Things to consider buying with your 3d printer

Okay, so when I first mentioned buying my Prusa i3 mk2s, I said that I wished I had ordered some additional pei sheets with the printer. But there have really been several small purchased I’ve made that have been pretty useful, so I thought I’d list them out for folks waiting for their printer to ship. I’m not endorsing the products I’ve bought, but I’ve linked to them on amazon in a totally non sponsored way so you can grab them easily if you like.

  • A good metric caliper that’s large enough to make sure that everything’s equal when you assemble a printer kit makes life a lot easier. I’m also looking forward to using it to measure real world objects for creating my own 3d objects.
  • A giant bag of desiccant and some humidity indicators. Filament is apparently pretty sensitive to humidity, so you want to make sure you’re keeping it dry. You probably also want a giant sealable plastic storage bin to keep it in with the desiccant and indicator.
  • A specialized spatula for removing printed objects. Turns out they stick pretty well to that pad, and being able to pry them up without ruining the PEI sheet on the printer is pretty important. A spatula with nicely rounded corners has been pretty helpful
  • Miscelaneous bearings and o-rings. Yeah, when you take a look at the projects on thingiverse, you’ll find quite a few that use o-rings for tires, or steel bearings as marbles, or other odd parts. Take a look through what you want to start with and order the right extras early.
  • Sandpaper. Okay, so I really haven’t been using this as much as I probably should have, but it’s worth picking up sandpaper in a variety of grits. The link here is for a kit with a whole bunch of sheets and a case for them.

So that’s what I’ve gotten so far: really not that much extra $, and I’ve been stalled at various points waiting for them to arrive. You might be able to speed yourself up a bit by getting them all at the start.
And as always, if you’re aware of other “must-haves”, share them in the comments!

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