Most common 3D printer part failures and ways to fight against them

Here is the PDF link to the Common 3D Printing Failures and How to Fight Against Them talk by Chris McCoy at the World Maker Faire in New York on September 20, 2014:  140919-common-3D-printing-failures-wmf-2014-NYC-v02

Did you not receive a “Wedgie” at the talk?   Download and print your own today!! http://www.bit.ly/wedgieSTL

Here’s a link to Chris’s presentation information.

In this article, I hope to give everyone general strategies to resolve the following issues (mainly for FFF-style 3D printers):

1. Part delamination from build plate
2. Mis-registration in your x and y axes
3. Many extruder issues (clogging in nozzle, clogging in feeder, filament breakage, filament tangling, poor extrusion, inconsistent extrusion, etc.)
4. Part warping
5. Frozen or stalled 3D prints
6. First layer issues
7. Risks of leaving your printer alone (filament jams, tangled filament, etc.)
8. Bed leveling common pitfalls
9. Saving a print that’s had issues

Overall, these problems are an artifact of early-adopter-version 3D printers.  Manufacturers of these machines are now very aware of some of these issues and are taking proactive steps to reduce these issues with innovative design.  We’ll talk about the ones we’re familiar with and as usual, we’ll post links to the relevant sources for help we got, solving the many problems we’ve identified with all of your help.

The final results of this study will ideally be presented in September 2014 in NYC.  More details to follow.

If you’d like to help or participate in this study, please don’t hesitate to contact me at chris at you3dit dot com.