I’m pretty excited, I ordered the Kobra X, along with 9kg of various colour filaments.
I’m wondering if I’m missing some stuff like bed glue, a scraping tool or things I haven’t even thought of. What do I need in preparation?
Before someone complains about my 3D printer brand choice, Yes I know Fuck Anycubic.
I did countless hours of research, and I know they’re a scummy company, but at least they flirt with being Open-Source, and for my first printer, and it being multi colour at that price, it was either this or not buying one at all.
It’s ok mate, the first printer experience I had was at university trying to coax a bricked Makerbot they had back into working… Not a fun time haha.
If you get into the hobby you won’t stop at just a single printer, especially if you learn how to maintain and repair them. Then you’ll be able to buy a cheap second hand one from a more open source company if that’s something you want to do.
So that’d be the next thing to look into: how to maintain and repair your printer and what consumables, spare parts, and tools you need to do that.
If it’s an open frame printer, have a look at building/buying an enclosure for it, perhaps with an active heating unit and carbon + HEPA filtered ventilation for the more noxious filaments.
Then after that some method of drying your filament. And either combined with or separate from the drying: air-tight storage for your filament.
Some stick glue (pritt-stick) will be useful, as will a bed scraper, an alternative to stick glue would be something like cat’s vomit (a brand of a liquid glue for printer beds, there’s a few alternative suppliers around)
Welcome to the hobby!
Thanks for the tips, I’ll aquire some of that. Very excited to start this new hobby!!
Anycubic is a pretty good choice compared to other options. Multi color is a bit of a gimmick imo. But it depends if you want structural prints which benefit more from enclosures, or artworks like figures which can use multi color. Then again, for 250 there’s not really a high temp printer.
It’s cool bud. We all know what life’s like right now and finding enjoyment in anything is very hard whilst having principles.
I don’t have much to add except maybe an enclosure for temperature/airflow management if you’re gonna print temperature sensitive filaments.
I really hope the printer works out well for you, have fun.
Thank you, I appreciate it.
Anycubic is a fine company they just have shitty consistency. I’ve owned a kobra pro, three kobra neos, three kobra2 neos and a kobra3 with the ace. I’ve loved all of them but the k3. They’re trying to get too much speed from a bed slinger in my opinion. It may do okay printing light parts with enough surface area on the bed to not be thrown off but when you’re printing functional stuff at 99 infill it has a tendency to launch shit mid print. Perhaps they’ve fixed all that with the newer models/iterations but It was disappointing enough I went back to my kobra2 neos… I’d like to hear about your experience with the X when you get it assembled and printing. I can’t decide whether I should take a chance on another printer or hoard k2 neo parts before that get difficult to locate.
Think about a good place to store your filament. It will want to absorb moisture.
What do you have for tools? Just laying around my printer, there’s probably 2 wire brushes, 2 spatulas, a deburring tool, a hobby knife, a magnifying glass, and a couple of flashlights. Plus tools to actually adjust the machine - screwdrivers and pliers mainly.
I just have basic tools for fixing thigns in my house, allen key set, lots of screw drivers and bits. Drills and standard hardware store stuff.
Thanks for the list, I’ll look into these
I also consider a caliper necessary too, igaging is a good brand I like, I have their 8 inch digital one.
Besides for 3d printing I also use it for sosososo many things, its like now thst I have it, I can use it for everything and it makes life so much nicer.
If it doesn’t come with the 3d printer, a pair of flush cutters is insanely useful. Just be careful with them, especially if you have a cheap pair. Probably wear eye protection.
If you think you would find them useful, there are also filaments at different levels of softness, bounciness, and foaming variants of those. Particularly useful for the soft ones as you can get different levels of softness by changing printing temperature. For any it helps to decrease weight.
For 3D modeling software, Fusion is good but annoying to obtain, Onshape is good but has a non-commercial license for the free version (and makes all of your files public), Freecad is FOSS, decent but not quite as good, Blender is good for detailed or sculpted things that are more art-y (although it’s often very difficult to achieve certain shapes that are easy in actual CAD software)
My modelling advice is to keep in mind where supports will go, what places can be bridged, what details the printer can achieve, what axis the vertical should go on (for strength)
Congrats! You can print bed scrapers, the metal ones tend to destroy the printbed. Plastic scrapers with a changeable “razor head” exist now.
Also check out parametric model designer on makerworld if you want to make easy models and don’t want to learn CAD for fully custom stuff. It does require an account though.
You dont need a scraping tool. It’ll only damage your bed. My printer came with one and it was a mistake to ever use it.
I never bought anything extra. Id say be patient for now, only spend after you realise there is a problem that needs fixing.
To add to this, I would actually 3d print a scraping tool. PLA isn’t likely to damage the print bed like a metal one would.
That’s a great idea, 3d printing upgrades to my 3d printer is my favourite use case for my printer!
Fusion 360 has a free version. It seems daunting but it’s not too hard to use after a few YouTube videos. Printing is fun but printing something you designed is really something.
Congratulations! From a side of printing that’s heavier-duty and plays with engineering materials more, have some knowledge:
- PLA+ != PLA. PLA+ is a monster of a plastic blend that’ll do a lot of heavy-duty things provided you keep the heat light
- Carbon fiber is not what makes a plastic strong. Treat CF blends individually – Nylons are usually pretty good structurally, PLA-CF less so
- Moisture content has a huge impact on print quality. +1 for a good filament dehydrator
- Keep yourself safe. Do not sand or cut filled plastics (-CF, -GF, etc.) without PPE! Don’t be the example case for new-age asbestos lung
Large glue sticks, they will fix 90% of problems.
What do you do with the Glue Sticks?
Coat the bed to increase bed adhesion for the first layer.
Doesn’t that decrease bed adheasion?
Over doing it can be a problem but a thin layer keeps things glued down. Many newer heated build plates are better at keeping the print adhered, so it’s not usually necessary on newer printers
I have a bottle Isopropanol for cleaning the bed before printing.
Poor choice. Beds are best cleaned with soap and water. IPA just dissolves oils and redeposits them when it dries.
