Jankiest 3D printing tips that actually work

"But don't worry, we can move the bar lower." 🤣

The sharpie trick was amazing. This is something you could easily integrate into a 3d printer's nozzle.....

“If you’re going to do it you might as well do it right, with fire” man is an honorary Floridian.

Oooooh, I like this one because I am a proud owner of The Janky Ender 3 Pro (which still works despite all upgrades I commited to it). So... My list: 1. You heard of "cold pull", now introduce "hot push" to unclog heat creep. At first, heat up hotend to 280C and disable hotend fan so heat can transfer up to cold zone. It softens clogged plastic enough for it to be pushed out. Push in some cheap 1.6mm weed wacker string. When plastic starts extruding, turn on hotend fan and continue pushing weed wacker string until it starts extruding clean. Turn off hotend heater, while still pushing weed wacker string. Push it until it stops melting. Wait for hotend to cool down and do a cold pull. Now hotend should be clean enough for the next clog. 2. Replacing the nozzle is a well documented procedure, but I was getting leaks anyway. Probably hotend wasn't hot enough so I detached hotend assembly from printer, removed heater cartridge and thermistor, gently heated it with propane torch up to "not glowing yet" and tightened it up. No leaks since then. 3. Filament dryer can also dry socks. 4. Jon from ProperPrinting showed in his lamp build video cool technique to increase mass of printed part for cheap. Pause printer before it starts covering infill, pour in sand, resume printing. 5. Mainsail/Fluidd don't know how to "start printing job later". Or I didn't update for too long? Anyway. G4 P3600000 pauses for 1 hour. Thanks, bye!

For a cheap way to dry your filament: You have a nice heated surface already! Just stick the spool on your heated bed, set an appropriate temperate, cover with cardbox box or similar. and go.

I am a firm believer in a janky cardboard enclosure. The thick cardboard that comes on new bed mattresses is perfect. It's thick enough that you can hot glue it together, I actually hot glue the cardboard to an old hardwood coffee table I put my 3d printers on. It works so good, I even use some packing tape to make hinges so I have cardboard doors on my cardboard enclosure, it's so janky it's awesome.

For what it's worth, every version of Cura I've ever used has a checkbox for "union overlapping volumes", which works exactly like the hack but without any fuss whatsoever.

That sharpie thing honestly should become a built-in feature, it's incredible.

Another janky habit I have is to move my printhead to push parts from the bed remotely, so that they fall out and a new print can be started. This works especially well with camera setups like in Bambu printers and octoprint setups

For the color in supports segment. Gluestick is PVA. Pla sticks to it enough to lay down, but it prevents layer adhesion, so the support will still pop off.

You could improve the spool joining technique with even more jank: just leave the PTFE tube on the fillament! It’s not going to block anything.

"I discovered there's a spider living on my Rat Rig and I'm going to leave it there... [begins outro]" LOL that was gold

I've often joined leftover filaments with a translucent ptfe tube. After pushing the melted ends together, pull them a little and the weld will thin out again, so you can get closer to a perfect 1.75.

Torch for stringing is amazing, way better than heat gun, but you dont need a full blown torch LOL Those little pocket torch lighters from the gas station work perfect for this, and have a small flame you can pinpoint spots with. Also works great to remove stress marks from ABS.

Janky tips: 1. If applying glue stick to the bed is too tedious for your liking, you can just use hairspray. 2. For 3D scanning, you don't need the expensive scanning spray to make a part matte - you can just use dry shampoo. It stinks, but it's dirt cheap and leaves a matte dust.

I don't worry about joining filament. When one gets closer to running out I just feed the second in right behind the first as the printer is running slowed down. The extruder happily catches it and keeps on feeding as you help it by pushing it in from behind as needed.

Here is my janky one :D When I had issues with ABS lifting in corners, I used a knife to cut a piece of glue stick. Shoved it in, and used a torch to soften the curling part. Than used the spatula that came with the printer to push down the curved part into the glue stick. I did this now on a few occasions and works like a charm if you only have 2-3 layers above the bed and the print started to curl already. Janky as hell but work :D

I print out a bunch of 2.75mm PETG rods of different lengths. Then I hot glue them as crossbraces from support to support. It works amazingly well for printing tall skinny things... An example: Basically if you want to print something like a harry potter wand straight up and down you would add 2 tall rods beside the wand in the slicer, they can be round or square doesnt matter. Use print by object and make the rods hollow with a nice brim so you arent wasting as much material. Now when it is a printing you can pause the print every few inches and hot glue some crossbraces on no problem. Be careful to apply the glue outside the printer and get rid of any stringing, you dont want your part cooling fan to suck in the wisps and it stays liquid long enough that you dont have to apply it directly inside the printer. Another great bit of jank i seen was using thoae flat button style magnets to hold down brims and also you can pause the print about a half inch or an inch into it and place magnets inside the supports. I am printing out a 40hr kroq-Gar statue where the supports all swoop in at extrememe angles from outside to catch things in the middle. These would absolutely break or fail if I didnt employ the magnet and hotglue jank. Youd be surprised how tall and skinny you can make things while getting literally perfect results even at 0.08mm where the nozzle is constantly rubbing.

I tried to join two rolls of ABS in a similar way. Turns out the last 3 meters of material on the roll were significantly more brittle, so I had to fix a mid-print failure 3 times within 10 minutes, as the material kept snapping before reaching the weld. I always print on a bed covered with polypropylene or paper tape. Every material works with only one of them. I was too lazy to update the firmware, so I added 100 ohm resistor in series with the thermistor to raise the max print temperature. I use car lightbulbs to heat the printer chamber

Awesome to see my model in your video thank you :)