13 Weird Things That Can Go Wrong With Your 3D Printer

A 3D printer might have been one of the most exciting purchases my household has ever made. First, our basic bed-slinger 3D printers were simple enough that a 12-year-old could put them together solo. Plus, the ability to print basically whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted, was super cool.

We did learn there are certain things you shouldn’t 3D print at home, of course. Still, you’ll find plenty of beginner 3D printing projects that will keep you busy for ages. But what happens when your printer starts printing wonky, or stops printing altogether?

A few years ago, as a newbie to 3D printing, I spent ages on Google researching possible fixes for all the weird problems that cropped up. Even now, as our printers are becoming old news as technology advances, the same issues continue to plague 3D printing forums. Things often go wrong with 3D printers, and often in weird ways, but especially with bed-slinger models. Here’s what to consider could go wrong, plus how to fix it — or at least a starting point for finding a fix.

For anyone who’s worked on any kind of machine before, it’s probably not surprising to learn that 3D printers have fuses. Yet if your printer suddenly stops working, you might not suspect a blown fuse as the primary culprit. Since many different things can go wrong with a 3D printer, checking at least one of its fuses can be a good place to start troubleshooting.

A couple of signs that your printer has a blown fuse include failure to power up or a completely blank and unresponsive touch screen. With Elegoo printers, for example, the primary indicator that you’ve blown a fuse is the touch screen failing to work. Elegoo suggests checking the fuse in the power switch before moving on to other potential issues.

In most cases, fixing a blown fuse is straightforward. On Elegoo printers, the power switch fuse pops out of a tiny compartment next to or inside the power cable port. On other printers, like a Prusa 3D printer, you might need to change the fuses on your printer’s sandwich board, modular board, or XL Splitter board. Of course, you should proceed with caution if you’re opening up your 3D printer’s guts — especially if the manufacturer doesn’t endorse that kind of DIY fix.

There are plenty of important things to know about 3D printing, many of which you’ll learn through trial and error. After all, 3D printing is inherently an adventure in DIY, and we’re not just talking about the actual printing of your custom files. While we would argue that 3D printing can be accessible to just about everyone, you may need a little technical know-how.

Case in point? Like your PC or laptop, 3D printers require drivers. If something goes wrong with a driver, you might be facing a blue screen of death. Unlike a computer, though, a 3D printer can — in our experience — be brought back to life after the death screen.

Many newer printers are like your Wi-Fi-enabled home printer — they can stay connected to the internet and automatically download updates. If you’re working with an offline printer, however, you’ll need to manually download the firmware, then install it on your machine. The most important step to reviving a 3D printer with an outdated driver is to make sure you find the right firmware package for your make and model. Bambu Lab makes that easy with its Wiki, and other manufacturers have a similar offering.

Possibly one of the most frustrating yet weird things that can go wrong with your 3D printer is the heat of the bed or hot end melting your cables. Given that certain parts of a 3D printer can get very hot — the nozzle could hit 554 degrees Fahrenheit, depending on the printer and the filament you’re working with — you might expect some heatproofing on the components.

Though our Creality and Elegoo printers have the cables bundled together, we’ve still had melty experiences when leaving printers unattended. In fact, that was one of the earliest experiences my household had with 3D printers, which led us to a bunch of 3D printed accessories, including cable management pieces.

The good news is that even if your cables are exposed to high heat, the contact may be brief enough that you don’t have to replace the cables. We felt comfortable continuing to use our 3D printer post-melt because the inner wires were not exposed, but that’s not expert advice by any means. Our best advice is to secure your cables before you ever hit the power switch on a new printer, just in case.

Sure, 3D printing can save you money, but it’s also wise to set aside a budget for not only 3D printer accessories, but also replacement parts. Plenty of things can go wrong, and you may not always be able to fix a specific part. One of the weird things that seems to go wrong more often than you may expect is a faulty thermistor.

One warning sign that your thermistor is bad, according to Creality, is temperature fluctuation. Whether your hot end doesn’t reach full heat, or your printer bed can’t maintain a steady temperature, the thermistor could be at fault. Some printers will also throw up error codes, specifically flagging thermal runaway, and a faulty thermistor could be the culprit. Fortunately, a replacement hot end with thermistor for our Creality Ender-3 V2 was only about $20 on Amazon, but it still involved some time, patience, and a bit of support from Creality.

Your printer likely has two thermistors, though some have three. For example, Prusa printers have these temperature sensors on both the hot end and the printer bed, but the Prusa i3 MK3S+ has a third for monitoring ambient temperature. You might need some basic tools (like multiple sizes of Allen keys, a screwdriver, and pliers) for thermistor replacement, and your best bet is to find a guide specific to your printer brand and model.

One especially weird problem that I never expected with 3D printers was the possibility for the printer to be set to the wrong voltage. Although many newer budget-friendly 3D printers may have remedied the issue, a friend once struggled to power up their used Creality machine. Only when they realized their Ender had a voltage switch set to 230V (for Europe) instead of 115V (most common in North America) were they able to actually use the printer.

In our friend’s case, the printer wouldn’t turn on at all when plugged in and set to the wrong voltage. However, Elegoo, for one, notes that the wrong voltage can cause issues like unexpected restarts due to low power, motherboard damage, or a fire. If you have a new (or new to you) 3D printer that won’t power up or randomly powers down, checking the voltage settings could help resolve the problem.

That said, some newer 3D printers reportedly have auto-switching power supplies. For example, Bambu Lab has a power supply that auto-switches based on whether you’re using a filament dryer or only the printer itself. Be sure to read the manufacturer’s guide for your particular model, though. Despite a thorough search, we had a hard time finding specifics on voltage switching for big-name models like Creality, Bambu Lab, and Elegoo.

Since a 3D printer’s job is to print 3D objects, you might think that it would just… do that. Unfortunately, most 3D printers eventually stop printing, albeit temporarily, due to filament clogs. Clogs seem to be a common problem with a variety of printers (at least, in our experience with Creality and Elegoo, to name two).

Filament clogs are so common that Creality, for one, has a guide on how to clear clogs. That guide also involves steps on how to disassemble your hot end to remove filament from the extruder shell, gears, and even inside the buffer casing. It’s not exactly fun to scrape filament out of your printer, but that’s not the worst part.

The most challenging part of filament clogs is that it’s hard to figure out why they happen. Bambu Lab lists common extruder clog causes as excessive heat, extrusion gear inconsistencies, overly soft filament (or damp PVA), and inconsistent filament diameter. Nozzle clogs, however, can be caused by a lack of heat and partial pre-existing clogs. It may take some trial and error to resolve the problem that’s causing clogs. You might want some spare parts on hand, like a new hot end or, at the very least, spare nozzles.

In some cases, thermal runaway can be caused by a faulty thermistor. Replacing a thermistor is its own issue, but fortunately, not the most complicated fix we’ve encountered. Yet in other cases, thermal runaway is its own problem that requires some sleuthing and troubleshooting.

Though it’s frustrating, thermal runaway auto-shutoffs are a safety feature. As Prusa explains, the safety feature cuts off the heat to avoid fires. Yet thermal runaway can happen in many different situations where it’s unlikely a fire will happen. For example, Prusa gives a possible scenario where low ambient temperatures (like an unheated garage in the winter) can lead to thermal runaway because when the printer fan turns on, the printer lacks the power to maintain its necessary temperature. If you’ve determined that external temperatures aren’t a factor, and your equipment is otherwise functional, you may want to perform PID tuning.

PID stands for Proportional Integral Derivative, and tuning PID is basically calibrating your printer to get its heat calculations correct. Fortunately, most 3D printer brands offer guides on how to handle PID tuning, because the process is different between, for example, Creality and Prusa printers.

The first time you experience layer shift with a 3D printer, you might be a bit miffed. If 3D printers are meant to 3D print, why is it so difficult to get a quality print sometimes? It turns out that like any other machine, a 3D printer needs some TLC, especially if it’s a bed-slinger model (which our Creality and Elegoo machines are).

Bed-slinger 3D printers involve movement of the print head along the X- and Z-axes, while the bed moves along the Y-axis. With so much movement of the bed — unlike Core XY printers, where the bed is stationary — it’s inevitable that a bed-slinger 3D printer will occasionally need a mechanical tune-up.

Unfortunately, layer shift could be the first indication that your printer has loose parts, or that you’re trying to run it at a speed it can’t quite manage. Plus, the larger your printer, the higher the odds it will develop problems with speed and vibration, says Creality, because the problems essentially scale up with it. If you’re experiencing layer shift, troubleshooting can start with checking for physical barriers to the bed moving properly, making sure your filament is dry, and slowing down the print speed.

Failure to heat up sufficiently is a relatable problem with 3D printers of all types. How you address the problem depends on whether it’s a hot end or bed heating issue. If you’ve determined that the bed is plenty toasty, the hot end could have an unseen issue that’s making your prints fail, or fail to start at all.

A cold nozzle is another offbeat problem with 3D printers that can have a range of causes. If your nozzle (and thus the hot end itself) fails to heat up at all, the problem might be easier to troubleshoot than if you have temperature fluctuations after reaching your desired temp. If there’s no power going to the hot end, you may have a thermistor issue, a blown fuse, or an incorrect setting.

Conversely, if the hot end gets hot, but then fluctuates, you might be looking at the same issues and an array of other ones. While the problem could still be the thermistor, fuse, or firmware, partial filament clogs, dry filament, or loose wires could also be to blame. Some printers will throw an error code (an Elegoo may give code 103, for example), which gives you a place to start troubleshooting.

Like other 3D printer mishaps, layer shift is a problem with a long list of potential causes. One of those potential causes is the filament itself. Moist filament can behave differently in a 3D printer than properly dry material, for starters. Yet temperature and humidity fluctuations can also make your filament too brittle to print properly, leading to layer shift, clogs, and other problems. Moisture basically degrades the quality of the filament over time, and that can happen even in relatively dry-feeling environments.

A brittle filament can snap between your fingers, or you might not notice a problem until you’re trying to print with it. A simple way to fix (and avoid) brittle filament is to keep it stored in a dry and temperature-controlled environment. Polymaker, a filament brand, suggests drying your filament before printing for the best results.

Though Polymaker mentions using an oven to dry your filament, we’d recommend a filament dryer. Not only do various filament types have ingredients that are definitely not meant to mingle with food, but filament dryers are basically set-and-forget. Most filament spools will arrive packaged in plastic, complete with desiccant packets, which are suitable for storage. Once you open your filament, check for flexibility before printing, and consider a spin in the dryer first.

You might expect a 3D printer to work perfectly out of the box because it’s brand-new. Unfortunately, that wasn’t our experience with our first, second, or third printer. We learned pretty quickly that a bare-bones printer required a lot more effort than we expected. On a positive note, most 3D printers are practically infinitely customizable. One of the best investments we made was flexible build plate surfaces for each of our printers.

Each time you print on a glass bed, cleaning the filament off might be a struggle. Especially if you let the printer cool down first, it may be nearly impossible to remove prints that cover a significant surface area. I admit to running some prints under hot water to get them to come off the build plate, but even that didn’t help get all the gunk off.

The problem is that even invisible debris can affect bed adhesion and, therefore, the quality of your prints, if not the success of the print job itself. A scraper is a useful 3D printed tool to help keep your print bed clean, but don’t stop there. Consider a flexible build plate add-on, and make sure to clean it regularly after you scrape any filament or printer glue off it. Isopropyl alcohol is a recommended cleaner for glass and most other bed types, according to Creality, but our advice is to follow the manufacturer’s recommendations for your printer or the build plate you add onto it.

3D printers make a lot of noises, and not all of them are a bad thing. Yet a clicking noise coming from your 3D printer is probably not good. One common problem that results in a clicking sound is the extruder having problems. According to Creality, there are many reasons why your extruder may click, and all of them involve some close examination and trial and error to solve.

A filament clog could lead to clicking, as could temperature problems that trap filament inside the nozzle or cause it to get backed up into the hot end. Clicking can also be a result of the filament tension being too tight. If your filament roll has the loose end pulled taut, that’s not a good sign. Wet filament (even if it has dried) can become misshapen, which can lead to the same clogging type issues.

Temperature inconsistencies, including the extruder motor overheating because of clogs, can also cause clicking. Creality recommends checking for clogs, ensuring your filament is in good shape, and taking a close look at the mechanical inner workings of your printer to make sure gears aren’t slipping.

Have you ever turned on your 3D printer, set up a print, and it started working… only to have it freeze and start beeping almost immediately? It’s one of the weirdest problems we’ve had with 3D printers, and it seems like an inexplicable issue. What problem could possibly result in the printer stopping and screaming at us?

This weird problem, like many others, can have a few different causes. Newer printers may also throw up an error code while beeping, while others might act like they’re having a meltdown with no explanation. While most 3D printer brands don’t specifically address beeping (likely because they address the associated error codes), nearly any kind of issue can cause a printer to freeze and alert you.

In fact, just about every weird thing that can go wrong with your printer could create an error code. For example, some printers seem to freeze up when the file you’re using is corrupt, or if your SD card wasn’t formatted properly. Others will alert when there is a thermistor issue, while firmware incompatibility can also halt a print. In short, if your printer beeps and freezes without giving a descriptive error code, you may have to start from zero when it comes to troubleshooting.