Maintenance

A printer you keep up with will print well for years. Most maintenance takes a few minutes and prevents exactly the problems that otherwise swallow a whole night of print time.

Keeping the nozzle clean

Remnants of burnt filament in the nozzle cause streaks, blobs and eventually a full blockage. The stainless steel needle clears the opening while the hotend is hot, and the brass brush wipes the outside without damaging the nozzle — brass is softer than steel, so it does not scratch. Do this between material changes and no old filament will mix into your new colour.

Cleaning the bed and your prints

Adhesion problems come from a dirty bed more often than from wrong settings. Grease from your fingers is enough to make a corner lift. Isopropanol at over 99% purity dissolves that grease and evaporates without residue, so your bed is usable again straight away. The same alcohol is what you use to smooth FiberSmooth prints.

Moving parts and filament

The silicone grease with PTFE belongs on the linear rails and lead screws: a quiet printer is almost always a lubricated printer. Silica gel goes in your filament box or vacuum bag. PLA takes up moisture from the air, and damp filament crackles while printing and gives rough walls — with a bag of beads alongside it, a spool stays good for months.

Tools you will need anyway

The side cutters for supports and for cutting filament at an angle, so it feeds into the Bowden tube more easily. The tube cutter gives a dead straight cut in PTFE tubing, which matters: a skewed cut stops the tube seating flat against the nozzle and causes leaks. And a 1.5 mm hex key, because that is always the first one to go missing.