I took all of your advice and bought an Elegoo Neptune 3 Pro because I would have had to have waited months for the 4 Pro in the US. I absolutely love it. I’m going to pass on some tips for beginners and I also have a few more questions:
Tips:
- Make sure to watch the video before you put it together, I just used the youtube one and it was probably the same one. It’s really necessary about half way through because their directions just sort of vaguely point to stuff.
- Make sure to set the height properly (the paper gives a little resistance when you pull it out) when you’re leveling. It’s the difference between a print actually working at all or it being strings and weird things.
- On a similar note, redo the leveling if you stop a print, it doesn’t matter if you haven’t turned it off. I kept having to stop the print because of the sd card not seeing the files, see the important note at the bottom for why.
- Make sure to have more PLA when it gets there, it doesn’t come with a whole lot. It works so easily and it’s so fun that you’re going to want to print more. I happened to have some from a 3D print pen that I tried a few years ago and didn’t use again. Also, I ordered some to go with the printer and they sent it separately. I haven’t received the rolls yet.
- Important -Don’t use the thumb drive, plug into your computer directly, I didn’t need any drivers. I’m guessing they downloaded with the slicing program. You can control everything from your computer then and things won’t randomly not print now.
If you’re using the thumb drive/SD card, make sure to put your sliced file (gcode) on the root directory, no folders, and rename it to something less than 20 characters (I think it was 20). If you don’t do this, the printer won’t see it. This one is odd to me because it saw the buddha file in a directory but it works now, so whatever.
Questions:
- It tells me to clean the printer nozzle after every use. What does that mean?
- Is the pliers that comes with it just for cutting the excess or am I missing something?
- Can I keep it together and just put a cover over it if it won’t get knocked or messed with? Someone recommended putting it back in the box when not in use.
- I made a flat print of a plaque and it started to curl on the edges, should I have cleaned the board after the buddha or is that normal for flat prints?
That’s it, thanks again for making this process so easy and fun.
I clean nozzle before every print with paper towel and few drops of alcohol, just a quick wipe and its shiny again.
You dont need to put it back in a box, thats crap. But consider building enclosure to avoid wrapping. It also helps if you have clean bed, use brim, use mouse ears if needed, and use glue if you really really need. Make sure your A/C is not blowing directly on the bed or open window etc. But for pla you should be good without any glue, just find better temps and nozzle/bed distance. I print first layer at 60C then I drop it to 55C and I almost always use brim, its super easy to remove it.
For cleaning, very cool, I can do that.
I will build a plastic enclosure for it then. I prefer not to put it back in the box so this is great.
Didn’t know what brim or mouse ears were so I’ll try that, thanks. I also received the file before slicing where it was standing with the small bottom as the base so I made it flat. The software was going wonky in snap so I might have not given it a flat spot. Would it have been better not to go flat and print it with the skinny side down? I thought it would fall over. Picture a wall plaque app. 70mm x 40mm x 4mm and it was presented as the 40mm x 4mm as the bottom and build up the 70mm.
I had a fan near it, oops. I will try the brim.
Thanks a lot for all of the advice. I have the whole day to work on stuff so I’m preparing my files and having a blast.
Flat and bulky parts with sharp corners are more prone to wraping. It happens because of uneven cooling and shrinking of part. It doesnt mean you have to change orientation because of that, but tune your settings to deal with it. On first layer you can try bit more squish, dont use <0.2 layer height and print slowly, dont use part cooling fan at all. After 2nd or 3d layer you can boost your fan to 100%
I will give all of that a try, that sounds like great info. I will look into how to tune my settings when I’m able to focus.