3D Printing and At-Home Fabrication Tips

About a year ago, I wrote about how important it is to use your slicer's print preview function to look at your print before sending it to the printer.  Well, I've learned a lot about 3D printing since then, so I figured that it was time to write a newer post and go into some greater detail about what exactly I'm looking for when I'm going through the print preview. Not much of a footprint there... The most important thing to look at is the model's footprint and it's where I always start.  A successful print depends on the model not moving relative to the printer bed.  Keeping the model in place requires a strong connection to the printer bed, which means that you need a good footprint. That's better!  See the slight contact at the heel? Always look at the first layer of your prints, even if the object is really simple and doesn't look like it'll need support .  In addition to looking for any weird bits sticking out the bottom of the mod...

All of the major slicing programs offer some sort of print preview feature, where you can examine the individual layers of the print.  This is a crucial functionality - I can't even count the number of catastrophic errors that I've caught by looking at that preview.  For example, today I downloaded some tree stumps off of thingiverse.  They looked great and would be super easy to print (nice big footprint, no meaningful overhangs, relatively short), so I loaded one up in Slic3r, sliced them, then transferred the gcode to my 3d printer to get things going. While my printer was heating up, I decided to check out the preview... and a major problem pretty immediately jumped out at me.  Unbeknownst to me, these tree stumps had tiny little protrusions reaching a few fractions of a millimeter downwards.  I didn't notice them when I was looking at the model, but it caused Slic3r to "hover" the bulk of each stump about .2 mm above the printer bed. So, I stopped the p...