Overview

Project Information
DND Dice Set

Progress

• Printed a DND Dice Set

Project Links

• Dice Set for DND - STL

Reflection

Remember the visible layer lines I noted from the previous print? Turns out even after spending hours leveling, re-leveling, adjusting, and re-adjusting the print bed and printer settings, the bed was STILL not leveled correctly. For larger objects, we can get away with a less than ideal printer setup, however for smaller objects where detail matters, a bad setup may mean that the printer won't even be able to print past the first few layers without destroying the object. This was exactly what happened the first few times I attempted to print this dice set.

Below are examples of a few of my failed first-layer prints. Note the gaps in the lines in the first layer and that some places of the first layer looks more "filled in" than others. This means that (a) the nozzle is too far away from the print bed, and (b) the bed is unlevelled.

After re-leveling the bed again, I was finally able to get past the first few layers without warping the details! The final settings for the Creality Ender 3 V2, using the HATCHBOX PLA 3D Printer Filament (1.75mm White) were:

• Nozzle Temperature: 200 C
• Print Bed Temperature: 60 C
• Layer Height: 1.5mm

I also originally planned to paint the dice after printing (which was why I chose to print using white filament), however I was worried that doing so may cause the dice to become unbalanced, so I decided to just leave the dice unpainted.

Lessons Learned

1. Getting the first layer printed correctly is important! After I fixed the first layer issues, it helped remove some of the obvious layer lines from the rest of the print.
2. Understand the effects of the print settings. I was tuning the z-offset to try to level the bed, however I did not check if increasing the number value meant if it was moving the nozzle closer or farther away from the print bed. I also did not know what the units were (ie. m, mm...). I ended up moving the nozzle farther away from the print bed, instead of closer, which caused a lot of initial confusion when print problems continued to persist. Though this may seem obvious, please check that the printer is actually doing what you think is doing when you tweak a parameter!