How to Troubleshoot Your 3D Printer With a 3D Benchy

Put your 3D printer through a stress test to see if it's ready for more demanding prints.

Getting the perfect 3D print is challenging, especially if the design is detailed. It is important to carefully adjust the 3D printer and the slicer settings to achieve the desired results. Making these adjustments manually is difficult until you use a test print like a 3D Benchy. This unique design can help you assess the capabilities of your machine, optimize the settings for your specific designs, and use the results to tweak your settings until you achieve the perfect results.

The original 3D Benchy was created in 2014 by Creative Tools. It was made to showcase the capabilities and limits of a 3D printer, plus show how to achieve the proper settings. You can download the model from the official 3D Benchy website, where you will see several options to download the design for free.

Users are supposed to print the model at a scale of 1:1 without any supports, and the general shape is in such a way that it can challenge any 3D printer during the 3D printing process since it will test the capabilities of every part.

The rear and front surfaces are parallel, with a cylindrical hole on top. There is also a rectangular front view, and its inner surfaces are parallel. On the sides are two cylindrical stern windows, and on the side are letters and signs extruded at 0.10 mm.

After downloading the files, you need to print them without adjusting any settings so that you can see how your printer will handle them. The recommended settings are:

On average, the 3D printing process will take around one hour. Once done, you can proceed to troubleshoot the printer.

First, you need to check if the design came out as intended. If everything is fine, you should not have issues like stringing and imperfections on the sides with overhangs. All the details should show it's a perfect 3D Benchy. If you find that it has 3D print stringing all around the design, for example, it means your retraction settings have issues.

You can adjust the retraction distance and speed from your slicer and see if it fixes the problem.

In addition, printing at a high temperature can cause stringing, and you need to play around with settings until you find the optimal value. Moreover, you should dry your filament using a filament dryer before printing to avoid such problems.

Furthermore, you need to check how the printer prints parts that are prone to warping like the front, the rear, as well as rectangular windows and circles (these sections have overhangs and bridges). For example, for the printer to print the section shown below without having issues, it must be well set.

Below is a comparison between two 3D Benchys, one that is correctly set and one not. The one on the right has suffered warping.

To fix this issue, consider adequate cooling so that the filament doesn't have time to sag as it moves from one section to another. Ensure that Enable Print Cooling option is checked and the Fan speed value is at 100 % (or you can adjust it to get the most appropriate value for your printer).

If warping occurs on the front section of the design, use a heated build plate and ensure it's well-leveled before. You can also apply an adhesive like glue as it helps the print to adhere firmly to the build plate.

Lowering the printing speed fixes these issues too, as the material has enough time to cool before the nozzle moves to the next position.

The default speed in a slicer like Cura is 50 mm/s, and you can try to lower it and see how it will perform.

You need to measure the design using a vernier caliper and see if the values all dimensions are as they are supposed to be. The following are the expected measurements of the dimensions of the parts of the model:

If you measure all the above and don't find accurate values, you have not calibrated your machine accurately. Accurately calibrating your 3D printer is useful when printing designs with fine details and complicated structures.

Check how the bottom section of your print looks to know how your printer prints the first layer. This is important as the first layer is the foundation of the entire print and determines the overall quality of the design. The letters should be well visible, and the other parts should be smooth.

If the text is not visible well, it means your nozzle must be too close to the first layer, and this pushes the filament to be wider than expected, making the text not visible, as shown below.

High temperature can also cause first-layer issues; you need to adjust it until you find the correct settings.

Furthermore, if you see gaps between the texts, it means that your nozzle is far from the bed, and you need to lower it slightly.

You should check how the hull of the 3D Benchy has been printed, and if there are any issues, it means there is an issue with temperature and cooling control. If the temperature is higher and the cooling isn't good enough, you will see blobs, rough surfaces, zits and voids forming on the surface of the design, as shown below.

You need to adjust the temperature, part cooling, and the 3D printing speed on the slicer until you get a smooth finish.

At the back of the Benchy, there is a small hole, another protruding from inside to the top, and a wheel-like shape inside. If you have set your 3D printer correctly, it should be able to print these details well. If the holes are smaller than expected, you should consider calibrating your extruder. Also, you can adjust the slicer settings to get the perfect holes. For example, in Cura, you can uncheck the Remove All Holes setting found on the Mesh Fixes setting.

This helps prevent the printer from removing the holes even if they are part of the design. Additionally, you should uncheck the Make Overhang Printable setting found under the Experimental section.

This will prevent Cura from modifying the geometry of the design and that all empty spaces and holes remain in their original parts.

If you have just received your 3D printer, or you are considering printing a detailed model, it's essential to do a test print so that you may prepare your machine to ensure that your design comes out as intended. Though there are many test prints that you can use to fine-tune your printer, 3D Benchy is the most preferred as you can use it to test various settings and fix any issue before the actual 3D printing process starts. This saves you time and material that you would have wasted if you had gone straight to printing the model.

Sammy has been covering 3D printing and 3D modeling topics since 2017. He has written for various websites, including All3DP (one of the most popular 3D printing magazines), 3Dsourced, and 3DWithUs. He owns six 3D printers, and when he is not writing, you will find him designing and 3D printing objects.He is currently pursuing a Masters Degree in Information Technology.