September 28, 2025 • 43 mins
Alex and Matt share "tool time" advice on various 3D printing tools they use alongside their 3D Printer. They discuss tools for maintenance, post-processing, and support removal, and more.
Matt & Alex also share cost-effective options, as well as high-end tools that get the job done. We close out discussing the tools we wish we had and how the right tool, no matter what it is, is invaluable to reduce labor and create better parts - faster!
Matt's blog on his essential tool for 3D printing (with affiliate links): https://www.niche3d.io/thenichenotes/essential-tools-for-3d-printing Links:
Alexander G. Orphanos | AG3D:
ag3d-printing.com
stan.store/AG3Dlabs
Matthew Guy | Niche 3D LLC:
Niche3D.io
00:00 Introduction to Layered Insights Podcast
00:43 Importance of Tools in 3D Printing
02:37 Cost-Effective Tools for 3D Printing
04:16 Premium Tool for Resin 3D Printing
08:50 Tools for Part Post-Processing
15:57 Tools for Support Removal
23:17 Tools for Prototyping
28:27 Tools for Maintenance
35:08 Future Tools We WISH We Had
41:12 Final Thoughts
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
You hello everybody, and welcometo layered insights, three brain
(00:27):
Podcast. I'm Alex, I'm Matt, andlet's start the show. So, Matt,
how you doing?
Man, good. Say we're talkingabout we're doing a little bit
of Tool Time.
Yeah, that's right. Tool Time.Man, yeah, the Lyd printing
tools that are kind of in, like,our tool belt for right now, we
haven't shown each other thesetools. Gonna be surprised for
(00:49):
both of us, we've got a handfulhere. But let's just, like,
start with a quick thing about,like, why tools are important.
So like, you you get a 3dprinter and like, that is a
tool, obviously, yes. But thisis, like, one of those things
that, when you have this idea ofgoing into 3d printing, you just
think, you click a button, itprints apart, and then it comes
(01:10):
off the bed and it's done. But,like, that's, that's just not
how reality
is. You can, yeah, if you canmake that work, that's
fantastic.
Is that that's a that's abillion dollar control. You
know,
there's some categories of toolstoo. There's like, the
maintenance tools, the postprocessing tools, even like
removing parts from the bed andstuff. So it's, you end up
(01:34):
building Arsenal tools justaround the tool itself.
Yeah, totally. And it's alwaysfun, like when you meet somebody
else who's doing 3d printing onthe regular like, oh, like,
what's that? Like, you know, youknow,
what do you Yeah, I feel likeeveryone has a different
technique to remove supports,everyone's using a different
tool. Yes, I was interested insee what people do.
(01:58):
I know, I know. And I alwayslike, you know, I think we both
kind of grew into this industryand our skills in this, like,
watching a bunch of peopleonline, like there was a bunch
of YouTubers that you know,would share, like their
favorites. But it's, it'salways, it's surprising to me,
the things you never wouldexpect to be a tool that is a
tool, as opposed to, like, acustom tool that was made
(02:19):
specifically for
it. Well, I think, like, mynumber one tool would probably
be surprising to most people,yeah, I think at the end, I
think we should also talk abouttools that we don't have, that
maybe there are price rangeright now, but stuff that we
would eventually
want to get. Oh, I like that alot. Okay, yeah, let's, let's
keep us
honest on that. And most of thetools, I'd say under, well,
(02:41):
under 50 bucks, you know,
yeah, yeah, that's a greatpoint, yeah, because, because
we're on the you mentioned thishere, the prosumer side of
things, like, we're using lowend, you know, 3d printers to
create businesses, and high endproducts that you don't have to
break the bank, you know, doingthat. No, I think I
think I'll have only one of mytools is, like, pretty
(03:03):
expensive. I was using it forother projects besides three
printing that's why it warrantedgetting it. But I think is, it
is a really good resin tool forresident print removal, support
removal, so it's expensive,though, that's the problem,
right? It's okay. When yourextra tool becomes the price of
(03:25):
a cheap printer, it becomeslike, yeah,
the price, yeah, well, and it'sinteresting, because I think
another aspect of why you and Imight choose a tool is because
of the labor involved to, like,get to the final part, right?
Like, if, if you can saveyourself the labor and get a
(03:47):
tool that cuts down on thattime, even if it does cost a
lot, like it, it pays for itselfin either peace of mind, and
just like, on the on the bankaccount too,
saves time. I mean, if you'repost processing hundreds of
parts, right, it's if you cansave, like, you know, a few
seconds or several seconds onevery part, it makes a big
(04:08):
difference.
Yeah, 100% so should we dive in?Should we do our first part?
Yeah, sure. All right, you wantto go tool? Yeah, you're right.
You're right. I'll start with
the most expensive thing, allright. So this a tool that you
might eventually want to get. SoI think it's better for resin
printing. I've been using itmore for other stuff, but you'd
(04:30):
maybe use it more formodifications if you made a
mistake, like cutting holes intoit and stuff. But it's, oh, it's
a ultrasonic cutter. Oh, cool.So I've seen those a lot more
lately. Yeah, it's like anexacto knife, but it vibrates
out. I think 40,000 kilohertz.Damn. Sorry, 40 kilohertz, still
(04:55):
crazy. So it makes it super mostplastics, it makes it super.
Easy, because not only does itheat up from just the vibration,
but just the vibrating actionwill actually easily cut through
plastic. So I was more using itfor vacuum forming stuff, but if
you need, like, messed up, youcan easily punch holes through
(05:17):
your plastic for your cosplay,like, if you wanted to do some
assembly, and, you know,sometimes you forget to add a
feature to assemble something.Or, I think it's more popular in
the resin community, when you'retrying to shave the supports off
the resin, you get really,really nice clean cuts with, you
know, very the whole point of itis no effort cutting. So you're,
(05:41):
you're just, you know, slowlymoving your hand and not using,
really any force.
I love that. I think I do haveto get that into my arsenal
soon, because
the problem is, it is, like, youknow, expensive or $300 device,
okay, okay, but it can
that's a good investment inyourself and your
(06:01):
great making tool, outside of 3dprinting too, if you're cutting
anything, and especially Cathplastic, modifying anything. So
it's a good tool to have anarsenal, in general, definitely.
I mean, I can't tell you howmany times I've stabbed myself
or cut myself from using a, youknow, a utility blade and trying
to the first thing I thought ofwhen you said that was, I could
(06:24):
use this for those on thosesupported areas where, you know,
it's just a little rough, butlike, you try and go through
there with an with a regularblade, and like, you risk,
because you've got to pushmanually, you risk, like, going
into the part itself and thenmarking up something that you
didn't want to mark up, and nowthe whole part is busted. Where
(06:46):
that it sounds like it wouldjust be so much better.
Yeah. I mean, the idea is itcuts easier, so it's supposed to
cut like butter.
So right for using that propermotor control on something like
that, if you're
using it properly, you should,there should be less of a
percentage of you stabbingyourself, thank goodness,
because you know you're not,like, you know, putting a lot of
(07:06):
force into it and then slippingand missing, right?
Yep, never mind just hours ofleaning over like a light to,
like, try and like, get thatcut, right? Yeah, totally, yeah.
That's a good one.
I like that a lot. It is, yeah,yeah. Anyone for me.
So definitely, and resin is agreat idea too, because resin is
different than, like, all theother materials, because, to
(07:26):
your point, if you make amistake, like, you don't have to
use glue, you just use the resinagain. So, like, you could,
like, make it look flawless, youknow, and essentially, you've
got the same bond as thematerial itself. So with resin,
like, that's that's such a huge
advantage. It wasn't nice,right? You just give a little
pink tons UV light on it, yep.Like, nothing happened.
(07:49):
No, it makes me think of a part,and then we'll move on to mine.
But I've got a friend who boughta like, a model online, and it
fell and the arm broke off. Andhe so when we were talking about
the part detective, he's like,Oh, I have a model that you
could fix. And so he hands methe model, and you can see the
(08:10):
arm fell off, and you can lookright inside, and there's all
the supports for the resin. Iwas like, Oh, this is perfect. I
was like, I'll just grab someresin and I'll be able to this
will be like brand new for you,
something I've been seeinggetting a little bit more
popularity. Instead of usingsuper glue, they have, like, a
tiny bottle of resin with a UVlight on it that you just, you
(08:34):
know, shine and put on thingsfor repairing stuff.
Totally, totally, yeah, I havebought clear resin just to,
like, do ceiling for reallydelicate parts that could snap,
like FDM, but story for anotherday. All right, so you did part
move. So I'll go to this one,because this is, like, on the
(08:55):
other end of, like, a cuttingtool for post processing, but is
on the, like, cheap end, and Ididn't even pay for this. This
came with another printer, theclassic, oh blue flush cutter.
I almost grabbed those. I'mlike, I'll just, I'll just
mention it. It's not worthgrabbing. Yeah, the flush
(09:16):
cutters is a must. Yeah, and,like, only for cutting filament,
but post processing and and
what I like about the flushcutter more than anything else,
is, like, you can get a flat cutwhile putting pressure against
something. So you can really doa lot with this guy. And you're
(09:37):
right, like you can do it forfilaments. There's, I mean, I
even use it sometimes, just topry up parts. It's just like,
once you get the face for
it, like, well, since, like yousaid, you're getting such a
flush cut, you just put it rightup against your model and cut
support off if it's, like,really giving you problems. And
even, you know, use it, use thesharp edge to get underneath
(09:59):
your support. Support and thenslightly squeeze it and use it
like pliers and roll off thesupport. Yes? So just to, like,
get underneath it and then useit as a plier, no.
So, yeah, versatile tool. And,like, I think, don't spend more
than $5 on this. And if you buya printer, you're probably gonna
get one of these. So you don'teven need to buy. You'll
(10:21):
probably have it in your
yours, and it's not like aregular wire cutter. So I want
regular wire cutters won't beflush and flat to the surface.
It'll be slightly raised so youwon't be able to get as close to
the surface to cut and trim. Oh,I guess, I guess I'll go to the
next maybe higher priced item,which isn't that high, but it's
(10:42):
one of my favorites. So this ismy number one
fire. So I got the, ah, nice,
you know, I got the hacksmithtorch, and I got a small other
this is, this would be yourcheaper option. Now you can get
go to a hardware store and get acheap little butane torch. So
this stuff I use for a lot ofstuff, if you're post processing
(11:04):
last stuff, like catchy TPU,anything that's stringing,
everything that might have evena little bit of a flaw, you can
quickly hit it with the fire.Get the string off if you have
some surface blemishes andstuff. Or even if you're
scraping a little bit with aknife to get stuff off, you can
(11:26):
cure a lot of blemishes, just bything with fire. And you should,
I'll do the warning you shouldbe wearing, generally. PP, some
type of, yeah, mask orsomething, because, you know,
you can do it outside, at thevery least, or do it outside or
some type of ventilation,because you you know, if you're
hitting the plastic fire, youcan get some fumes and stuff.
(11:49):
But even the bearish or TPU fromcolor fab, you hit the fire with
that, and you get a nice you canget a nice, shiny finish, versus
a a very matte finish, becausethat stuff you're printing more
like foam. So it's all like, youknow, open things, and then you
can hit with fire, and somealmost more of a closed form,
(12:12):
mm, closed foam. So I use it alot for that. So, like, I'm
doing some my orders. It's, youknow, hundreds and hundreds of
parts. That's when the lastfinishing touches. You know, I
double check the visual, I QC,check that something fits, and
then I might hit it. It's alittle bit far to clean up any
(12:32):
stringness, any stuff left overon the seams and stuff like
that, especially when you'reshaving off edges or anything.
Possibly, maybe you miss it, andyou put a little, you know, Nick
in it with your knife fromremoving support. Sometimes you
can clean that up just byheating off quickly. And
(12:53):
sometimes use I have, like, alittle silicone socking put on
my finger to brush oversomething, or, Oh, it's not too
hot, just brushing it overquickly with your hand to smooth
something up. They want to heatup too much. You're doing like,
you know, very quick, just,yeah, hitting it with fire.
Well, it's funny, that's it's aquestion I wanted to ask you
because so I've used, obviously,the ghetto version of the
(13:16):
lighter, which works, you know,in a pinch, and it's probably
something you have in yourhouse. But I started using a
heat gun that was that empty,the other alternative. So what,
what do you feel? Have you usedboth the torch and the heat gun?
Yes, so I have what you feelabout the differences? Yeah,
I've won the big heat guns. Yousee kind of distracting this.
(13:37):
Just go, you see it like warpand melts and stuff, this stuff,
you're kind of, like, instantlycinching off the stringiness,
instead of, like, you see itmelt into the model. So it's,
you're actually more ofcompletely burning it and
getting rid of it, instead of itlike, so I remember, I won those
big heat guns, you know, youtake your bar, and I wasn't that
(13:59):
great at printing back in theday, so you'd have a lot of
stringiness, yeah. And then youjust hit it with the heat gun,
and the stringiness willnecessarily disappear. Might
just melt and form onto yourpart, right onto the surface,
and then you have a messy part.But with the fire, you know,
you're instantly it sees thelittle, little volume material
there, instantly almost vaporizeit, which is why you should be
(14:21):
wearing your PPE when you'redoing it. Yep, yep. It's a
quicker clean and you're notjust re melting the plastic and
it forming back on the surfaceof your part
totally. And I will say, fromusing the heat gun, the problem
that I've seen with it,especially when you're working
with the the cheaper plasticslike PLA the heat gun will end
up warming the whole part to thepoint where, if you spend just
(14:46):
too long with it, the actual thepart just starts to deform.
That's, you know, you get thesame thing with the fire. But I,
oh, yeah, that's where I'd sayyou do use the heat gun if you
want to heat up the whole part.And you kind of more want to.
Make it manual and formyourself. That's where I would
use the heat gun more often. Soif you You've a little bit more
(15:06):
control with the heat, right? Ifyou're trying to do that with
the fire to kind of heat up thewhole part, and maybe, you know,
bend it just a few centimetershere, there you are more at risk
of, like, burning your part. Andyou can get, like, you're a lot
more serious in getting actualburn marks. Or, you know, if
you're using a white you couldget singe and burn marks on it,
(15:29):
or just completely burn a holethrough your part. It's
something you're doing. You'regenerally not heating, you know,
holding the heat on it verylong. It's very quick. It's
just, like, some people willtake a lighter and, like, if
they have, like, a string ontheir pants, on the jeans,
they'll quickly just light itup. And it's the same concept,
yeah. And I would say, if you'retrying to get rid of stringing,
(15:51):
go with the flame approach. Andthen any like, you said the
malleability part, probably theheat gun. Usually I
would peel off as much as I can.You know, you don't want to do
usually, you want to print aswell as you can, to eliminate
string, and you're just reallygetting little hairs, nothing
(16:11):
too long or back.
No, I like that. That was great.All right, what am I gonna go to
next? Well, let's go this way,because we're kind of talking
about supports and stringing. Sothis is a tool that when we were
working together for the firsttime, I found this out because
we had part removal, like FDMstuff, and so you're you're
(16:33):
actually removing supports.That's the same as the material
that you're printing the part.So that's kind of classic, one
color, FDM, three printing.Nobody likes removing supports,
but if you can find somethingthat makes it easier, go for it.
And I found that this workedeven better with the organic
supports. And so that's the sothis is a soldering tool, so I
(16:57):
I saw that, and I'm like, Oh, Ilove that. Yeah, I forgot. I
don't have one, but I do haveone size. I have some with my my
soldering equipment. I forgot.
Yeah, all those out. So thisone's, I think, the solder
assist on there. But, yeah, theygot these. I mean, you could
find some on Amazon. I'm sureyou could find one at the same
place you'd buy a, you know,solder and all that stuff in an
(17:19):
iron. But specifically, I likethe one with, there's like an
angled poker, and then mine'sbroken here, but it was like a
little hook, yeah? And likethose two alone, like, I like
the poking side, because you cango with it, especially with an
organic support, you can go intothe support and then just crack
it. And so the the the wholesupport has structure because of
(17:42):
this. And then you're just,like, basically cracking it at
the place where it's touchingthe model, or very close. So
that just saves you so much asfar as like that. And then the
hook was really nice, becauseyou could, like, pull supports
away from the part. So for like,like support that's still up
against the model. It's reallygood for peeling that back. And
(18:03):
you're you're just working lesshard, and I think getting better
results, because when you'reusing the pliers and ripping,
usually, I mean, you're going tobe just destroyed by by the end
of that do that, your wrists aregoing to be cramping and you're
probably going to hit yourselfor something else from your
weight, pulling
better off, getting as much asthe if you're doing, like,
(18:26):
interface layers right, like, atleast lifting or getting it
loose as much from the model aspossible before trying to rip
everything off.
Totally not something you youfigure out until you've done it
a lot. You're like, I'm so tiredof this. It's kind of gotta be a
better way. So, yeah, that'sanother budget, budget friendly,
one that you might even havealready, yeah.
(18:47):
So I'll go into my port removalslash hand tools. So I'd say the
step down from that tool is likea dental pick. Oh, yeah, yeah.
So the what's nice about yoursis that the metals a lot
stronger, so you're not going tobe breaking them or like this
(19:08):
one's completely bent out ofshape, because
what's that? Like? Aluminum?
Um, I don't know. Might bestainless steel. Oh, okay, but
it's just thinner. Probably itmight be three or four or
something. Oh, okay. It might bemore corrosion resistance. It
might be three or four orsomething like that, or 316 that
(19:30):
makes sense. But you know,they're so thin that you can
pop, you know, you can bend themout of shape, and you can pop
off the edges. But sometimesit's really good to get
underneath those, those hard toget areas, yeah,
in the hard to reach places,man, that'll, that'll kill your,
your love of a project realquick, yeah?
And then, like, just like thattool, right? I use, I like the
(19:53):
hooked pliers, yes. Then, onceagain, you can use that flying
mechanism and get under it, justlike. This. I don't I use that
more reply or than actual, like,buyers or tweezers, whatever,
yeah. And then there's, Iactually don't know. I think
these are just from China, andthey're just called, I don't
(20:15):
know. They're originally usedfor, they're more like, almost
like a chisel. But noweveryone's selling them for 30
printing stuff is like, oh,yeah, hand tools. So usually
they come in packs of six, andthere's all different shapes,
but I think these are my mostused ones. So nice, you know,
you got kind of a chisel, littlebit of a lip, so you can really
nice underneath the parts andkind of like, scrape the whole
(20:36):
surface, and then even onethat's a little more point to
less, like, a little bit morecurve, yeah, like a scoop. And
then I think some diamond files.Good, you know, you might know
I've completely got the undersurface. You can just do a
slight file. And then I'm bad, Idid use a razor support
(21:04):
sometimes I just say utilityrazor.
Oh, that's great.
You should though, I'll includethis as a tool. Use cut proof
gloves.
Yeah, yeah. That is a great bitof advice,
because I have many scars on myhands, but, yeah, don't use
these enough. But I'd say thisis a really, really good tool.
(21:26):
And even if you're using some ofthis other stuff, it won't 100%
like, protect you from puncturesand stuff, but it will stop a
lot of stuff if you know, youslip or whatever. So I
definitely get those. I even usethis to clean, not Pei beds, but
maybe textured pi bed and someother ones. If you're very, very
(21:50):
light on it, yeah, if you wantbe more safe, I also for
cleaning beds. So I'm coming outto watch holes and get plastic
razors. Yeah. So these you youdon't really hurt yourself, and
you won't hurt your bed removingstuff that's huge. The other out
of the box. One is, now I havethe same ones. This is a
(22:14):
painting tool, but these are myfavorite, too, back in the day,
for moving prints off the bed,yeah. And kind of, if you really
get stuck, you can kind of, youknow, shimmy it all around the
part even, I mean, even withthese flex beds, you still
sometimes get the problem whereyou can't get off so you can
(22:34):
slowly, you know,
get it out. So, yeah, yeah. Andthat's like, more like the like,
exotic, more exotic materials,when you start getting the
strong stuff, that's when it'syou can, yeah,
really you're using, you'reusing or TPU, right? Yeah, get
under your TPU. Totally that TPthat doesn't just flex off. You
(22:55):
know, I've damaged a lot of pibeds just from, I've
definitely come back to a TPUprint in the spring steel has
has gone up because the partwarped, but it brought the plate
with it. Yeah, TPU is crazy,
yeah. So like, you know, you'dbe surprised a lot of other
tools and even art supplies canbe used for, yeah, yeah.
(23:19):
100% Well, that's a perfectsegue. So what another arts and
crafts tool that I use a lot,and I even use it for, like,
final assemblies, becausethere's just stuff that's that
good, is hot glue gun. Like,yep, hot glue gun is cheap, it's
fast. You can always come backfrom using it, you know, for the
(23:41):
most part, as long as youhaven't destroyed or melted, you
have that Undo button totallyand sometimes, especially when
you're prototyping, like, thisis your best friend with so many
things. And I've even used it inways that are, like, non
conventional, which is like,I'll just use the hot tip to
smooth over some areas.
Oh, yeah, bonding something,yeah. So people will use
(24:03):
soldering irons for that. Yes.And do like solder and seams,
which, I mean, it's likefriction store welding,
basically, except you're justmelting it 100%
welding, if you'd be puttingBondo or other paint on it and
sanding it up. It's great forthat, because then you start,
you're getting that plastic toplastic,
yes, right? Just like with theresin, yep, no. And that's,
(24:27):
that's huge, um, so thatdefinitely, I mean, like, the
glue sticks themselves arecheap. I think I go with
Gorilla, not for any reasonother than it works and it's
available, you know, yeah, Idon't need to, like, go to
Joanne fabrics to get the gluestick, you know, because that
was, that was a problem for awhile where I had, like,
they're also calling me out ofbusiness. So, yeah, yeah.
And it's just like, it's like aodd shape, like this is, like
(24:50):
circular, but they have, like,other shapes for
different Yeah, they have theoval ones and the very, very
thin ones, exactly.
So, like, this was just like acheap buy, and it. It just, it
helps me out. In so manyscenarios,
you can get two differenttemperatures too. So yeah, some
of the hot glue guns will behigh and low. So I love that
feature, yeah.
(25:10):
And to go more into that, like,practicality wise, low is great
for just like, I need to put itin place and see what it is, and
maybe I want to go back and fixit. But if I'm doing this for
part that's going out the door,I don't want to use a poxy or I
don't need it, I'll go highbecause the bonding is just that
much better on the highertemperature. Yes. And it says on
(25:31):
the instructions for the gluestick that that you buy it
should tell you it's definitelysomething to look at when you're
using it.
Yeah. So good thing you want theglue sticks. I'd say this is
the next level of glue stick,which is your yes suitor pen,
(25:51):
right? So I don't think I haveany filament here, but you plug
this in, you take some of yourright, just your spool that you
don't finish. So you have, youknow, a couple of loops around
you feed this and, and it's youryour hand, 3d printing thing,
right? So, like, you can controlthe temperature. So this one,
(26:12):
you can usually go between like170 and 230s and go like that,
your PLA your picture, your abs,most of your regular stuff,
yeah, and then you can controlthe speed, yes, which is nice,
that is
so they were not always likethat, yeah.
So this, right, you need repair,and you fill in the gap. You
(26:34):
want to combine two. So youcould do like, almost like a
welding technique, pass onstuff. It's very useful,
especially for cost by you wantto add some more detail to your
mask, like some extra stuff. Youwant to add some maybe you're
selling something. You want toadd some customizability. Maybe,
if you have goodmanship, right,write someone's name on it and
(26:56):
stuff. There's all differenttypes of things you can do with
a 3d pen. They're pretty cheap.You can recycle your filament
that you don't completely use inthe spool. So it's a nice little
one to have an have an arsenal,
yeah, and the other use I'veseen for it that I just don't
have the patience for is, like,drawing, basically a manual 3d
(27:17):
printer. And, yeah, I like, theyhave, like, printouts of
patterns. You just follow thepattern, and then you could,
like, build a whole structure.There are some incredible
artists out there doingincredible it's like, sculpting.
It's really, yeah, reallyimpressive. And the
how they're using it, and howthey're adding texture and
flattening out pieces and stuffis just incredible, yeah, like,
right, even you had the patientsadding an incredible texture to
(27:42):
a mask or to a model orsomething too.
Yeah, because you could do it in2d just like you would with
like, clothing, you know, you'vegot your template, and then you
could use the heat gun and formit onto whatever surface or
whatever. So there's really, Imean, I've seen videos online of
people who have done like, full,high quality pieces, but they
just, like, will, they'll justdoodle the whole structure, and
(28:05):
then they'll sand it, and thenbuild on top of it. And it's
like the patience and the like,the determination to finish a
project like that is just, it'sjust crazy. I have the patience.
It really is like sculpting,because there I see a lot of
them using, you know, asoldering gun, like a sculpting
thing, to kind of smooth out andkind of get the divots and the
(28:26):
texture and different thingsthey want. It's very super
impressive. I don't think I cando it
right there with you. All right.So this is my last tool that I
have, but you keep going afterthat, I know I only got one more
too. Oh, perfect. Okay, so thisis one of the newest tools to my
addition, and this became,really, I had something like
(28:49):
this that was given to me on theXYZ printer that I had, the Da
Vinci Pro. It was just like anadd in that they threw into the
printer. And it actually wassuper valuable with dealing with
when the printer went down,because that's a whole other
suite of tools of like cowboy,like Cavalier, like saving your
print tools like this definitelyfalls into that category. Just
(29:15):
wire brush, yeah, a wire brush Ihave also, I just did this on a
print downstairs. I startedgetting some curling on some
some parts, and I just put amagnet to hold it down on the
inside of the part. And then,yeah, right. It was like, mid
(29:36):
print. I was like, How do Isurvive this? And I just had
magnets. And I was like, that'sa good idea. So just like the
stuff you just like figure outalong the way. But what I've got
that's helped me a ton,especially with the multi color
printing, is a poke stick. Sonow they make these. So this is
the same they do, thickness theydo. So this is from CReality.
(29:59):
They sell one that's. Reallygood. So it's 1.7 diameter,
especially if you're printingwith a bunch of different
colors, or, like, differenttypes of material, like same
like PLA, but they're from twodifferent manufacturers, and so
the you just haven't dialed inall the settings, or it's just
enough where they don't mix welltogether. So then you get a
clog. This guy just goes rightin there, pokes it through and
(30:21):
like on the original like E, 3dblocks, the v6 heat blocks. This
was like, this worked everysingle time for the E, 3d Revo.
What ends up happening isthere's a little bit more
freedom in the in the O D,sorry, the the I D, of the
actual tube of the nozzle. Sowhat happens is, you, you poke
(30:41):
down, and then sometimes whenyou come back up, there's like,
this little, like sheath ofplastic around this, and then,
yeah, that comes up, and then itjams the nozzle. So it's not a
perfect solution, but it hassaved me so many times. I wish
it was a hardened steel, becauseI don't know if you can see
this, but it's not flat anymore.It's bent a bunch of times.
(31:03):
Oh, you should see mine. Mine'sa lot in a vice. And I'm like,
All right, all right. We definejust pushing it down. Yeah, no,
I have, we an old one from whenthe old companies we used to
work at. I think I only havelike, two of them, and so I
always lose it, but it's not aslong, and you get one of those
with a nice handle, yeah. No,that that has saved me so much
(31:25):
in some of the older machines.Some of the newer machines are
harder to use on because youcan't always, like, get the
extruder gears out of the way.True. Sometimes you can still
push them, you know, push itthrough the gears a little bit,
or even run the printer toextrude, and I'll push the metal
piece through, not supersuggested, because you might
(31:46):
wear out some of the hardwaretotally. But no, that's a I
didn't even think about thattool, probably, because I don't
know where mine currently is,yeah, but it's a fantastic
tool, absolutely. And like, I'veused an allen key, a 175 allen
key that works. But not allextruders you're going to reach
with that. The Da Vinci one XYZwas just like a piece of 175
(32:08):
steel that had just like a loopon the end. So it was great you
could just cut that seemed to belike the best design, honestly.
Yeah. So used a piece offilament that I just had just
cut this long enough. Sometimesthat's all you need, especially
when, like, you get that littlethat, like sheath. For whatever
reason, I think it's because thefilaments not as straight as the
(32:30):
metal, so you kind of catch theside a little bit more. But,
yeah, sometimes that's all youneed to
but for that stuff too. Somesome punches will come with
little needle so you can pushthrough, yeah, the nozzle. Or
the thing would be, try doing acold pull where you Yes, heat it
up, lower it to a little bitbelow your usual printing
(32:52):
temperature, between the glasstransition temperature and your
melting temperature, and thenpull it up. And sometimes you
can get that, like you said,that weird little plastic that
forms kind of around it, yeah?But no, that's for the
maintenance. That's when andfixing things don't have a jam,
right? That's one of my favoritetools, for sure,
yeah, but that's, that's, that'swhat I got.
(33:13):
Last one would just be, yeah,the engineers favorite tool,
yeah.
Even though, even though all ofthe, all of the like
measurement, folks are losingtheir minds saying it's not a
tool.
Oh, come on, it's an inspectiondevice. No, right, we're
designing, so it's a tool. Soyou got your big ones,
(33:35):
and I'm joking, there are peoplewho will use the caliper to
like, and this is, this ishorrible to think of, but as
like a hammer or like to cutthings. Oh, no. IG, I know, I
know, but see some of thecalipers
that are out there? We're notsaying to do that. It's
a tool
inspected or calibrated in awhile either.
(33:58):
Yeah, absolutely. We're doingFDM printing, so it's, uh, close
enough for most things, right? Ithink this, this is our, oh, I
guess the other thing would be a3d scan. I would be your, oh,
yes, your pre printing tools,right? Yeah. So no that, right,
(34:18):
or even use it for post, right?You gotta double check that
again, the measurement that youthink you're gonna get. Or, I
mean, you even use a lot ifyou're trying to tune a printer
or diagnose problems, you know,measure the Cali cubes or Cali
cat, seeing if anything's out ofwhack with the printer. Very
useful tool, especially ifyou're coming more from the
(34:40):
engineering side, and youactually design a lot of stuff
too, yes, yeah, great for rapidprototyping. I mean, you give
someone a caliper and, you know,a design software tool like, or
just a piece of paper like, youcan literally reverse engineer
almost anything. It's, it'spretty Yeah.
Do a lot of that. Yeah, yep,absolutely, absolutely, any,
(35:04):
any tools you want to get that'sjust kind of you don't have the
space for. That's like,
oh man, so I do have a mediablast cabinet, which I got for.
That's a series of jobs thatwas, you know, necessary.
That's exactly what I was gonnasay was I want one of those. So
here's
so here's the stuff that I wishI knew or that I learned along
(35:27):
the way. So like your totalvolume of compressed gas, let's
just describe what it is first.Oh, sorry, yes, yeah. So a media
blast cabinet is just orsandblasting sand blaster
cabinet. Yep, it's, it's aenclosed chamber, right? That
you would put something in tosand to, like, remove stuff on
(35:49):
the surface. You've got, like, amedia inside. And that media
could be as simple as, like,walnuts and, like, really soft
things, if you don't want to doa lot of damage in, like, more
cosmetic stuff, all the way tosilica and sand for really
abrasive stuff. And then you caneven go into the metals, and you
can get a shine, you know. Soit, instead of going in and
(36:13):
manually sanding something ablast cabinet would be a great
tool, because it's just going tobe so much better for your
labor. So I got that because Iwas doing a lot of big parts,
and these were going into, like,basically front lobbies of
buildings that had securitystops. So, you know, they needed
to look good, and I needed topaint them. So for me, instead
of hand sanding everythingsmooth enough, I would use the
(36:35):
media blast cabinet to get mostof the way there, and save a
bunch of time, because I had alot of parts I had to make. So
it was great, but the things Ilearned along the way were that
you probably need more abrasivematerial than you think you
need, because I went, like thesofter route, because I didn't
want to take away a lot of thematerial, so that we lost the
(36:55):
dimensionality of it. But thatalso meant it took a lot longer.
So yeah, you know, I would liketo have two cabinets, like a
rough cabinet and a finishingtouch cabinet. I can only have
the finishing touch the lighterstuff in my home. You know, I
don't want sand in the air ormetal in the air in my home.
(37:16):
So or spend that much on areally good system, 100% Yeah.
I mean, you get a really cheapone from Harbor Freight. Oh,
harbor freight, yeah, yeah,that's what I got. And then
I've, I've done, I've used thesemedia cabinets multiple times
throughout my career. So I've, Iknow how to, like, seal the
inside and get a really greatvacuum on it. I've got, like, a
(37:38):
vacuum hooked up to it, and thenthat hose goes out my exhaust
for for the for the basement,yeah. So it is a really nice
contained unit, but havingenough compressed air so that
you can do as much work as youneed is like the most important
thing. So then, yeah, you're,you're basically getting huge
volumes of compressed gas. Sothat's a whole other aspect of
(37:59):
that
tool, especially is juststanding there for how we're
doing it. Yeah, and it's, it'sso much funner than hand sanding
stuff. Yes, traditionally, you'dsee these with the SLS
technology to get off the excesspowder. So that's where you
usually see it in threeprinting. But can also easily
(38:21):
use it for FDM printing or mostother things too. It's a great
finishing tool,
yes. But as far as like a toolthat I would want, let's see
that I don't have. Hmm, youknow, you go first. I'll think
about that.
That was my question. Sand andsanding. I'll keep thinking, but
(38:45):
I
think so for me, I think thatthe tool that would be the most
helpful for me would be eitherlike an automatic washing
station with a lot more volumefor resin prints. You know, I
have the wash stations and themixers, but they don't agitate
the fluid enough for what Ineed. So that, that means I've
(39:08):
got to basically build my own oror buy one which they're all of
those are very expensive,
yeah, if I only got in resinprinting again, I'd have to do
that stuff.
Yeah, that stuff makes it superuseful, and then just scaling
that operation up together,right? And like, having a bigger
thing to cure parts in is hugetoo, because then you can kind
(39:30):
of batch your work better. But Ithink that's, that's what I
would look like amongst Yeah,
I don't know if I consider thisa tool, but having a bunch of so
all my, most of my benches are8020 so extruded aluminum. Yeah,
those are great to makedifferent size benches or
fixtures or anything you need,not quite a tool, but it's
(39:52):
always nice to have more, well,
more of that. The engineer inus, it is probably the that
every engineer. Here wants andhas some of Yeah, yeah.
I mean, a lot of three printersare made with them now too.
Well, at least more like DIYhobbyist stuff is, it's
amazing how cheap 8020 or like asimilar thing as
(40:15):
some cheap ones from China rightnow? Yeah, yeah. Well, I usually
try to buy them used. Well, notnice, no, that's not anymore.
That's that's the way to go,Yeah, but cool. There's a lot
more tools than I thought wewere gonna bring up in this.
You're pretty good, yeah, yeah,yeah. And I love that. I don't
(40:35):
think any of us had the sametool, just maybe a similar one,
a similar one, maybe, yeah,yeah. We, we have our different
techniques, yes,
yeah, 100% but that's, that'swhat it's about. Like, at the
end of the day, the tools thatyou're gonna have, like you're
not gonna have, you know, theysell sets and stuff like that,
and everyone buys, like, alittle kit, because it's just
(40:57):
the easiest, cheapest way to getparts. But yeah, at the end of
the day, it's like, there is no,like, one part for one thing,
it, it, it's a tool for areason, right? Like it's trying
to help you. So if something isgoing to help you, and it's not
the classic thing that everyoneuses, who cares?
Yeah, it's interesting when yougive someone a part of support
(41:17):
and tell them to remove thesports, everyone does it
differently.
Man, that would make a reallygood video to see if they how
everyone would do it, like aworkshop test or something you
should
do, yeah, like the I remember ata mug, they had a couple of
workshops of just showing us howto remove materials supports,
(41:38):
yeah, would be cool to Be like,bring, like, one of those
videos, you bring people thatdon't throw your print in a room
and some people that do throughyour printer in a room, yeah,
and watch how the differentpeople remove supports. Yes,
that'd be kind of interesting.
It would be that'd be fun event.Maybe we'll have to plan
something that'd be cool, yeah,but yeah, I think that's it. I
(41:58):
think that's good for thisepisode. Like, we're good All
right, so let's close out. Thankyou for joining us for another
episode of layered insightsprinting podcast. You can check
me out at AG, 3d printing.com tosee what we're doing here in the
ag, 3d printing lab. And thenwe've got the part detective
that helps with your partmysteries in printing. We're
(42:19):
available to jump on a callduring the day, same day, to
help you talk through any 3dprinting mystery that you have
and help you through theprocess, whether it's a part
that's not working anymore oranything like that. So that's
you can email us at AG, 3d partdetective@gmail.com that's what
I got going on. What about you,Matt?
Yeah, you can find me at nichethree d.io and I'm on LinkedIn
at Matthew guy. I also got myemail at matthew.guy@niche.io
(42:44):
boom, awesome. Thanks forjoining us. Everybody. Have a
good one.
See you next time you
you.
You hello everybody, and welcometo layered insights, three brain
(00:27):
Podcast. I'm Alex, I'm Matt, andlet's start the show. So, Matt,
how you doing?
Man, good. Say we're talkingabout we're doing a little bit
of Tool Time.
Yeah, that's right. Tool Time.Man, yeah, the Lyd printing
tools that are kind of in, like,our tool belt for right now, we
haven't shown each other thesetools. Gonna be surprised for
(00:49):
both of us, we've got a handfulhere. But let's just, like,
start with a quick thing about,like, why tools are important.
So like, you you get a 3dprinter and like, that is a
tool, obviously, yes. But thisis, like, one of those things
that, when you have this idea ofgoing into 3d printing, you just
think, you click a button, itprints apart, and then it comes
(01:10):
off the bed and it's done. But,like, that's, that's just not
how reality
is. You can, yeah, if you canmake that work, that's
fantastic.
Is that that's a that's abillion dollar control. You
know,
there's some categories of toolstoo. There's like, the
maintenance tools, the postprocessing tools, even like
removing parts from the bed andstuff. So it's, you end up
(01:34):
building Arsenal tools justaround the tool itself.
Yeah, totally. And it's alwaysfun, like when you meet somebody
else who's doing 3d printing onthe regular like, oh, like,
what's that? Like, you know, youknow,
what do you Yeah, I feel likeeveryone has a different
technique to remove supports,everyone's using a different
tool. Yes, I was interested insee what people do.
(01:58):
I know, I know. And I alwayslike, you know, I think we both
kind of grew into this industryand our skills in this, like,
watching a bunch of peopleonline, like there was a bunch
of YouTubers that you know,would share, like their
favorites. But it's, it'salways, it's surprising to me,
the things you never wouldexpect to be a tool that is a
tool, as opposed to, like, acustom tool that was made
(02:19):
specifically for
it. Well, I think, like, mynumber one tool would probably
be surprising to most people,yeah, I think at the end, I
think we should also talk abouttools that we don't have, that
maybe there are price rangeright now, but stuff that we
would eventually
want to get. Oh, I like that alot. Okay, yeah, let's, let's
keep us
honest on that. And most of thetools, I'd say under, well,
(02:41):
under 50 bucks, you know,
yeah, yeah, that's a greatpoint, yeah, because, because
we're on the you mentioned thishere, the prosumer side of
things, like, we're using lowend, you know, 3d printers to
create businesses, and high endproducts that you don't have to
break the bank, you know, doingthat. No, I think I
think I'll have only one of mytools is, like, pretty
(03:03):
expensive. I was using it forother projects besides three
printing that's why it warrantedgetting it. But I think is, it
is a really good resin tool forresident print removal, support
removal, so it's expensive,though, that's the problem,
right? It's okay. When yourextra tool becomes the price of
(03:25):
a cheap printer, it becomeslike, yeah,
the price, yeah, well, and it'sinteresting, because I think
another aspect of why you and Imight choose a tool is because
of the labor involved to, like,get to the final part, right?
Like, if, if you can saveyourself the labor and get a
(03:47):
tool that cuts down on thattime, even if it does cost a
lot, like it, it pays for itselfin either peace of mind, and
just like, on the on the bankaccount too,
saves time. I mean, if you'repost processing hundreds of
parts, right, it's if you cansave, like, you know, a few
seconds or several seconds onevery part, it makes a big
(04:08):
difference.
Yeah, 100% so should we dive in?Should we do our first part?
Yeah, sure. All right, you wantto go tool? Yeah, you're right.
You're right. I'll start with
the most expensive thing, allright. So this a tool that you
might eventually want to get. SoI think it's better for resin
printing. I've been using itmore for other stuff, but you'd
(04:30):
maybe use it more formodifications if you made a
mistake, like cutting holes intoit and stuff. But it's, oh, it's
a ultrasonic cutter. Oh, cool.So I've seen those a lot more
lately. Yeah, it's like anexacto knife, but it vibrates
out. I think 40,000 kilohertz.Damn. Sorry, 40 kilohertz, still
(04:55):
crazy. So it makes it super mostplastics, it makes it super.
Easy, because not only does itheat up from just the vibration,
but just the vibrating actionwill actually easily cut through
plastic. So I was more using itfor vacuum forming stuff, but if
you need, like, messed up, youcan easily punch holes through
(05:17):
your plastic for your cosplay,like, if you wanted to do some
assembly, and, you know,sometimes you forget to add a
feature to assemble something.Or, I think it's more popular in
the resin community, when you'retrying to shave the supports off
the resin, you get really,really nice clean cuts with, you
know, very the whole point of itis no effort cutting. So you're,
(05:41):
you're just, you know, slowlymoving your hand and not using,
really any force.
I love that. I think I do haveto get that into my arsenal
soon, because
the problem is, it is, like, youknow, expensive or $300 device,
okay, okay, but it can
that's a good investment inyourself and your
(06:01):
great making tool, outside of 3dprinting too, if you're cutting
anything, and especially Cathplastic, modifying anything. So
it's a good tool to have anarsenal, in general, definitely.
I mean, I can't tell you howmany times I've stabbed myself
or cut myself from using a, youknow, a utility blade and trying
to the first thing I thought ofwhen you said that was, I could
(06:24):
use this for those on thosesupported areas where, you know,
it's just a little rough, butlike, you try and go through
there with an with a regularblade, and like, you risk,
because you've got to pushmanually, you risk, like, going
into the part itself and thenmarking up something that you
didn't want to mark up, and nowthe whole part is busted. Where
(06:46):
that it sounds like it wouldjust be so much better.
Yeah. I mean, the idea is itcuts easier, so it's supposed to
cut like butter.
So right for using that propermotor control on something like
that, if you're
using it properly, you should,there should be less of a
percentage of you stabbingyourself, thank goodness,
because you know you're not,like, you know, putting a lot of
(07:06):
force into it and then slippingand missing, right?
Yep, never mind just hours ofleaning over like a light to,
like, try and like, get thatcut, right? Yeah, totally, yeah.
That's a good one.
I like that a lot. It is, yeah,yeah. Anyone for me.
So definitely, and resin is agreat idea too, because resin is
different than, like, all theother materials, because, to
(07:26):
your point, if you make amistake, like, you don't have to
use glue, you just use the resinagain. So, like, you could,
like, make it look flawless, youknow, and essentially, you've
got the same bond as thematerial itself. So with resin,
like, that's that's such a huge
advantage. It wasn't nice,right? You just give a little
pink tons UV light on it, yep.Like, nothing happened.
(07:49):
No, it makes me think of a part,and then we'll move on to mine.
But I've got a friend who boughta like, a model online, and it
fell and the arm broke off. Andhe so when we were talking about
the part detective, he's like,Oh, I have a model that you
could fix. And so he hands methe model, and you can see the
(08:10):
arm fell off, and you can lookright inside, and there's all
the supports for the resin. Iwas like, Oh, this is perfect. I
was like, I'll just grab someresin and I'll be able to this
will be like brand new for you,
something I've been seeinggetting a little bit more
popularity. Instead of usingsuper glue, they have, like, a
tiny bottle of resin with a UVlight on it that you just, you
(08:34):
know, shine and put on thingsfor repairing stuff.
Totally, totally, yeah, I havebought clear resin just to,
like, do ceiling for reallydelicate parts that could snap,
like FDM, but story for anotherday. All right, so you did part
move. So I'll go to this one,because this is, like, on the
(08:55):
other end of, like, a cuttingtool for post processing, but is
on the, like, cheap end, and Ididn't even pay for this. This
came with another printer, theclassic, oh blue flush cutter.
I almost grabbed those. I'mlike, I'll just, I'll just
mention it. It's not worthgrabbing. Yeah, the flush
(09:16):
cutters is a must. Yeah, and,like, only for cutting filament,
but post processing and and
what I like about the flushcutter more than anything else,
is, like, you can get a flat cutwhile putting pressure against
something. So you can really doa lot with this guy. And you're
(09:37):
right, like you can do it forfilaments. There's, I mean, I
even use it sometimes, just topry up parts. It's just like,
once you get the face for
it, like, well, since, like yousaid, you're getting such a
flush cut, you just put it rightup against your model and cut
support off if it's, like,really giving you problems. And
even, you know, use it, use thesharp edge to get underneath
(09:59):
your support. Support and thenslightly squeeze it and use it
like pliers and roll off thesupport. Yes? So just to, like,
get underneath it and then useit as a plier, no.
So, yeah, versatile tool. And,like, I think, don't spend more
than $5 on this. And if you buya printer, you're probably gonna
get one of these. So you don'teven need to buy. You'll
(10:21):
probably have it in your
yours, and it's not like aregular wire cutter. So I want
regular wire cutters won't beflush and flat to the surface.
It'll be slightly raised so youwon't be able to get as close to
the surface to cut and trim. Oh,I guess, I guess I'll go to the
next maybe higher priced item,which isn't that high, but it's
(10:42):
one of my favorites. So this ismy number one
fire. So I got the, ah, nice,
you know, I got the hacksmithtorch, and I got a small other
this is, this would be yourcheaper option. Now you can get
go to a hardware store and get acheap little butane torch. So
this stuff I use for a lot ofstuff, if you're post processing
(11:04):
last stuff, like catchy TPU,anything that's stringing,
everything that might have evena little bit of a flaw, you can
quickly hit it with the fire.Get the string off if you have
some surface blemishes andstuff. Or even if you're
scraping a little bit with aknife to get stuff off, you can
(11:26):
cure a lot of blemishes, just bything with fire. And you should,
I'll do the warning you shouldbe wearing, generally. PP, some
type of, yeah, mask orsomething, because, you know,
you can do it outside, at thevery least, or do it outside or
some type of ventilation,because you you know, if you're
hitting the plastic fire, youcan get some fumes and stuff.
(11:49):
But even the bearish or TPU fromcolor fab, you hit the fire with
that, and you get a nice you canget a nice, shiny finish, versus
a a very matte finish, becausethat stuff you're printing more
like foam. So it's all like, youknow, open things, and then you
can hit with fire, and somealmost more of a closed form,
(12:12):
mm, closed foam. So I use it alot for that. So, like, I'm
doing some my orders. It's, youknow, hundreds and hundreds of
parts. That's when the lastfinishing touches. You know, I
double check the visual, I QC,check that something fits, and
then I might hit it. It's alittle bit far to clean up any
(12:32):
stringness, any stuff left overon the seams and stuff like
that, especially when you'reshaving off edges or anything.
Possibly, maybe you miss it, andyou put a little, you know, Nick
in it with your knife fromremoving support. Sometimes you
can clean that up just byheating off quickly. And
(12:53):
sometimes use I have, like, alittle silicone socking put on
my finger to brush oversomething, or, Oh, it's not too
hot, just brushing it overquickly with your hand to smooth
something up. They want to heatup too much. You're doing like,
you know, very quick, just,yeah, hitting it with fire.
Well, it's funny, that's it's aquestion I wanted to ask you
because so I've used, obviously,the ghetto version of the
(13:16):
lighter, which works, you know,in a pinch, and it's probably
something you have in yourhouse. But I started using a
heat gun that was that empty,the other alternative. So what,
what do you feel? Have you usedboth the torch and the heat gun?
Yes, so I have what you feelabout the differences? Yeah,
I've won the big heat guns. Yousee kind of distracting this.
(13:37):
Just go, you see it like warpand melts and stuff, this stuff,
you're kind of, like, instantlycinching off the stringiness,
instead of, like, you see itmelt into the model. So it's,
you're actually more ofcompletely burning it and
getting rid of it, instead of itlike, so I remember, I won those
big heat guns, you know, youtake your bar, and I wasn't that
(13:59):
great at printing back in theday, so you'd have a lot of
stringiness, yeah. And then youjust hit it with the heat gun,
and the stringiness willnecessarily disappear. Might
just melt and form onto yourpart, right onto the surface,
and then you have a messy part.But with the fire, you know,
you're instantly it sees thelittle, little volume material
there, instantly almost vaporizeit, which is why you should be
(14:21):
wearing your PPE when you'redoing it. Yep, yep. It's a
quicker clean and you're notjust re melting the plastic and
it forming back on the surfaceof your part
totally. And I will say, fromusing the heat gun, the problem
that I've seen with it,especially when you're working
with the the cheaper plasticslike PLA the heat gun will end
up warming the whole part to thepoint where, if you spend just
(14:46):
too long with it, the actual thepart just starts to deform.
That's, you know, you get thesame thing with the fire. But I,
oh, yeah, that's where I'd sayyou do use the heat gun if you
want to heat up the whole part.And you kind of more want to.
Make it manual and formyourself. That's where I would
use the heat gun more often. Soif you You've a little bit more
(15:06):
control with the heat, right? Ifyou're trying to do that with
the fire to kind of heat up thewhole part, and maybe, you know,
bend it just a few centimetershere, there you are more at risk
of, like, burning your part. Andyou can get, like, you're a lot
more serious in getting actualburn marks. Or, you know, if
you're using a white you couldget singe and burn marks on it,
(15:29):
or just completely burn a holethrough your part. It's
something you're doing. You'regenerally not heating, you know,
holding the heat on it verylong. It's very quick. It's
just, like, some people willtake a lighter and, like, if
they have, like, a string ontheir pants, on the jeans,
they'll quickly just light itup. And it's the same concept,
yeah. And I would say, if you'retrying to get rid of stringing,
(15:51):
go with the flame approach. Andthen any like, you said the
malleability part, probably theheat gun. Usually I
would peel off as much as I can.You know, you don't want to do
usually, you want to print aswell as you can, to eliminate
string, and you're just reallygetting little hairs, nothing
(16:11):
too long or back.
No, I like that. That was great.All right, what am I gonna go to
next? Well, let's go this way,because we're kind of talking
about supports and stringing. Sothis is a tool that when we were
working together for the firsttime, I found this out because
we had part removal, like FDMstuff, and so you're you're
(16:33):
actually removing supports.That's the same as the material
that you're printing the part.So that's kind of classic, one
color, FDM, three printing.Nobody likes removing supports,
but if you can find somethingthat makes it easier, go for it.
And I found that this workedeven better with the organic
supports. And so that's the sothis is a soldering tool, so I
(16:57):
I saw that, and I'm like, Oh, Ilove that. Yeah, I forgot. I
don't have one, but I do haveone size. I have some with my my
soldering equipment. I forgot.
Yeah, all those out. So thisone's, I think, the solder
assist on there. But, yeah, theygot these. I mean, you could
find some on Amazon. I'm sureyou could find one at the same
place you'd buy a, you know,solder and all that stuff in an
(17:19):
iron. But specifically, I likethe one with, there's like an
angled poker, and then mine'sbroken here, but it was like a
little hook, yeah? And likethose two alone, like, I like
the poking side, because you cango with it, especially with an
organic support, you can go intothe support and then just crack
it. And so the the the wholesupport has structure because of
(17:42):
this. And then you're just,like, basically cracking it at
the place where it's touchingthe model, or very close. So
that just saves you so much asfar as like that. And then the
hook was really nice, becauseyou could, like, pull supports
away from the part. So for like,like support that's still up
against the model. It's reallygood for peeling that back. And
(18:03):
you're you're just working lesshard, and I think getting better
results, because when you'reusing the pliers and ripping,
usually, I mean, you're going tobe just destroyed by by the end
of that do that, your wrists aregoing to be cramping and you're
probably going to hit yourselfor something else from your
weight, pulling
better off, getting as much asthe if you're doing, like,
(18:26):
interface layers right, like, atleast lifting or getting it
loose as much from the model aspossible before trying to rip
everything off.
Totally not something you youfigure out until you've done it
a lot. You're like, I'm so tiredof this. It's kind of gotta be a
better way. So, yeah, that'sanother budget, budget friendly,
one that you might even havealready, yeah.
(18:47):
So I'll go into my port removalslash hand tools. So I'd say the
step down from that tool is likea dental pick. Oh, yeah, yeah.
So the what's nice about yoursis that the metals a lot
stronger, so you're not going tobe breaking them or like this
(19:08):
one's completely bent out ofshape, because
what's that? Like? Aluminum?
Um, I don't know. Might bestainless steel. Oh, okay, but
it's just thinner. Probably itmight be three or four or
something. Oh, okay. It might bemore corrosion resistance. It
might be three or four orsomething like that, or 316 that
(19:30):
makes sense. But you know,they're so thin that you can
pop, you know, you can bend themout of shape, and you can pop
off the edges. But sometimesit's really good to get
underneath those, those hard toget areas, yeah,
in the hard to reach places,man, that'll, that'll kill your,
your love of a project realquick, yeah?
And then, like, just like thattool, right? I use, I like the
(19:53):
hooked pliers, yes. Then, onceagain, you can use that flying
mechanism and get under it, justlike. This. I don't I use that
more reply or than actual, like,buyers or tweezers, whatever,
yeah. And then there's, Iactually don't know. I think
these are just from China, andthey're just called, I don't
(20:15):
know. They're originally usedfor, they're more like, almost
like a chisel. But noweveryone's selling them for 30
printing stuff is like, oh,yeah, hand tools. So usually
they come in packs of six, andthere's all different shapes,
but I think these are my mostused ones. So nice, you know,
you got kind of a chisel, littlebit of a lip, so you can really
nice underneath the parts andkind of like, scrape the whole
(20:36):
surface, and then even onethat's a little more point to
less, like, a little bit morecurve, yeah, like a scoop. And
then I think some diamond files.Good, you know, you might know
I've completely got the undersurface. You can just do a
slight file. And then I'm bad, Idid use a razor support
(21:04):
sometimes I just say utilityrazor.
Oh, that's great.
You should though, I'll includethis as a tool. Use cut proof
gloves.
Yeah, yeah. That is a great bitof advice,
because I have many scars on myhands, but, yeah, don't use
these enough. But I'd say thisis a really, really good tool.
(21:26):
And even if you're using some ofthis other stuff, it won't 100%
like, protect you from puncturesand stuff, but it will stop a
lot of stuff if you know, youslip or whatever. So I
definitely get those. I even usethis to clean, not Pei beds, but
maybe textured pi bed and someother ones. If you're very, very
(21:50):
light on it, yeah, if you wantbe more safe, I also for
cleaning beds. So I'm coming outto watch holes and get plastic
razors. Yeah. So these you youdon't really hurt yourself, and
you won't hurt your bed removingstuff that's huge. The other out
of the box. One is, now I havethe same ones. This is a
(22:14):
painting tool, but these are myfavorite, too, back in the day,
for moving prints off the bed,yeah. And kind of, if you really
get stuck, you can kind of, youknow, shimmy it all around the
part even, I mean, even withthese flex beds, you still
sometimes get the problem whereyou can't get off so you can
(22:34):
slowly, you know,
get it out. So, yeah, yeah. Andthat's like, more like the like,
exotic, more exotic materials,when you start getting the
strong stuff, that's when it'syou can, yeah,
really you're using, you'reusing or TPU, right? Yeah, get
under your TPU. Totally that TPthat doesn't just flex off. You
(22:55):
know, I've damaged a lot of pibeds just from, I've
definitely come back to a TPUprint in the spring steel has
has gone up because the partwarped, but it brought the plate
with it. Yeah, TPU is crazy,
yeah. So like, you know, you'dbe surprised a lot of other
tools and even art supplies canbe used for, yeah, yeah.
(23:19):
100% Well, that's a perfectsegue. So what another arts and
crafts tool that I use a lot,and I even use it for, like,
final assemblies, becausethere's just stuff that's that
good, is hot glue gun. Like,yep, hot glue gun is cheap, it's
fast. You can always come backfrom using it, you know, for the
(23:41):
most part, as long as youhaven't destroyed or melted, you
have that Undo button totallyand sometimes, especially when
you're prototyping, like, thisis your best friend with so many
things. And I've even used it inways that are, like, non
conventional, which is like,I'll just use the hot tip to
smooth over some areas.
Oh, yeah, bonding something,yeah. So people will use
(24:03):
soldering irons for that. Yes.And do like solder and seams,
which, I mean, it's likefriction store welding,
basically, except you're justmelting it 100%
welding, if you'd be puttingBondo or other paint on it and
sanding it up. It's great forthat, because then you start,
you're getting that plastic toplastic,
yes, right? Just like with theresin, yep, no. And that's,
(24:27):
that's huge, um, so thatdefinitely, I mean, like, the
glue sticks themselves arecheap. I think I go with
Gorilla, not for any reasonother than it works and it's
available, you know, yeah, Idon't need to, like, go to
Joanne fabrics to get the gluestick, you know, because that
was, that was a problem for awhile where I had, like,
they're also calling me out ofbusiness. So, yeah, yeah.
And it's just like, it's like aodd shape, like this is, like
(24:50):
circular, but they have, like,other shapes for
different Yeah, they have theoval ones and the very, very
thin ones, exactly.
So, like, this was just like acheap buy, and it. It just, it
helps me out. In so manyscenarios,
you can get two differenttemperatures too. So yeah, some
of the hot glue guns will behigh and low. So I love that
feature, yeah.
(25:10):
And to go more into that, like,practicality wise, low is great
for just like, I need to put itin place and see what it is, and
maybe I want to go back and fixit. But if I'm doing this for
part that's going out the door,I don't want to use a poxy or I
don't need it, I'll go highbecause the bonding is just that
much better on the highertemperature. Yes. And it says on
(25:31):
the instructions for the gluestick that that you buy it
should tell you it's definitelysomething to look at when you're
using it.
Yeah. So good thing you want theglue sticks. I'd say this is
the next level of glue stick,which is your yes suitor pen,
(25:51):
right? So I don't think I haveany filament here, but you plug
this in, you take some of yourright, just your spool that you
don't finish. So you have, youknow, a couple of loops around
you feed this and, and it's youryour hand, 3d printing thing,
right? So, like, you can controlthe temperature. So this one,
(26:12):
you can usually go between like170 and 230s and go like that,
your PLA your picture, your abs,most of your regular stuff,
yeah, and then you can controlthe speed, yes, which is nice,
that is
so they were not always likethat, yeah.
So this, right, you need repair,and you fill in the gap. You
(26:34):
want to combine two. So youcould do like, almost like a
welding technique, pass onstuff. It's very useful,
especially for cost by you wantto add some more detail to your
mask, like some extra stuff. Youwant to add some maybe you're
selling something. You want toadd some customizability. Maybe,
if you have goodmanship, right,write someone's name on it and
(26:56):
stuff. There's all differenttypes of things you can do with
a 3d pen. They're pretty cheap.You can recycle your filament
that you don't completely use inthe spool. So it's a nice little
one to have an have an arsenal,
yeah, and the other use I'veseen for it that I just don't
have the patience for is, like,drawing, basically a manual 3d
(27:17):
printer. And, yeah, I like, theyhave, like, printouts of
patterns. You just follow thepattern, and then you could,
like, build a whole structure.There are some incredible
artists out there doingincredible it's like, sculpting.
It's really, yeah, reallyimpressive. And the
how they're using it, and howthey're adding texture and
flattening out pieces and stuffis just incredible, yeah, like,
right, even you had the patientsadding an incredible texture to
(27:42):
a mask or to a model orsomething too.
Yeah, because you could do it in2d just like you would with
like, clothing, you know, you'vegot your template, and then you
could use the heat gun and formit onto whatever surface or
whatever. So there's really, Imean, I've seen videos online of
people who have done like, full,high quality pieces, but they
just, like, will, they'll justdoodle the whole structure, and
(28:05):
then they'll sand it, and thenbuild on top of it. And it's
like the patience and the like,the determination to finish a
project like that is just, it'sjust crazy. I have the patience.
It really is like sculpting,because there I see a lot of
them using, you know, asoldering gun, like a sculpting
thing, to kind of smooth out andkind of get the divots and the
(28:26):
texture and different thingsthey want. It's very super
impressive. I don't think I cando it
right there with you. All right.So this is my last tool that I
have, but you keep going afterthat, I know I only got one more
too. Oh, perfect. Okay, so thisis one of the newest tools to my
addition, and this became,really, I had something like
(28:49):
this that was given to me on theXYZ printer that I had, the Da
Vinci Pro. It was just like anadd in that they threw into the
printer. And it actually wassuper valuable with dealing with
when the printer went down,because that's a whole other
suite of tools of like cowboy,like Cavalier, like saving your
print tools like this definitelyfalls into that category. Just
(29:15):
wire brush, yeah, a wire brush Ihave also, I just did this on a
print downstairs. I startedgetting some curling on some
some parts, and I just put amagnet to hold it down on the
inside of the part. And then,yeah, right. It was like, mid
(29:36):
print. I was like, How do Isurvive this? And I just had
magnets. And I was like, that'sa good idea. So just like the
stuff you just like figure outalong the way. But what I've got
that's helped me a ton,especially with the multi color
printing, is a poke stick. Sonow they make these. So this is
the same they do, thickness theydo. So this is from CReality.
(29:59):
They sell one that's. Reallygood. So it's 1.7 diameter,
especially if you're printingwith a bunch of different
colors, or, like, differenttypes of material, like same
like PLA, but they're from twodifferent manufacturers, and so
the you just haven't dialed inall the settings, or it's just
enough where they don't mix welltogether. So then you get a
clog. This guy just goes rightin there, pokes it through and
(30:21):
like on the original like E, 3dblocks, the v6 heat blocks. This
was like, this worked everysingle time for the E, 3d Revo.
What ends up happening isthere's a little bit more
freedom in the in the O D,sorry, the the I D, of the
actual tube of the nozzle. Sowhat happens is, you, you poke
(30:41):
down, and then sometimes whenyou come back up, there's like,
this little, like sheath ofplastic around this, and then,
yeah, that comes up, and then itjams the nozzle. So it's not a
perfect solution, but it hassaved me so many times. I wish
it was a hardened steel, becauseI don't know if you can see
this, but it's not flat anymore.It's bent a bunch of times.
(31:03):
Oh, you should see mine. Mine'sa lot in a vice. And I'm like,
All right, all right. We definejust pushing it down. Yeah, no,
I have, we an old one from whenthe old companies we used to
work at. I think I only havelike, two of them, and so I
always lose it, but it's not aslong, and you get one of those
with a nice handle, yeah. No,that that has saved me so much
(31:25):
in some of the older machines.Some of the newer machines are
harder to use on because youcan't always, like, get the
extruder gears out of the way.True. Sometimes you can still
push them, you know, push itthrough the gears a little bit,
or even run the printer toextrude, and I'll push the metal
piece through, not supersuggested, because you might
(31:46):
wear out some of the hardwaretotally. But no, that's a I
didn't even think about thattool, probably, because I don't
know where mine currently is,yeah, but it's a fantastic
tool, absolutely. And like, I'veused an allen key, a 175 allen
key that works. But not allextruders you're going to reach
with that. The Da Vinci one XYZwas just like a piece of 175
(32:08):
steel that had just like a loopon the end. So it was great you
could just cut that seemed to belike the best design, honestly.
Yeah. So used a piece offilament that I just had just
cut this long enough. Sometimesthat's all you need, especially
when, like, you get that littlethat, like sheath. For whatever
reason, I think it's because thefilaments not as straight as the
(32:30):
metal, so you kind of catch theside a little bit more. But,
yeah, sometimes that's all youneed to
but for that stuff too. Somesome punches will come with
little needle so you can pushthrough, yeah, the nozzle. Or
the thing would be, try doing acold pull where you Yes, heat it
up, lower it to a little bitbelow your usual printing
(32:52):
temperature, between the glasstransition temperature and your
melting temperature, and thenpull it up. And sometimes you
can get that, like you said,that weird little plastic that
forms kind of around it, yeah?But no, that's for the
maintenance. That's when andfixing things don't have a jam,
right? That's one of my favoritetools, for sure,
yeah, but that's, that's, that'swhat I got.
(33:13):
Last one would just be, yeah,the engineers favorite tool,
yeah.
Even though, even though all ofthe, all of the like
measurement, folks are losingtheir minds saying it's not a
tool.
Oh, come on, it's an inspectiondevice. No, right, we're
designing, so it's a tool. Soyou got your big ones,
(33:35):
and I'm joking, there are peoplewho will use the caliper to
like, and this is, this ishorrible to think of, but as
like a hammer or like to cutthings. Oh, no. IG, I know, I
know, but see some of thecalipers
that are out there? We're notsaying to do that. It's
a tool
inspected or calibrated in awhile either.
(33:58):
Yeah, absolutely. We're doingFDM printing, so it's, uh, close
enough for most things, right? Ithink this, this is our, oh, I
guess the other thing would be a3d scan. I would be your, oh,
yes, your pre printing tools,right? Yeah. So no that, right,
(34:18):
or even use it for post, right?You gotta double check that
again, the measurement that youthink you're gonna get. Or, I
mean, you even use a lot ifyou're trying to tune a printer
or diagnose problems, you know,measure the Cali cubes or Cali
cat, seeing if anything's out ofwhack with the printer. Very
useful tool, especially ifyou're coming more from the
(34:40):
engineering side, and youactually design a lot of stuff
too, yes, yeah, great for rapidprototyping. I mean, you give
someone a caliper and, you know,a design software tool like, or
just a piece of paper like, youcan literally reverse engineer
almost anything. It's, it'spretty Yeah.
Do a lot of that. Yeah, yep,absolutely, absolutely, any,
(35:04):
any tools you want to get that'sjust kind of you don't have the
space for. That's like,
oh man, so I do have a mediablast cabinet, which I got for.
That's a series of jobs thatwas, you know, necessary.
That's exactly what I was gonnasay was I want one of those. So
here's
so here's the stuff that I wishI knew or that I learned along
(35:27):
the way. So like your totalvolume of compressed gas, let's
just describe what it is first.Oh, sorry, yes, yeah. So a media
blast cabinet is just orsandblasting sand blaster
cabinet. Yep, it's, it's aenclosed chamber, right? That
you would put something in tosand to, like, remove stuff on
(35:49):
the surface. You've got, like, amedia inside. And that media
could be as simple as, like,walnuts and, like, really soft
things, if you don't want to doa lot of damage in, like, more
cosmetic stuff, all the way tosilica and sand for really
abrasive stuff. And then you caneven go into the metals, and you
can get a shine, you know. Soit, instead of going in and
(36:13):
manually sanding something ablast cabinet would be a great
tool, because it's just going tobe so much better for your
labor. So I got that because Iwas doing a lot of big parts,
and these were going into, like,basically front lobbies of
buildings that had securitystops. So, you know, they needed
to look good, and I needed topaint them. So for me, instead
of hand sanding everythingsmooth enough, I would use the
(36:35):
media blast cabinet to get mostof the way there, and save a
bunch of time, because I had alot of parts I had to make. So
it was great, but the things Ilearned along the way were that
you probably need more abrasivematerial than you think you
need, because I went, like thesofter route, because I didn't
want to take away a lot of thematerial, so that we lost the
(36:55):
dimensionality of it. But thatalso meant it took a lot longer.
So yeah, you know, I would liketo have two cabinets, like a
rough cabinet and a finishingtouch cabinet. I can only have
the finishing touch the lighterstuff in my home. You know, I
don't want sand in the air ormetal in the air in my home.
(37:16):
So or spend that much on areally good system, 100% Yeah.
I mean, you get a really cheapone from Harbor Freight. Oh,
harbor freight, yeah, yeah,that's what I got. And then
I've, I've done, I've used thesemedia cabinets multiple times
throughout my career. So I've, Iknow how to, like, seal the
inside and get a really greatvacuum on it. I've got, like, a
(37:38):
vacuum hooked up to it, and thenthat hose goes out my exhaust
for for the for the basement,yeah. So it is a really nice
contained unit, but havingenough compressed air so that
you can do as much work as youneed is like the most important
thing. So then, yeah, you're,you're basically getting huge
volumes of compressed gas. Sothat's a whole other aspect of
(37:59):
that
tool, especially is juststanding there for how we're
doing it. Yeah, and it's, it'sso much funner than hand sanding
stuff. Yes, traditionally, you'dsee these with the SLS
technology to get off the excesspowder. So that's where you
usually see it in threeprinting. But can also easily
(38:21):
use it for FDM printing or mostother things too. It's a great
finishing tool,
yes. But as far as like a toolthat I would want, let's see
that I don't have. Hmm, youknow, you go first. I'll think
about that.
That was my question. Sand andsanding. I'll keep thinking, but
(38:45):
I
think so for me, I think thatthe tool that would be the most
helpful for me would be eitherlike an automatic washing
station with a lot more volumefor resin prints. You know, I
have the wash stations and themixers, but they don't agitate
the fluid enough for what Ineed. So that, that means I've
(39:08):
got to basically build my own oror buy one which they're all of
those are very expensive,
yeah, if I only got in resinprinting again, I'd have to do
that stuff.
Yeah, that stuff makes it superuseful, and then just scaling
that operation up together,right? And like, having a bigger
thing to cure parts in is hugetoo, because then you can kind
(39:30):
of batch your work better. But Ithink that's, that's what I
would look like amongst Yeah,
I don't know if I consider thisa tool, but having a bunch of so
all my, most of my benches are8020 so extruded aluminum. Yeah,
those are great to makedifferent size benches or
fixtures or anything you need,not quite a tool, but it's
(39:52):
always nice to have more, well,
more of that. The engineer inus, it is probably the that
every engineer. Here wants andhas some of Yeah, yeah.
I mean, a lot of three printersare made with them now too.
Well, at least more like DIYhobbyist stuff is, it's
amazing how cheap 8020 or like asimilar thing as
(40:15):
some cheap ones from China rightnow? Yeah, yeah. Well, I usually
try to buy them used. Well, notnice, no, that's not anymore.
That's that's the way to go,Yeah, but cool. There's a lot
more tools than I thought wewere gonna bring up in this.
You're pretty good, yeah, yeah,yeah. And I love that. I don't
(40:35):
think any of us had the sametool, just maybe a similar one,
a similar one, maybe, yeah,yeah. We, we have our different
techniques, yes,
yeah, 100% but that's, that'swhat it's about. Like, at the
end of the day, the tools thatyou're gonna have, like you're
not gonna have, you know, theysell sets and stuff like that,
and everyone buys, like, alittle kit, because it's just
(40:57):
the easiest, cheapest way to getparts. But yeah, at the end of
the day, it's like, there is no,like, one part for one thing,
it, it, it's a tool for areason, right? Like it's trying
to help you. So if something isgoing to help you, and it's not
the classic thing that everyoneuses, who cares?
Yeah, it's interesting when yougive someone a part of support
(41:17):
and tell them to remove thesports, everyone does it
differently.
Man, that would make a reallygood video to see if they how
everyone would do it, like aworkshop test or something you
should
do, yeah, like the I remember ata mug, they had a couple of
workshops of just showing us howto remove materials supports,
(41:38):
yeah, would be cool to Be like,bring, like, one of those
videos, you bring people thatdon't throw your print in a room
and some people that do throughyour printer in a room, yeah,
and watch how the differentpeople remove supports. Yes,
that'd be kind of interesting.
It would be that'd be fun event.Maybe we'll have to plan
something that'd be cool, yeah,but yeah, I think that's it. I
(41:58):
think that's good for thisepisode. Like, we're good All
right, so let's close out. Thankyou for joining us for another
episode of layered insightsprinting podcast. You can check
me out at AG, 3d printing.com tosee what we're doing here in the
ag, 3d printing lab. And thenwe've got the part detective
that helps with your partmysteries in printing. We're
(42:19):
available to jump on a callduring the day, same day, to
help you talk through any 3dprinting mystery that you have
and help you through theprocess, whether it's a part
that's not working anymore oranything like that. So that's
you can email us at AG, 3d partdetective@gmail.com that's what
I got going on. What about you,Matt?
Yeah, you can find me at nichethree d.io and I'm on LinkedIn
at Matthew guy. I also got myemail at matthew.guy@niche.io
(42:44):
boom, awesome. Thanks forjoining us. Everybody. Have a
good one.
See you next time you
you.
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