Anycubic Vyper

Factory Two 3D Printers (FDM)

Member Checkout & Operating SOP

This SOP covers the filament (FDM) printers: the Artillery Sidewinder X1, the Anycubic Vyper, the Ender 3 fleet, and both MakerBot Sketches. One FDM checkout covers all of them. They are all a little different, so read the machine section for the one you are using.

The two Elegoo Mars resin printers are a different process with different hazards and need their own certification. Nothing in this document applies to them.

1. Before You Start

F2's general shop rules (closed-toe shoes, no impaired operation, report damage, clean up after yourself) apply here and everywhere in the building. This document covers what is specific to these machines.

You must have completed 3D printer checkout with F2 staff before using these machines unsupervised. The checkout walks you through slicing in Cura, loading filament, leveling a bed, and running one print of your own.

PPE: none required for normal operation. The hazards are a nozzle at 200 to 260 C and a bed up to 130 C, and the defense against both is not touching them. Wear safety glasses when you are using a scraper or snips to clean up a print. Cured PLA chips and breaks in unhelpful directions.

Know your safety equipment:

• Fire extinguisher: on the wall by the electronics lab, about 15 feet from the printer bench.
• First aid kit: staff will point it out during your checkout. Know where it is before you need it.

Filament: F2 stocks PLA and PETG for member use at no charge. You are welcome to bring your own filament. PLA is the default and what these machines do best. ABS is fine to run here. The Enders are not great with nylon. Flexible filament (TPU) only runs on a direct-drive extruder; F2 does not stock it, and only some units can run it, so ask staff before you bring any in.

Reserving a printer: reserve the specific unit you want on factorytwo.org. There is no maximum print time.

2. Getting a Model and Preparing Your File

You need a 3D model in STL format. Two ways to get one.

Download it. Thingiverse (thingiverse.com) and Printables (printables.com) are large community libraries. Both need a free account with an email address. Most files are free, some are paid.

Model it yourself. Onshape (onshape.com) is free, runs entirely in a browser with nothing to install, and works on most devices. It has a large library of tutorial videos in its help area. Modeling is a real skill and it takes longer to learn than printing does.

STL is the file type to bring to the slicer. Cura will open some other formats, but STL is what the F2 workflow assumes and what every tutorial you find will use.

Design for the machine. A model that prints beautifully in a rendering can be impossible in plastic. Steep overhangs need support material, which you then have to break off and throw away, and which leaves a rough surface behind. Tall thin parts fall over. Large flat parts warp. Before you slice, rotate the part in your head and ask which face you want against the bed. Short and wide beats tall and narrow almost every time, and putting the fine detail on an upward-facing surface gets you a better result than putting it on a surface the printer has to build into thin air.

3. House Rules for Every Printer Here

Clean before you print. The bed you print on is the bed you clear first. If someone else's finished print is still on the bed when you arrive, remove it carefully (Section 4.6) and set it aside where they will find it. Do not throw out another member's print.

Stay for the first three layers. Almost every print that fails, fails at the start, and a first layer that never stuck turns into hours of the nozzle dragging a growing ball of plastic around an empty bed. Stay at the machine until three layers are down and you can see the part is stuck. Then you may leave.

Overnight and unattended prints are allowed. After the first three layers, you may leave the building with a print running and come back for it the next business day.

Failed prints. If you come back and the print has failed, stop the job before anything else. Then clean up your own failure, including the plastic welded to the bed, and leave the machine ready for the next person.

Report anything wrong. If a machine makes a noise it did not make before, if a heater takes far longer than usual to come up to temperature, if a belt looks loose, or if you smell burning plastic that is not the print, stop the job and tell staff. Do not repair the machine yourself. Do not reflash firmware. Do not adjust extruder tension or belts on a machine that was printing fine for someone else yesterday.

4. The Common Procedure

This section applies to every FDM printer here. Machine-specific details are in Section 6, and you need both.

4.1 Slicing in Cura

The 3D printing computer is the dedicated PC at the printer bench. Cura is installed on it. Cura is free, well proven, and recommended by Creality, which makes the Ender 3. It takes your STL and produces G-code, the instruction file the printer actually reads.

Open your STL with the file menu. The controls down the left side of the screen move, scale, rotate, and mirror the part on the virtual bed. Use these first, because orientation decides most of the outcome.

Then work through the print settings. These are the ones that matter:

• Quality sets layer height. Thinner layers mean more precision and a longer print. This is the biggest single lever on print time.
• Walls sets how many perimeters the printer traces around the outside. This controls surface quality and outer strength.
• Infill sets how much material goes inside the part. Ask how much internal strength you actually need. 15 to 20 percent is plenty for most things; 100 percent is almost never worth the hours.
• Material sets nozzle and bed temperature. Every filament has a suggested temperature range, usually printed on the spool. Your settings may differ from the profile defaults.
• Speed sets how fast the hotend moves. Faster is worse and shorter.
• Cooling controls the part fan. More cooling gives crisper overhangs on PLA and worse layer bonding.
• Support generates removable structure under overhangs. Support blocker lets you delete support from places that do not need it.
• Build plate adhesion adds a skirt, brim, or raft to hold the part down. A brim is the usual answer when a part has a small footprint.

Choose the correct printer profile in Cura before you slice. A file sliced for an Ender 3 sent to a MakerBot Sketch will try to print past the edge of a bed that is 70mm smaller in both directions, and a file sliced for the Sidewinder will not fit on anything else.

Press Slice. Cura calculates the toolpaths and gives you a time estimate. If the estimate is longer than you expected, go back and look at layer height and infill before you look at anything else.

Then use the save to disk button to write the .gcode file out.

F2's training file is Training Star.stl. It is on the bench PC.

4.2 Getting the File to the Printer

Each printer has a memory card that goes in a USB reader on the bench PC. The reader shows up as the next available drive letter, usually F, but it may be G or H if something else is already plugged in. Look for the removable drive, not the letter.

Save the sliced .gcode to that card, eject it, and carry it to the printer.

The card should also carry Test Spiral.gcode, the bed leveling verification file. If it is missing from your card, ask staff.

The MakerBot Sketches do not use Cura or the card. See Section 6.4.

4.3 Loading and Unloading Filament

Do this before you level, and do it hot. The nozzle must be at temperature or you will damage the filament, the drive gear, or both.

To unload:

1. Heat the nozzle to 200 C. Some filaments need up to 220 C. Wait until it actually reaches temperature.
2. The nozzle is now very hot. Everything you touch from here is a small piece of metal at twice the boiling point of water.
3. Squeeze the spring lever to release the filament feeder wheel.
4. Push a little filament in first. This loosens the melted plug at the tip.
5. Then pull the filament all the way out in one motion.
6. Hold onto the free end and secure it in the hole in the spool rim. If you let go, the spool unwinds itself, the loose end tangles under a lower wrap, and the next person gets a jam they did not cause.

To load:

1. If you just unloaded, the nozzle is still at 200 to 220 C. If not, heat it first.
2. Use the cutters to cut a clean point on the end of the filament. A blunt or crimped end will not find the hole. Discard the first few inches if they are bent.
3. Squeeze the spring lever again and guide the filament into the feed hole. On the Bowden machines this hole is hard to see; go by feel.
4. Feed it all the way through the tube, twirling it between your fingers as you go. It will catch at the hose ends. Do not force it. Back off and try again.
5. When it reaches the nozzle, give it a minute at temperature, then push some through by hand. You should see a thin string of melted filament come out.
6. If the color coming out is still the old color, keep pushing until it changes. Purge until clean.

4.4 Leveling and the First Layer

Bed adhesion is the most serious problem in 3D printing. Getting a good first layer, and keeping the part from warping off the bed over the following hours, is hard because it is not always obvious what went wrong or how to fix it. Bed temperature, whether the bed is level, and the height of the nozzle above the bed are all critical, and they interact.

The leveling procedure depends on the machine. Three kinds exist in this fleet, and Section 6 tells you which one you have:

• Manual: you turn four knobs under the bed by hand. The Sidewinder X1 and most of the Enders.
• Assisted: the machine walks you through it on screen and you adjust with buttons. Both MakerBot Sketches.
• Automatic: the machine probes the bed itself and compensates in software. The Anycubic Vyper, and any Ender fitted with a probe.

Manual leveling procedure:

1. Run Auto Home. The nozzle moves to the zero position in X, Y, and Z.
2. Disable steppers so you can move the hotend by hand.
3. Slide the hotend to the first corner. Put the 0.10 feeler gauge between the nozzle and the bed and turn that corner's hand screw until you feel just a bit of friction on the gauge. Not gripped, not loose.
4. Repeat at all four corners.
5. Go back around a second time. Adjusting one corner moves the other three.
6. Run Test Spiral.gcode from the memory card to verify.
7. Watch the bead of filament it lays down. You want it consistent all the way around, slightly flattened rather than round, and sticking to the bed firmly. A round bead sitting on top of the bed means the nozzle is too high. A transparent smear with gaps means it is too low.
8. You can make small adjustments during this test print. Very small ones, a few degrees of the knob at a time.

Watch the first three layers on every machine, including the automatic ones. Automatic leveling compensates for a bed that is out of true; it does not fix one, and it does not catch a dirty bed or a nozzle that is too high.

4.5 Running the Job

Insert your card, find your file on the printer's screen, and start it. The display gives you elapsed time and percent complete as it goes. Large prints run for many hours.

Stay for the first three layers. After that you may leave.

4.6 Removing the Part Without Wrecking the Bed

This is where more damage gets done to F2's printers than anywhere else in the process.

Let the bed cool first. PLA shrinks slightly as it cools and often releases on its own. Two minutes of patience frequently replaces all the force you were about to apply.

If the bed is a removable magnetic sheet, lift the whole sheet off the machine, flex it, and let the part pop free. Flex it away from the part, not toward it. Do not attack a part with a scraper while the sheet is still on the printer, because if the tool slips you are gouging the surface everyone else prints on.

If you must use the putty knife, hold it nearly flat to the bed, get under a corner of the part, and use steady pressure rather than stabs. A blade driven down into the bed leaves a divot, and every future print over that divot has a bad first layer.

Never use a metal blade on a glass bed unless staff has told you that particular machine's bed tolerates it. Chipped glass beds do not get repaired, they get replaced.

Remove the skirt, brim, or raft too. That plastic is yours and it goes in the trash with the rest of your waste, not left on the bed for the next person.

5. Failure Modes

Four things go wrong. Recognize them by sight.

Bed adhesion failure. The part comes loose, usually at a corner first, and curls upward. Everything after that is wrong. Causes are a bed that is not level, a nozzle too far from the bed, a bed that is too cool, or a dirty bed. Wipe the bed with isopropyl alcohol before you print; skin oil from handling the sheet is a common and invisible cause. A brim in the slicer buys you a lot of margin on parts with small footprints.

Warping. The part stays stuck but the corners lift as lower layers cool and contract. Larger and flatter parts warp more. More bed heat, a brim, and keeping drafts off the machine all help.

Delamination. The layers separate and you get cracks up the side of the part. It looks like a disaster and it is one of the easier problems to fix. Increase hotend temperature, decrease cooling fan speed, or increase flow rate. Any of the three works; temperature first.

Spaghetti. The nozzle loses the part entirely and extrudes into open air, producing a growing nest of stringy plastic. Once it starts there is no recovery. The mess continues until you interrupt the print, so interrupt the print.

6. The Machines, One at a Time

6.1 Artillery Sidewinder X1 (Large Format)

Build volume: 300 x 300 x 400 mm. By far the largest bed at F2 and the reason to use this machine.

Materials: PLA and PETG. The hotend is PTFE-lined and rated to 240 C, so nothing that wants a hotter nozzle. Direct-drive extruder. The bed goes to 130 C.

Slicer: Cura, Artillery Sidewinder X1 profile.

Leveling: manual. Four knobs, the feeler gauge, and the procedure in Section 4.4.

Enclosure: none. Open frame.

Quirks: the Sidewinder's gantry flexes at higher print speeds, so slow this machine down rather than pushing it. Bed temperature is uneven across a 300mm plate, particularly near the mounting screws, and big beds warp big parts, so use a brim on anything with a large footprint. The AC-heated bed comes up to temperature unusually fast, which is convenient and also means it is hot before you expect it to be.

6.2 Anycubic Vyper

Build volume: 245 x 245 x 260 mm. Second largest bed in the fleet.

Materials: PLA, ABS, PETG, TPU, and wood-filled filament per Anycubic. Nozzle up to 260 C, bed up to 110 C, 0.4mm nozzle. The 260 C hotend gives it more range than the Enders.

Slicer: Cura, Anycubic Vyper profile.

File transfer: microSD card. There is also a USB cable, which Anycubic marks as expert users only. Use the card.

Leveling: automatic. The Vyper has 16-point auto leveling using a strain-gauge sensor built into the hotend, so it probes with the nozzle itself. Run the auto level from the touchscreen and let it finish.

Auto leveling sets the shape of the bed, but the Z offset sets the height, and the Z offset is what you adjust if the first layer is too squished or not squished enough. Adjust it in small steps, roughly 0.02mm at a time, while a first layer is printing.

Enclosure: none. Open frame.

Quirks: the strain-gauge sensor reads the nozzle pressing on the bed, so a blob of old filament on the nozzle tip makes the machine think the bed is higher than it is and gives you a first layer too far away. Wipe the nozzle clean before you auto level. PEI-coated magnetic spring steel plate, so lift it off and flex it rather than scraping. 4.3 inch touchscreen.

6.3 Ender 3 Fleet

F2 runs a fleet of Ender 3 Pro and better. They started out nearly identical and they are not any more: some have glass beds, some have magnetic sheets, some have an auto-leveling probe added, and some have been converted to direct drive. Look at the machine you are using before you assume anything. A probe is a small module bolted next to the hotend. A direct-drive unit has the extruder motor riding on the print head instead of on the frame.

Build volume: 220 x 220 x 250 mm on all of them.

Materials: PLA is what these machines do well. PETG and ABS work. Nozzle maximum is 255 C and bed maximum is 110 C with a PTFE-lined hotend, so nothing that wants a hotter nozzle. Nylon is a poor fit for these machines. TPU only on a direct-drive unit.

Slicer: Cura, Creality Ender 3 Pro profile.

Leveling: manual on the units without a probe, following Section 4.4. On a unit with a probe, run the auto level from the menu, then check the Z offset the same way you would on the Vyper.

Enclosure: none. Open frame.

Bed removal: a magnetic sheet comes off and flexes. A glass bed stays put; let it cool fully and the part will usually release on its own, and never take a metal blade to it.

Quirks: the stock Ender is a Bowden extruder, meaning the drive motor is on the frame and pushes filament down a long PTFE tube to the hotend. That tube is why loading takes patience and why the filament catches at the hose ends. Use the Cura profile rather than inventing your own retraction settings. The bed springs go soft over time, and a machine that will not hold a level for more than a few prints usually needs new springs, which is a staff job.

The unit number on the machine is how you report a problem. "One of the Enders is making a noise" helps nobody.

6.4 MakerBot Sketch 1 and Sketch 2

The two Sketches are the same machine. Everything here applies to both.

Build volume: 150 x 150 x 150 mm. The smallest bed at F2 by a wide margin. Check your part fits before you walk over.

Materials: PLA. F2's house spools fit and third-party PLA works. Heated build plate up to 100 C.

Slicer: not Cura. Use MakerBot Print on the bench PC, signed in to the F2 account. It slices and sends the job to the printer from there.

File transfer: from MakerBot Print over the network, or by USB flash drive.

Leveling: assisted. The touchscreen walks you through it. You slide a sheet of paper between the nozzle and the plate and tap the up and down arrows until you feel slight friction, the same feel as the feeler gauge on an Ender but with the machine telling you where to go next.

Enclosure: yes. Fully enclosed with a front door and a particulate filter. This is the classroom machine, built so nobody can reach anything hot, and it is the quietest printer here. The enclosure holds heat in, which helps with warping on larger flat parts.

Quirks: small bed and a closed software stack. In exchange it is the most reliable machine in the building for a first print. Magnetic flexible build plate, so lift and flex rather than scrape.

7. Emergencies

A printer fire. Printer fires are rare and almost always electrical: a heater cartridge, a loose terminal at the heated bed, or a failed thermistor letting the hotend run away. Turn the machine off at its own switch if you can reach it safely, and unplug it or kill it at the wall if you cannot. Then use the extinguisher. A burning printer is mostly burning wiring and plastic, so treat it as an electrical fire.

Do not throw water on a printer.

Runaway heating. If a display shows a temperature climbing well past its setpoint, or you smell burning that is not the ordinary smell of hot plastic, cut power. Do not try to stop the job through the menu first.

Burns. The nozzle runs at 200 to 260 C and the bed up to 130 C. Cool the burn under running water. Report it to staff, and report it even if it seems minor, because F2 needs the incident recorded.

8. Cleanup

1. Remove your print. Let the bed cool, lift the magnetic sheet, flex it. Use the putty knife only if you must, held flat, per Section 4.6.
2. Remove the skirt, brim, raft, and any support material. It is your plastic and it goes in the trash.
3. Clear the bed of every scrap, including the small ones you have to look for. The next person's first layer depends on this.
4. If you loaded your own filament, unload it and take it with you.
5. Return the feeler gauge, the snips, the putty knife, and the memory card to their holders. Every one of these tools goes missing constantly and a machine without a feeler gauge cannot be leveled.
6. Leave the machine as nice as you found it. Better, if you found it badly.
7. If anything seemed wrong, report it to staff, with the unit number.