When you unbox a new printer for the first time, you can expect you will need to follow a few steps to adjust machine from ready to ship to ready to print, including running a set of calibration, configuration and testing stages. Prepared to help first-time operators have excellent experiences. This process need not be long with Ultimaker 2+ and 3 printers, you can have them out of the box and printing in under 10 minutes with a little experience. But remember to complete all the setup steps recommended by the manufacturer. Even if you're eager to print a unique project of your own, there is a benefit to following along with a demo as a status check for the readiness of your printer to do its job well. Is this your first time? Rather than placing a value judgment on your past experiences or skills with 3D printers. I really mean this literally, is this the first time you are using this printer? The reason being, there are often a number of additional setup and configuration stages when setting up a machine for the first time as well as on-board training opportunities designed to acquaint a new operator with the peculiarities of this particular model. So if both of these things are true, if no one has yet used this particular machine and if you've never used this model before yourself, go hunting for first-time user instructions in the manual, online or even write on the interface. With Ultimaker machines, the interface itself prompts you to follow through a special first-run experience sequence. This is not just useful to orient you for how to load and unload filament, cores and configure the build platform. The machine won't actually be ready for use until you complete these stages. Will there be any other first-time users? While you might get a lot of benefit from the first-time user instructions for the machine, if there will be others using machine as well, consider alerting them as to how to access those setup instructions and encourage them to go through the same process to prevent issues later down the line. With Ultimaker machines and several other vendors such as CBC and Elif objects. There tends to be an option to reactivate this first run experience sequence, share the location of this feature at any configuration advice with your colleagues and make sure they complete this process as well. Otherwise prepare for them to complain that you set it up wrong at their first obstacle as novice users. Prepare for the worst, keep the box, your new machine might be bright and shiny with that new car smell but I recommend operators error on the side of caution when setting up a machine for the first time. No matter how much wear and tear you plan to put your machine through or where you intend to use it, the time when it is most vulnerable to damage, misalignment, missing parts, loose wiring and other environmental factors such as humidity and dramatic heat cycles is during shipping and transport. So while you may be tempted to rip open the package and discard it before you even have machine up and running, I suggest you keep everything together and accessible prepare for the worst and then you won't be surprised by anything. Wait until you're completely confident with the machine has survived its journey and has survived your first few jobs before deciding what to do with the box, because I've worked for several companies that sell 3D printers. I actually advise you to save the original packaging somewhere even if you have to store it offsite, should something happen requiring you to shift the machine back to the factory or to the technical support team, they will likely request that you ship the machine back in its original shipping materials. While this can be a pain, the reason is a good one, eliminating your own liability should the machine come to any harm during transport. You can benefit from the hard work that has gone into the packaging design as well when you transport them machine around town or ship it to another location. Any printer manufacturer worth its all has taken pains to ensure that the packaging protects the machine or else the customer support issues would just crush them. If you do move or if absolutely desperate breakdown your packaging, make extra sure you have all the replacement parts tools and paperwork. Elements as particular as a paper of a specific thickness, tiny replacement fuses and metric or faster specific tools can be annoying or difficult to replace in urgent moment. Find a proper home for your printer. I can't tell you how many novice operators I have met who bring home their first printer without a clue where they should set it up or why, others spend weeks tracking down purpose-built furniture and shelving almost like outfitting a nursery. The good news is this, machines truly deserving the label desktop as opposed to bench-top have a small enough footprint to fit just about anywhere, but that doesn't mean you should literally place it anywhere. Here are a few cared feeding tips. One, pick a sturdy table or shelf that is firmly seated on the ground and won't shift or vibrate from the thousands of tiny actions and adjustments your machine makes while printing. Two, going to print a lot, plan for constant work chirp and birbal from the printer. These days long prints can continue for days and days at a time. Even though manufacturers such as Ultimaker take the extra care to tune their machines to be as quiet as possible. Some sound vibration is to be expected. One handy way to help with a noisy printer is to throw a thick silicone sound absorption panel under it. You can also use anti-fatigue mats, eliminating the transfer of tiny vibrations from the sounding board to hollow furniture or shelving. Three, should your printer be network addressable, you have the option to place machine anywhere you'd like within the network. Use this as an opportunity to seek out the most useful and convenient place for it and avoid the temptation to place it in the next available on plain location no matter how unsuited to access and use of machine. Four, make sure that your machine stays dry, warm, room temperature a little warmer as best and isn't set up under AC ventilation or next to an open window even if your machine is mostly enclosed no reason to tempt fate, because of the critical importance of temperature management and the heating of plastic to this process. Desktop 3D printers in cold humid and drafty rooms don't behave the way they're manufacturers expect them to. If your available conditions are at the other extreme very hot, bone dry with still close air that can be a challenge as well especially if there's extra static electricity. So aim to end up somewhere in the middle with the option to tune and tweak the environment around your printer as needed. You know what makes a decent printer cover if you're fighting drafts, nothing more glamorous than a cardboard box open to the top and bottom to serve as a makeshift drafts screen, it's a good short term fix. Finally, here's one more pro tip from someone who has broken this rule far too many times and has always regretted it. Five, before you plug in the machine and set it up take a second and then a moment to consider what kind of access you will need during a typical print job. Time and again I have found the perfect spot only to realize how difficult it is to get around to the other side of the machine and load material or service elements. A little room to rotate your machine and address it from any direction goes a long way. Follow the first use tutorial to completion, use it as a safety check. We talked before about the training and machine setup value for completing your 3D printers on-boarding sequence, but there is another value to this process as well. Use the on-boarding tutorial as a safety check to make sure that all is well with your new machine. Most manufacturers include photos and videos comprehensively detailing these first few stages, compare what you are seeing with your machine to those provided models, because if you discover something out of place with your machine then it is better to address this immediately when whomever sold or loaned you the machine can be reached quickly. You don't want to overlook something that may prove to be an issue later especially when you're up against a deadline or tricky project and don't have as many resources to compare to your machine and print pieces. This goes double when you're ready to launch into doing your own designs and can't be sure if issues you're seeing are with your designs or with your printer. These projects are all clearly set up to be used with your printer. Those are my top recommendations for machine setup and first time use. Remember that as capable as desktop 3D printers can be when you transmit the right instructions to them, they aren't very clever and recognizing when their baseline assumptions about their environment, configuration and set up aren't correct.
