6 Small Tools Every 3D Printer Owner Should Have

The first fight with every print is getting it off the bed. A kitchen knife or a paint scraper either can’t get under the edge or digs into the build surface. A dedicated knife with a beveled edge slides in under the first layer and lets you lever the part up from one side.

This kit has two tools: a long knife for bigger parts and a small offset spatula for small parts and corners. The blades are riveted in place, so they don’t spin in the handle when you push.

Pro tip Let the bed cool down before you start prying. Most prints release on their own once the bed is at room temperature, and you’ll need far less force.

Almost every FDM print comes off the bed with a slightly flared, sharp bottom edge, the “elephant’s foot”. Sanding it takes a while and a knife is risky. A deburring tool is made for exactly this: the hooked blade swivels, so you just drag it along the edge and it peels off a thin curl of plastic.

It’s also the quickest way to clean up the edge of a hole or remove what’s left of a brim. Noga is the original maker of this type of tool, and the handle holds the spare blades.

Pro tip Use light pressure and several passes. Plastic cuts much more easily than metal, and one hard pass can leave a visible bevel on the part.

The first layer is going down and there’s a blob of ooze stuck to the nozzle, or a string of plastic across the part. Fingers are too big and too close to a hot nozzle. A pair of long tweezers lets you pick it off from a safe distance while the printer keeps going.

The set has three shapes: a straight fine tip for strings, a curved one for reaching around the nozzle, and a flat tip for gripping small supports and placing magnets or nuts into a print paused mid-job.

Pro tip For prints with embedded magnets or nuts, add a pause at that layer in your slicer and use the flat tweezers to drop them in. Wiggle them flat before resuming, or the nozzle can catch them.

3D printers are held together with metric hex bolts, and the little wrenches in the printer box are usually soft and round off after a few uses. A good set of hex keys makes maintenance less painful: tightening the frame, adjusting belt tension, swapping a hotend.

The ball end lets you turn a bolt at an angle, which helps with the screws that sit behind a fan shroud or under the gantry. Use the short straight end for breaking a bolt loose or for the final tighten.

Pro tip Go through every frame bolt on a new printer after the first few weeks. Bolts loosen as the frame settles, and a slightly loose frame shows up as wobble and layer lines.

On a Bowden printer, the PTFE tube has to sit perfectly flat against the nozzle. A tube cut at a slight angle with a knife leaves a tiny gap where melted filament collects, and that’s a classic source of clogs and under-extrusion.

A tube cutter holds the tubing at a right angle and cuts it in one squeeze, so the end is square and clean. It’s a small tool you won’t use every week, but when you replace a tube, you want it.

Pro tip When you swap the PTFE tube, push it down firmly so it sits against the nozzle, and hold it there while you lock the coupling clip. A tube that springs back even a millimeter leaves the same gap.

Filament absorbs moisture from the air. When it’s wet, it pops and hisses in the nozzle, strings, and prints rough, weak parts, and it’s easy to blame the printer for it. PETG, TPU and nylon are especially sensitive, but even old PLA can suffer.

A filament dryer heats the spool at a set temperature for a set time and turns it so it dries evenly. The S2 can also work as a spool holder while you print, so the filament keeps drying as it feeds into the printer.

Pro tip Dry at the temperature for the filament, not the maximum. PLA can soften and stick to itself if you dry it too hot. Check the manufacturer’s recommendation on the spool’s label.