustrates that a pile of spaghetti can be the result of setting the Z offset too high.

Nozzle Temperature. When I first started 3D printing, I heard that 200 degrees C was a good starting point for printing PLA filament, and I had success with many prints at that temperature. However, it later occurred to me that depending on the filament that you purchase, there may be different recommended temperature ranges. Many of my print failures have been due to setting my nozzle temperature too low. Nowadays I default to a nozzle temperature of 205 degrees C, but I pay more attention to the recommended temperatures of different filaments and may adjust the slicer settings accordingly.

Heat Break. My prior 3 examples have all been related to settings that can be configured on the 3D printer or slicer software. This last example is related to a piece of hardware, the heat break. The heat break is designed to pass heat from the heater block (which heats up the nozzle) to the heat sink. You see, the filament is supposed to melt only in the nozzle and not anywhere upstream of it. The filament tube is meant to channel the filament to the heat break and should never melt. My Creality Ender-3 V2 Neo comes with a standard heat break which in some circumstances can result in a jam due to melting of the filament tube or filament melting too far upstream of the nozzle. My fix to this problem was to upgrade my heat break with a design that puts a little more distance between my filament tubing and the nozzle. Check out this video for more information:

I hope this has been helpful. Can you think of other reasons why a beginner might not get successful prints?