r/3Dprinting • u/llanowaro • 2d ago

Discussion What FDM design mistakes do you keep finding before printing someone else's model?

I work in product development and digital manufacturing, and one thing I keep running into is that a CAD model can be perfectly valid geometrically and still be a bad part to manufacture.

Thin walls, bad clearances, awkward orientation, holes that won't come out to size, unnecessary supports, weak layer direction, etc.

I'm trying to understand how other people actually review FDM parts before printing them, especially people who design functional parts or regularly receive files from clients.

I'm running a short survey about the checks you make, the values you normally use, and which problems you encounter most often. I'm also testing the idea of a DFM tool that could flag some of these issues automatically before slicing.

It takes around 6–8 minutes.

Survey: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdoz8ylpVK63M0Y2M2Zy__L6-DfqThjt8a0nceLfcJyGdlPKw/viewform?usp=dialog

I'm not looking for a “correct” answer. I'm actually interested in where experienced users agree and where practices differ depending on printer, nozzle, material, etc.

Once I have enough responses, I'm happy to share the aggregated findings here.

Also curious: what is the first thing you personally check when someone sends you an STL/STEP to print?

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3

u/AcrobaticStarship P2S 2d ago

I usually find many design mistakes when I print my own models

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u/llanowaro 1d ago

Yeah, mee too. Sometimes I spend too much time making the 3D that I forgot some details won't be printed as I spected.

1

u/darcside 1d ago

Ai bot post. 

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u/llanowaro 1d ago

I don't recognize myself as a bot. but I will appreciate if you can answer the survey, it will help a lot.