First - Attitude/Approach
Depending on the printer you choose, at some point you’re going to have problems. Take a deep breath.
Get a pen and paper, or open a doc on your computer to track what you do.
Look at what your printer maker states is the problem, if they don’t have great manuals, look for others on this and other forums who have the same printer, and had similar issues.
Make notes on what they or the manufacture suggest you try do to resolve your problem.
Try the simplest things first, take notes on what if anything changed.
Take another deep breath.
Then try the next thing, taking notes.
Take another deep breath
Repeat this until you’ve either exhausted the pool of knowledge, or resolved the issue.
Don’t be afraid to ask on this or other forums for suggestions. If you get lots of negative trash talk from a forum, walk away - there are others. This is a hobby or for some, career, with an incredible range of variables to keep track of as you see to obtain the print quality and results you want.
Keeping notes will help you stay focused on solving the issue, while you really get to learn the inner workings of your printer, the firmware that drives it, the software you use to create your models, and the material science behind the filament or resin you use.
Stay calm. Remember, you’re learning - keep your expectations realistic. It takes time to master this … I’m going to go with craft here, and if you keep calm, and keep plugging away, you will.
Second - Practical Practice
Get a reasonable decent vernier caliper. They don’t take long to learn to use.
Run through the calibration tutorials, print the cube, the thermal tower, etc. It’s tedious but worth it.
Come back to them from time to time as you change filament, or after any tweaks you make to your system.
Ease into the bigger prints - start small so you can see if your settings are working as expected - Don’t try to print the Mandalorian Mask right after you figure out you seem to get good results at 215 deg C nozzle temp, 55 deg C bed temp with white PLA, and running at 40 mm/s. Murphy’s waiting.
Get to know your PLA or PLA+
Get to know how fast your individual printer can really run. Mine’s supposed to get close to 60 mm/s, I rarely run it above 40 mm/s because it gets crappy.
Make sure you have it setup so you can shut the door on it and not bother the rest of the household, but, don’t ignore it - keep tabs - they can have various levels of failure including self immolation.
Keep Practicing. Keep measuring - when things start to drift away from your best, you’ll have those documented, and you’ll have an idea what needs to be fixed (new v-wheels, new belts, etc) and what your maintenance cycle will be.
Set a max monthly spend limit while you’re learning - this can get costly.
Meet up with local 3D printer folks at your library, community center or what have you - sometimes a second pair of eyes helps!
Before you know it, you’ll be holding hundreds if not thousands of points of data about how your printer behaves under differing conditions, filament, etc. and develop the knowledge on what to tweak.
