10 Of The Best 3D Printing Accessories You Can Buy On Amazon – BGR

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3D printing isn’t as simple as choosing a model and hitting the print button. There’s still a learning curve, and all manner of gadgets and gizmos to make your life easier and give your prints a greater chance of becoming what you envisioned; not just a tangle of spaghetti.

I’ve been reviewing 3D printers for the best part of a decade — from the first ever toy machines that printed no more than a few inches cubed (if they managed to print at all), to the almighty Elegoo Orangestorm Giga with a print volume of around 39,000 inches cubed. Rarely a day goes by when one of my machines isn’t pumping out some cosplay props, wargaming terrain, or other such nerdy goodness (you can even 3D print your own laptop parts). I’ve watched the hobby evolve from slinging around glorified hot glue guns, through the awkward phase of Delta printers and polar coordinate systems, and now to the high-speed, precise and reliable CoreXY-based devices — and some things never change.

It’s been a wild ride and I’ve learnt a few things along the way, including what accessories are actually worth investing in. Some are obvious, while some you’ve probably not heard of.

Even if you don’t live in an area of the world that’s constantly above 70% humidity (I do), PLA filament will still absorb moisture from the moment the package is opened. The more moisture it absorbs, the more brittle it becomes, the worse it adheres to the build plate, and the worse your print quality will get as the moisture boils off inside the hot end and interferes with extrusion. Unless you plan to print solidly for a few days and use an entire 1kg roll at once (you could batch print TSA security keys as presents for your entire neighborhood, I guess?), most printers will benefit from a filament dryer to maintain optimal conditions. 

If you’re swapping between a few filaments, a dryer box becomes essential. Leaving them in the bag or a ziploc with a silica gel packet is not enough. The alternative budget solution is sticking a roll in the oven at a very low temperature for a few hours, and that’s not an exact science, nor is it partner-approved. Best case you get nanoparticles of plastic in your Sunday roast; worst case you get the temperature wrong and get a molten plastic pie that you can’t scrape off. Lovely. 

The Sunlu Filament Dryer is what I use, and I’m happy with its performance and features, but they all largely do the same job.

This one is very much dependant on your printer, but if you’ve got a compatible printer and not yet upgraded to a multicolor AMS/CMS unit, you’re seriously missing out. Just think of all the multicolor flexidragons you could be selling at your local craft market! Even if you don’t plan to do actual multicolored prints, the AMS unit is a great way to store filaments as you swap out colors between prints, keeping them clean and dry within the sealed container. It’s also a lot less hassle to just choose the color you want in your slicer, and let the machine swap them over.

AMS units typically hold four filament rolls in a sealed environment, and keep tabs on the humidity — though you will need to replace the dehumidifier packs occasionally (about once a year in my experience). Sunlu even offers a heater upgrade for your AMS Gen 1, though the next generation units are starting to integrate heaters directly. 

One warning though: multicolor color printing comes with a lot of waste. As the colors change, the machine needs to purge the previous one to avoid color bleed. It does this by printing out a little spiral, then throwing it out of a hole at the back of the printer. You’ll soon be testing out various bin designs. 

Sometimes just looking at a 3D printer in a funny way is enough to make your print fail, but ambient temperature fluctuations and draughts are the worst. Being able to keep the temperatures stable is important for flow, and adhesion — especially at the corners. If a part cools unevenly (which can happen even with a heated build plate), it’ll warp, pull up, and potentially slide off.

Putting an enclosure around your printer will keep the heat in, reduce power usage, and increase print quality and reliability — not to mention the safety benefits, if you have children and pets. Here’s one for the ever popular A1 Mini, but as long as you know the size of your printer you should be able to find something suitable. Prices vary from under $20 for a fabric model with a delicate metal wire frame, up to $200 for a more substantial solid Plexiglass system. Of course, at that price, it might be worth simply buying a new printer with an integrated enclosure.

Holographic build plates are a bit like old school records, with thousands of tiny indentations in the surface. But instead of dragging a needle over them to create sound, light is reflected to create a pseudo-3D image. Even more magical is that if you print something on top of a build plate imbued with these specially patterned surfaces, an exact copy of the pattern is transferred to the print. It won’t improve adhesion, and it won’t fix ugly layer lines, but it can certainly add a little bling to the right models. 

Of course, you’ll need to keep in mind it’s only the bottom layer that gets the holographic treatment, so it’s only good for those items that are normally printed upside down with a big, flat surface — like a phone case or badge. You can buy a variety of patterned build plates depending on the effect you want, from rainbow holographic stars to carbon fiber and camouflage.

Sometimes you’ll want to print something larger, complex, or in multiple parts because your build volume is too small. At that point, you’ll need to glue parts together. But gluing plastic can be tricky. PVA or Elmer’s Glue is useless, as it won’t be absorbed. Superglue can work in a pinch, but it’s too brittle to stand up to any rigour. 

Unlike Superglue (or “cyanoacrylate” to give it the technical name) — which produces a layer of chemical bonding — Weld-On plastic cement melts the plastic to physically merge the pieces together, giving a much stronger, and sometimes seamless connection. Be careful not to use too much though or let it drip on the rest of your print; it’ll eat away at the surface and leave indentations, rough edges, or just ruin the surface texture. Be sure to do a test fit first, as well, because once you’ve committed there’s no going back. 

Grease from your fingers is another factor that stops your print adhering to the build plate. Even if you think you have clean hands, it’ll accumulate, and suddenly your prints stop sticking and you can’t work out why. Thankfully, it’s easy to clean off: just a quick wipe with a little 99% isopropyl alcohol every few prints is sufficient to keep your build plate in top condition. A single 32-oz bottle should last you for years; you don’t need to drown the plate with the stuff. 70% “rubbing alcohol” can also work, but only if it’s just isopropyl and water; anything else in the mix could have the opposite effect. 

It’s not exactly a glamorous accessory, but it is an essential. It stinks, and rapidly evaporates — so don’t forget to screw the cap back on when you’re finished. It’s also highly flammable, so keep your vape away from the craft room because we haven’t got to the bit about fire extinguishers, yet.  

Most printers ship with a 0.4mm nozzle — that’s the width of the molten filament that’s pushed out layer by layer. While you can adjust the layer height in software, the width is determined by your hardware. Luckily, modern printers make it a relatively easy process to swap out the nozzle.

So, why would you want to do this? If you’re printing particularly small models with a lot of fine details, you’ll get cleaner results with a smaller 0.2mm nozzle. Print time will typically double, however. Meanwhile, if you want to print quicker and don’t mind a loss of detail, a larger 0.6mm nozzle will be better. This is especially true if your model has a lot of walls. This Voronoi lamp went from a little under 20 hours to just over 11 hours. If your printer is big enough and happens to be fed by concrete, you can 3D-print a house in 140 hours – imagine the nozzle size on that! 

The other benefit of using a larger nozzle is that you’ll get less clogging when printing with abrasive filaments (like glow-in-dark, wood, or carbon-fiber infused) or flexible filaments (like TPU). While you’re at it, you should also make sure it’s a hardened steel nozzle to lessen the wear and tear of abrasive fibers (printers usually ship with a basic brass nozzle). Sadly, you can’t just swap out the nozzle and start printing in chocolate. 

Whichever way you look at it, a 42-piece 3D printer toolkit at less than $30 is ridiculously good value. It has everything you’ll need to cut supports and filament, clean the nozzle, scrape your prints off the build plate, debur them, and even some cheap callipers for designing your own models (though I wouldn’t expect great tolerances). There’s a cutting mat, and a bag to store it all in, too. Don’t forget the added fun of playing the “what on earth is this thing even for?” game.  

That said, don’t rush to buy this until your printer has arrived — most come with a little toolkit of the basics, and you can get away without the nice-to-have bits until you’ve got a few prints under your belt. At that point, you’ll probably have a better idea of which tools you need more of and where your arsenal is lacking. 

While 3D printers are equipped with all manner of safety cut-offs and thermal fuses, they still sling a piece of pointy metal around at upwards of 200 degrees C and run a mini-heater constantly on the build plate. Even if the nozzle temperature has cooled because of an error, the build plate stays hot to ensure the print doesn’t peel away while you fix the other problem. There’s always an unforeseen risk of some glob of plastic getting caught where it shouldn’t, or an electronic part failing, or cables being inadvertently pulled out by moving parts. 

So, having a fire extinguisher around just in case of emergencies is sensible. But what type of fire extinguisher? A regular pressurized water-based extinguisher will ruin the printer for sure, even if the fire otherwise did little damage. Dry powder extinguishers are a little more expensive at around $100, but the chemicals may corrode your electronics. A CO2 extinguisher is best for electrical fires, and won’t damage your printer in the process — but it’s also the most expensive at upwards of $200 each. A cheaper option to consider are fire suppression balls, which sit on top of your printer and shower everything with powder when they detect a flame. Samsung even tried to make a flower vase that could explode into fire suppressing goo. 

Stringing — or whispy strands of extruded filament where the print head moved quickly — is a perpetual problem unless you’re willing to spend hours dialling in the retraction and temperature settings for every new filament you buy.

But there’s a quick and simple “hack” that can deal with stringing: a hot air gun. You don’t need anything fancy, just a quick blast of hot air will shrivel the whispy strings up so they’re either imperceptible, or turn into a tiny ball that you can easily cut off. Just be careful not to leave the hot blast of air dwelling on the print for too long, or you’ll end up deforming it.

In fact, some models are made to be melted with a heat gun after being printed, like this infamous hairy lion whose glorious mane you can melt into place like a L’Oréal commercial.  

You might have heard that a glue stick or hairspray is essential to make your print stick to the bed, but it’s not 2010 any more. Modern printers and build plates don’t need glue to print in basic PLA — you’ll just end up with a sticky, unnecessary mess. Material science has come on a long way, and most printers now use an engineered steel textured PEI (polyetherimide) build plate combined with a heated print bed.

That means if you are having problems with adhesion to your build plate, it more than likely points to more fundamental issues with calibration: bed levelling, Z-height, or machine wobble. Make sure you’re printing on as stable a surface as possible, and rerun the height calibration. Hairsprays and glue will just mask the underlying issue (and, ironically, make everything worse). 

In fact, the only time you might need a glue stick on a modern 3D printer is when you’re printing in PETG, and that’s only to reduce the adhesion, not increase it. If you don’t use glue, it can actually stick too well to the bed, ripping up some of the surface in the process.

This list was created from over a decade of experience, as well as compiled from new user “what else should I buy?!” threads on Reddit. I’ve had my fair share of failed prints, and tried all kinds of techniques to improve print quality or make tricky prints adhere better. I’ve never tried 3D printing shoes though, I’ll admit. Modern 3D printers are getting so close to being plug and play devices that anyone can use, but they’re not quite there yet. Like any hobby, there’s always going to be some essential accessories and maintenance tools, things that can make your life easier, and we’ve tried to share a few with you here.