Fighting Warping in 3D Printing

Fighting Warping in your 3D prints is a manageable task using these helpful tips. This video will show you how to nearly eliminate warping caused by the cooling of the plastic.

So what is warping? Warping is when your 3D print changes shape from what you originally intended to print. The sides of your project tend to curl up into the center of your 3d print. It is a frustrating part of 3D printing that we unfortunately have to deal with. But there are ways to help manage this problem and I will show you what sort of things that you can do to get the best quality prints from your 3d print from your printer.

Warping occurs when your plastic cools and shrinks. This shrinking effect causes it to pull on the other plastic pieces that it is connected to, and as the layers of your project begin to take shape, this effect becomes more and more pronounced.

There are many ways to fight this warping effect, the first and most well known way is to apply a thin layer of hair spray to your printer bed. I suggest not using Kapton Tape and then apply a layer directly to the glass of your printer bed.
Allow the hairspray to completely dry. As the warm plastic touches the dried hairspray, it will melt it slightly and then as it cools the hair spray will form a bond between the printer bed and the plastic. This will go a long way to helping prevent warping in your projects.

The second method, is placing a object known as helper disks on the corners of your project. Helper disks are essentially round disks that give more surface area contact to your printer bed, essentially holding down the sides of your project.
You will probably notice that the helper disks will lift up themselves, but the sides of your project will stay down better.

The way you design your project has a lot of effect on warping too. Square corners tend to have the most warping. So if possible try and design your project with circles.

Because warping is a shrinking of the plastic, the more plastic that you have in a project the more it will warp. Printing a 100% solid object will see a lot more warping then a project printed with say 30%. So in your printing software, change the infill of your project to something lower to reduce the amount of warping.

Enjoi!