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?
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)
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.
Congratulations on your new toy!!!
Get a good precision screwdriver set. You can get good ones on Amazon for pretty cheap or there’s a nice milwaukee one for like $35usd. You will need it. Also consider getting a couple replacement thermistors and heaters and lubricant and rubbing alcohol for cleaning all the parts, and as others mentioned, cheap glue sticks. Needle nose pliers and diagonal cutters are a must for the supports.
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
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.
With PLA, drying is usually less of a concern, but will be more important once you start getting into PETG and other more hygroscopic filaments. Other than the other things mentioned, I’d suggest needle nose pliers and flush cutters. Calipers too once you start getting into functional printing.
All filaments are hydroscopic.
Most
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.
Reminder that while people talk about isopropyl alcohol for bed cleaning, its only really a disinfectant and doesn’t actually clean invisible debris off the be very well which when not cleaned with dish out it will cause bed adhesion issues.
I didn’t know why I was having adhesion issue for awhile after I had a ton of experience under my belt and trying a lot of different things and nothing shrot of changing the bed would fix the weird unfisable adhesion issues I had everh so often until I learned thst isoprpyl alcohol was not actually the correct thing for bed cleaning and when I did that the issue went away.
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!!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Here’s a useful printer calibration guide I followed through religiously when I started 3d printing things, most of the time I don’t need it now that I know a lot of the variables by heart.
Large glue sticks, they will fix 90% of problems.
Do I need special glue sticks, or just any from like a school supply store?
This?Did a teeny bit of googling and it I’ve seen a few people saying PVP washes a little bit easier but it sounds like pretty much any composition is fine, for PLA at least
What do you do with the Glue Sticks?
Coat the bed to increase bed adhesion for the first layer.
