Special Techniques and Goals
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An intro is needed.
3d prints aren't food safe (even if the materials used to make them are), this is due to the layering process these machines use. It makes thousands of tiny grooves, which are just perfect for growing mould in.
There's an awful lot of science that goes into making an item food safe. Here's an expert discussing the issue.
Food safety is tricky. You're not getting anything FDA approved off of a 3D printer. Actual safety is a bit trickier. Keep in mind that anything on this page is conjecture and that the editors are by no means experts on the matter.
ABS plastic is generally food safe, but there are lots of additives to it that aren't. There's no real way to verify that any given filament manufacturer hasn't added something dangerous, but the worst you're probably going to get would be similarly dangerous to BPA or a mild carcinogen. If you purchase from a good supplies, odds are pretty good it's pure ABS.
PLA is generally food safe and much less likely to have weird additives. Sadly you can't use acetone vapour smoothing, and it's thus less tenable.
The problem is that hobbyist (FFF) 3D printers create a rough semi-porous surface. Bacteria can live in those holes. If you're using an FFF printer you need to run it through an acetone vapour chamber to seal up those holes. This presumably would result in a more appropriate surface finish, but rigorous testing on this has not been performed. If nothing else, the parts could be washed more easily after this treatment.
As for services like Shapeways or i.materialise, they mostly use SLS based printers. They don't tell you what their plastic actually is, and it's unknown how safe their surface finish is. Shapeways offers glazed ceramics that they say is food safe.
PET/PETG is another good option if you are looking for a safe material, keep in mind though that you will still want to seal this after you print it to avoid bacteria growth.
The easiest way to print transparent parts is with resin printing, however it's also achievable with FFF
A guide to incorporating fabric into your prints can be found here
Layer stepping can be smoothed using [this technique(https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/czephq/has_anyone_tried_nonplanar_printing/) Also see the Non Planar Printing page on this wiki.
Can be done by altering the model to contain a thin bridge
Spreadsheet doc /u/crua9 made this tool. The sheet is filled with junk info, but you can copy it to your own Google account. The tool will help you keep track of the filament you use, how much you have, what you're buying, and several other things. Please feel free to message /u/crua9 if you have questions about the tool.
This method lets you make a simple 3D print of most 2D pictures. Once you shine a light through the print, you can see the picture. There are plenty of free online tools that you can use.
This video guide was made by /u/crua9. Within the description of the video there is links to help you navigate your gcode. In a nutshell the guide gets into editing the gcode you're using to print from where the machine stopped printing. Note that you will still need to find what caused the problem, and you need to solve it. But at at least you don't have to start completely over with this.
Also note that this guide can only help you if the area that it stopped printing was clean or might have a little fuzz. This is to include you being able to clean a level without removing the print from the bed. Also note that this guide is only for FDM printers. For any other type of printer, it is best to use your own judgment if this will apply.
