I’m beautiful and tough like a diamond…or beef jerky in a ball gown.

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Joined 7 months ago
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Cake day: July 15th, 2025

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  • I mean, first layer adhesion is a problem common to more than just a specific printer and there are all kinds of tips and tricks to deal with it. The only one I tried (covering the bed in painter’s tape) didn’t pan out, and a friend was talking up the glass bed he just installed.

    So instead of trying more tips and tricks like taking a glue stick to the bed surface, I went with the glass bed. I was expecting it to be like a $60 part but it was only like $15 so that worked out really well.


  • My Ender 3 V3 SE (I think I got all the initials in there?) has been pretty painless. The only thing I changed on it was replacing the stock magnetic bed with the glass one. I was having constant adhesion problems with the base layer and the glass bed fixed that immediately.

    The other thing that (seemed to) help was switching from whatever slicer I originally used (forget which) to OrcaSlicer and just using its generic defaults for the filament and printer options. When I first started, I took the specs from the filament rolls and made profiles for each brand, but that just made my prints worse. Orca’s defaults “just work” for me and less effort on my part. Win-win lol.
















  • Wow thanks! That’s actually super helpful. Gonna save this and probably throw it in a text document for later reference. I was 100% trying to do an all-in-one-go single project like you described because “that’s what i wanted it to look like”. The result was predictably frustrating and just awful.

    I’ve watched a few tutorials but a lot of it went over my head or talked in terms I wasn’t familiar with yet or started in the middle of an existing project. Will definitely try breaking things down into smaller, simpler primitives. I’ve not done CAD work before so this is all brand new to me, so things like the actual workflow are things I need to learn (and you’ve described very well).



  • Well, switching the mouse navigation mode got me further and less frustrating than before, so progress I suppose! The default “CAD” navigation was hell to use with my trackball since the DPI button is right below the wheel and wheel + button to free rotate the model was just awkward on so many levels. OpenCascade seems to be the sweet spot.

    I’ll stick with it. Was just hoping there was something more for dummies like me lol.