Printing Tips & Tricks

Table of Contents

Overview

General Advice

Speed

Brims vs. Supports

Layer Height

Infill & Strength

Materials

Miscellaneous

Overview

Over the past couple of months as more and more people have been printing and assembling our models, it has become apparent that, because of our intricate assemblies and sometimes small, detailed parts, not everyone has a smooth time with it! We know that there are plenty of people who are new to 3D printing, and even those who have been in the community for some time have new things to learn(us included). Long story short, everyone has a different experience with 3D printing, and we wanted to create a resource for those who are attempting to print and assemble our models, but may be having a bit of trouble. This document is not set in stone, so please let us know if you’d like to see something addressed here (our discord server is a great place to discuss that). Here we go!

General Advice

When it comes down to it, there are two things that could go wrong: 

• A print or multiple prints fail 
• The successfully printed parts won’t go together smoothly

The solution to both of these things is found in your print settings and practices. Improving these will keep your prints from failing, and then more importantly will produce high quality parts that meet the tolerances required to complete the assembly. Our assemblies are meant to be tight, so print quality/accuracy is most important. We definitely don’t claim to be experts, but the following is what we have found works best for our models 🙂

Speed

This is somewhat of a controversial topic with the myriad of new printers being released that are boasting 300-500mm/s+ print speeds, but we would suggest one thing: The slower the print speeds, the higher quality print.

This is the first thing we ask people when their prints are not assembling as they should and the majority of the time people have been printing at speeds we have never touched when designing and testing our models. We would suggest the following speeds for some of the more important parts of the printing process:

• Perimeters: <100mm/s
• Infill: <150mm/s
• Bridges: <40mm/s
• First Layer: <40mm/s

Brims vs. Supports

All of our models are designed to be printed without support - they really don’t need it - but it’s understandable that some people feel the need to use them in order to have successful prints. What we would suggest is to use a brim instead, to keep prints from falling over, and check out the layer height suggestions below to make sure things print cleanly. Specifically we would suggest using brims on the following parts:

• Hands: 20mm outer brim 
• Arms: inner brim that fills inside (cut out after)
• Any part that falls over during printing: slap a brim on it, and it should be fine (I recommend larger brims, at least 20mm - it doesn't make cleanup any worse but makes sure your print will stick).

Layer Height

Bottom line here is that we design all of our parts to be printed at no higher than a 0.2mm layer height, which is the layer height we use for all of our prints. The thicker you make your layers, the more likely some of the steep angles we put on some models will not be geometrically accurate, or fail. This can cause things to not fit. To be safe, stay at or below 0.2mm. Lower should only help things fit better. 

Infill & Strength

Because our assemblies are tight, some of the parts require a decent amount of force to be applied in order to fit them together - this is intentional! Tighter fits mean models can stand on their own and will feel much more sturdy and high quality. Because of this, we would recommend the following:

• Infill Density: >15%
• Infill Type: Use a type that is strong in 3 dimensions (we use gyroid)
• Perimeter: At least 2

Materials

All of our models are designed to be printed using PLA. That being said, different filament brands or types of PLA (PLA+ vs. Matte vs. Silk vs. Glow) can print differently and have quite different properties. We print most of our models out of the following brands of filament:

• PolyMaker Polyterra
• Hatchbox
• Duramic
• Overture

We typically opt for more matte filaments that usually assemble a bit tighter and don’t slide as easily.

Miscellaneous

Here are just a few other settings or practices that we have found to be helpful:

• Bed Adhesion: If you’re having trouble we highly recommend using the product called Magigoo. You can get it on Amazon, and it is a fantastic bed adhesive for PLA. Just apply a very thin layer - it’s way better than a glue stick.
• Elephant Foot Compensation: At least 0.2mm, but higher if you need it. Elephant foot can definitely cause issues with assembly!
• Printing temperature: This is a hard one to give a succinct suggestion for, but just make sure to test your print temperature with the filaments you are using. There are a lot of test prints you can find online to make sure your temperature is not affecting print quality.
• Nozzle wear: We use hardened steel nozzles on all of our printers now after discovering that some worn brass nozzles were severely affecting our print quality. If you’re having quality issues you can’t remedy, it’s always worth checking on your nozzle to make sure it’s not worn down.

We really hope this helps! Again, if you want to see anything else addressed here, please come join our discord server and request that it be added! Happy printing 🙂