Your first week with a 3D printer

What we would tell you across the counter if you had an hour. In order.

Day one: print the test file that came with it

Do not download anything yet. The file on the card was sliced by the manufacturer for that exact machine, so if it prints, the printer is fine and anything that goes wrong afterwards is something you have changed.

Day two: learn the first layer

This is the whole game. A correct first layer looks like slightly squashed round lines, touching their neighbours, with no gaps and no ridges. Watch it go down and adjust the Z-offset live in 0.02mm steps until it looks right. Save it.

Day three: one change at a time

The temptation is to change five settings at once. Every experienced person has learned the hard way that you then have no idea which one helped. Change one thing, print, look, repeat.

Day four: print something useful

A bracket, a hook, a holder for something on your desk. The moment the printer solves an actual problem rather than making a decorative boat is the moment it stops being a toy.

Day five: learn the slicer, a bit

You need four settings: layer height, infill, walls and supports. Everything else can wait months. Anyone who tells you otherwise is enjoying the complexity for its own sake.

Things nobody tells you

• Filament absorbs moisture from the air, and damp filament prints badly — seal it when you are done
• The first layer is nine out of ten problems
• A failed print is not a broken printer
• Cheap filament is a false economy while you are learning; you cannot tell your mistakes from the material's
• Keep the printer somewhere without a draught