Part 6 walked you through slicing software and the logic of turning a 3D model into printer instructions. You learned how layer height, infill, and support settings translate from abstract sliders into physical objects. That knowledge is essential. It's also completely inert until you put it to work.
This part is where you actually build things.
Five projects. Two machines. A deliberate progression from simple to complex, from single-material FDM to dual extrusion to high-resolution resin. Each project targets a specific skill gap and leaves you with something real at the end. Not a test cube. Not a calibration print. Something you'll actually use, display, or show someone.
Why Projects Beat Theory Every Single Time
The Gap Between Knowing and Doing
Reading about 3D printing is genuinely useful. Understanding why first layers matter, how infill affects strength, and what causes stringing makes you a better operator before you've pressed print once. But there's a ceiling on what passive reading can teach you, and you hit it faster than you'd expect.
The problem is that printing is a physical, iterative craft. The feedback loop is the lesson. You watch a first layer go down and immediately understand bed leveling in a way no diagram can replicate. You pull a failed print off the bed and suddenly support placement makes sense at a gut level.
Beginners often stall not because they lack knowledge but because they don't know what to print. The library of available models is enormous, which paradoxically makes choosing harder. This series solves that by giving you five specific targets with specific goals.
How This Project Series Is Structured
The five projects in this article are sequenced intentionally. Each one introduces a new concept while reinforcing skills from the last. Project 1 is a simple utility print on the FlashForge Inventor. Project 2 is a functional, load-bearing part. Project 3 introduces multi-part assembly thinking. Project 4 uses the Inventor's dual extruder. Project 5 moves to the Anycubic Photon S for your first resin build.
Before starting, you should have completed the setup and slicing lessons from earlier in the series. If you haven't calibrated your bed, dialed in your first-layer offset, and run at least one test print, do that first. These projects assume a working printer, not a troubleshooting session.
Project 1: The Classic Phone Stand (Simple Utility Object)
What You'll Learn From This Build
The phone stand is the perfect first real project for three reasons. The geometry is forgiving, the print time is short enough to stay interesting, and you'll actually use the finished object. It's not a trophy. It's a tool that earns its place on your desk immediately.
More importantly, a phone stand teaches you to make decisions. Do you need supports? What infill percentage is enough? How do you orient the part for the best surface finish on the face people actually see? These aren't trick questions, but they're the right questions to be asking at this stage.
Designing or Downloading the Model
You have two options here. The faster one is downloading a free STL from Thingiverse or Printables. Search "phone stand" and filter by most downloaded. You'll find dozens of well-tested designs that print reliably on consumer FDM printers. Look for models with a high make count, meaning other people have printed it successfully, and check the comments for any known issues.
The more educational option is designing your own in TinkerCAD. Part 6 of this series covered TinkerCAD basics, and a phone stand is genuinely achievable in 30 minutes with that foundation. You need a base, an angled back support, and a lip to keep the phone from sliding. That's three shapes, a couple of boolean operations, and you have something original.
Either path is valid. Downloading teaches you to evaluate and use community resources. Designing teaches you to think spatially. Do both eventually.
Slicing Settings for the FlashForge Inventor
Open FlashPrint and import your STL. These settings work well for a first phone stand print:
- Layer height: 0.2mm. This is the standard workhorse setting. Fine enough to look good, fast enough to finish in a reasonable time.
- Infill: 20%. A phone stand isn't load-bearing in any serious way. Twenty percent is more than sufficient.
- Material profile: PLA. Use the built-in FlashForge PLA profile. Don't adjust temperatures on your first run.
- Supports: Probably not needed. Most phone stand designs are oriented so the angled back prints without overhangs exceeding 45 degrees. Check the support preview in FlashPrint before committing.
The FlashForge Inventor's heated bed is an advantage here. Set it to 60°C for PLA and apply a thin layer of glue stick if you're printing on bare glass. The first layer should squish slightly flat against the bed. If it looks like a round bead sitting on the surface, your nozzle is too high.
Print, Inspect, and Iterate
Watch the first 10 minutes. Seriously, don't walk away. You're looking for consistent extrusion, no gaps between lines on the first layer, and no corners peeling up. If any of those things happen, stop the print and fix the issue before restarting.
When the print finishes, pull it off the bed and inspect it with intention. Run your fingers along the layer lines and look for separation between layers, which indicates under-extrusion. Check the base for warping. Look at any corners or edges for stringing or blobs.
Remix It
Once you have a successful print, change something. Adjust the angle by five degrees in TinkerCAD. Add your initials extruded into the base. Make it wider for a tablet. The best way to learn design is to modify something that already works, because you know what the correct output looks like.
A good first print is a starting point, not a finish line. The iteration loop is the skill.
Project 2: A Functional Bracket or Wall Mount (Practical Engineering Print)
Thinking Functionally: Prints That Do a Job
Somewhere around Project 1, a thought occurs to most people: "I could print a fix for that thing that's been annoying me for months." That instinct is exactly right, and it's where 3D printing stops being a hobby and starts being genuinely useful. A cable management clip behind your desk. A bracket to hold a shelf at a non-standard height. A mount for a sensor that no one makes a commercial bracket for.
Functional prints are different from decorative ones. They carry load. They experience heat. They get touched, pulled, twisted, and stressed in ways a phone stand never will. That changes every decision you make, from material choice to infill pattern to part orientation.
Designing the Bracket in TinkerCAD or Fusion 360
Start simple. An L-bracket with two mounting holes is a genuinely useful object and a perfect design exercise. In TinkerCAD, create a box for the horizontal arm, another for the vertical arm, and merge them. Add cylindrical holes for screws. The entire design takes maybe 20 minutes.
If you're ready to step up, Fusion 360 handles parametric design, meaning you can change a dimension and the whole model updates. That matters for brackets because you'll almost certainly need to adjust something after the first test fit. A parametric model makes that a two-minute change instead of starting over.
Measure your actual mounting surface before you design anything. Real dimensions, not estimates. A bracket that's 2mm too narrow is useless.
"Design for the real world, not the ideal one. Measure twice, model once, print a small test section before committing to the full part."
Material Choice Matters: Why PLA Might Not Be Enough
PLA is easy to print and looks great. It's also the worst choice for anything that will sit in a hot car, near a heat source, or under sustained mechanical load. PLA softens around 60°C, which is well within the temperature range of a sun-exposed surface or an electronics enclosure.
For load-bearing brackets, consider PETG or ABS. Part 4 of this series covered material properties in detail, but the short version is this: PETG offers better impact resistance and heat tolerance than PLA while remaining easier to print than ABS. The FlashForge Inventor handles PETG well. Set the bed to 80°C and the nozzle to 235°C, and make sure your first layer is slower than usual to get good adhesion.
Slicing for Strength, Not Just Speed
Three settings have the biggest impact on part strength:
Wall count: Default slicer settings often use two perimeters. For a structural bracket, go to four. The outer walls carry most of the stress in FDM parts, and doubling the wall count dramatically increases resistance to cracking along layer lines.
Infill pattern: Grid infill is the default and works fine for most prints. For parts under directional load, gyroid infill distributes stress more evenly across three dimensions. It also uses slightly more filament, but for a bracket, that's a worthwhile trade.
Part orientation: This is the most important setting and the one beginners overlook most often. FDM parts are weakest perpendicular to the layer lines. Orient your bracket so the primary stress direction runs parallel to the layers, not across them. For an L-bracket taking downward load on the horizontal arm, that usually means printing with the vertical arm flat on the bed.
For screw holes, design them 0.2mm larger than the nominal screw diameter. FDM printers don't hold tight tolerances on circular features, and a hole that's exactly 3mm in the model will print slightly undersized. A 3.2mm design hole prints close to 3mm actual. Test this on a small sacrificial piece before printing the full bracket.
Project 3: A Multi-Part Assembly (Thinking Beyond a Single Print)
Why Multi-Part Designs Unlock a New Level of Complexity
Every printer has a build volume limit. The FlashForge Inventor's is generous for a desktop machine, but you'll eventually want to print something larger, or something that's stronger when printed in pieces with better orientation, or something modular that can be reconfigured. That's when multi-part design becomes necessary rather than optional.
There's another reason to think in assemblies even when you don't have to. Breaking a design into parts makes post-processing dramatically easier. Sanding, painting, and finishing a small component is far more manageable than working on a single complex object with interior surfaces you can't reach.
Designing Parts That Fit Together
A good beginner multi-part project is a modular desk organizer: individual compartments that snap or slide together in any configuration. Each piece is simple enough to design in TinkerCAD, small enough to print quickly, and the assembly logic is forgiving enough that small fit errors don't ruin the whole thing.
Design each piece as a separate TinkerCAD file, or use Fusion 360's assembly workspace if you want to see how parts relate to each other in context. The key discipline is consistency: every mating feature needs to be designed to the same standard across all pieces, or your assembly will have some joints that fit and some that don't.
Tolerances, Clearances, and the 0.2mm Rule
FDM printing is not a precision manufacturing process. A dimension that's 20mm in your model might print as 19.8mm or 20.3mm depending on your printer, your filament, and the ambient temperature in your workspace. For decorative prints, that variance is invisible. For parts that need to fit together, it matters enormously.
The standard starting point for FDM assemblies is 0.2mm of clearance between mating surfaces. If you want a peg to slide into a hole, make the hole 0.2mm larger than the peg in your model. If you want a lid to fit snugly on a box, add 0.2mm to the interior dimensions of the lid opening.
That number will shift based on your specific printer and material. PETG tends to print slightly larger than PLA at the same settings. The FlashForge Inventor holds tighter tolerances than many budget printers, but you still need to calibrate for your actual machine. Print a small test peg and hole before committing to a full assembly print.
Assembly Techniques: Glue, Snap Fits, and Hardware Inserts
Snap fits are elegant when they work. A cantilever snap is the simplest type: a flexible arm with a catch that deflects during assembly and springs back to lock. Design the arm from PETG or nylon rather than PLA for better flex fatigue resistance. The arm length, thickness, and deflection angle all affect how much force it takes to snap together, and getting those numbers right usually takes two or three test prints.
Heat-set threaded inserts are the strongest option for parts that need to be assembled and disassembled repeatedly. You press a brass insert into a slightly undersized hole using a soldering iron, and it melts in place. The result is a proper metal thread in your plastic part. The FlashForge Inventor's PLA and PETG parts both accept heat-set inserts well.
Adhesives are the simplest approach for permanent assemblies. Superglue works on PLA. Epoxy works on everything and fills small gaps. For ABS parts, acetone welding actually fuses the layers at a molecular level, creating a joint that's often stronger than the surrounding material.
Test First, Print Once
Before printing your full assembly, print just the mating features of two parts as small test sections. A 20mm cube with your peg on one side and your hole on the other takes 15 minutes to print and tells you whether your tolerances are right before you spend two hours on the full parts.
Project 4: Your First Dual-Extrusion Print on the FlashForge Inventor
What Dual Extrusion Actually Lets You Do
The FlashForge Inventor ships with two extruders, and most people use one of them for the entire first month of ownership. That's understandable. Single-extrusion printing is already a lot to learn. But the second extruder unlocks two genuinely different capabilities that are worth the setup effort.
The first is multi-color or multi-material aesthetics: printing a model with two different filament colors, or combining a rigid material with a flexible one in the same print. The second is soluble supports: loading PVA filament in the second extruder and using it to generate support structures that dissolve in water, leaving no marks on the model surface and no tedious support removal.
Setting Up the FlashForge Inventor for Dual Printing
Load both filaments before you do anything else. The loading process is the same as single-extrusion, but do each extruder separately and confirm you get consistent extrusion from both nozzles before slicing.
Nozzle offset calibration is the step most people skip and then regret. The two nozzles are physically close but not perfectly aligned. If you don't calibrate the offset, your two colors will be slightly misregistered, which looks terrible on a two-color badge and causes actual print failures on more complex models. FlashPrint includes a built-in calibration routine that prints a target pattern. Follow it. It takes 15 minutes and saves hours of troubleshooting.
The purge tower is a small block that prints alongside your model. Every time the printer switches extruders, it purges the previous color into the tower before printing on the model. This prevents color contamination. Don't disable it. It feels wasteful, but the alternative is color bleed on your actual part.
:::figure ![Colorful abstract image representing multi-color printing possibilities](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1530124566582-a45a7e3
Cross-Project Skills: What These Five Builds Actually Taught You
Five projects. Five completely different challenges. And somewhere between the first phone stand and the final resin print, something shifted. You stopped guessing and started diagnosing.
Design Skills Gained
The progression across these projects wasn't accidental. It was a ladder. You started by downloading a file someone else designed, then modified an existing model, then built something from scratch, then assembled multiple parts together, then handled dual materials simultaneously. Each step required you to think one level deeper about how geometry, tolerances, and intent interact. That's not beginner thinking. That's a design process.
Printing and Slicing Confidence Built
Your slicer settings tell the whole story. Early on, you accepted the defaults. Then you started adjusting infill for strength. Then you tackled dual extrusion profiles and resin exposure times. That's four distinct categories of slicing knowledge, earned through actual prints, not tutorials watched from a couch.
Troubleshooting Instincts Developed
Nobody develops troubleshooting instincts by reading about problems. They develop them by standing in front of a printer at 11pm wondering why the layer adhesion looks wrong. You've done that now. You've seen warping, stringing, support failures, and adhesion issues in the real world, not in a diagram.
Not every project in this series went perfectly the first time. That's not a flaw in the curriculum. That's the curriculum.
Post-Processing Experience Earned
FDM cleanup, support removal, resin washing, UV curing: you've touched all of it. These aren't afterthoughts. Post-processing is where a good print becomes a finished object. If Part 8 feels relevant to where you are right now, that's because it is. The upcoming troubleshooting article addresses exactly the walls you may have already hit.
"The machine doesn't fail you. It shows you what you haven't figured out yet." - common wisdom in every makerspace worth visiting
Common Mistakes Made During These Projects (And How to Dodge Them)
Mistakes at this stage aren't signs of incompetence. They're signs you're actually printing things. Here's what shows up most often and how to stop repeating it.
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FDM Project Pitfalls
Three mistakes dominate at this skill level. First: choosing the wrong infill for functional parts. Gyroid looks cool but a bracket holding real weight needs higher density and a pattern like cubic or rectilinear. Second: ignoring part orientation. A clip printed flat will snap under stress. The same clip printed upright survives. Third: skipping calibration between projects. Your first-layer height doesn't stay perfect forever. Check it.
Resin Project Pitfalls
Resin mistakes tend to cluster around three areas. Over-exposing bottom layers creates elephant foot, where the base spreads wider than the model intends. Insufficient supports cause mid-print failures, usually discovered when you open the lid and find half your model stuck to the FEP. And skipping the wash step leaves uncured resin on the surface, which stays tacky and degrades over time.
For dual extrusion specifically: skipping nozzle offset calibration produces misaligned color boundaries. Not using a purge tower wastes the first few millimeters of a color switch on your actual model. Misassigning extruders in the slicer is embarrassingly common and completely avoidable by double-checking before you slice.
FEP Film Reality Check
The FEP film on your Anycubic Photon S will eventually need replacing. It's not a question of if. It's a question of when. Start watching for cloudiness, small pits, or adhesion problems on the build plate. Catching it early saves a ruined print and a messy cleanup.
The Mindset Trap: Perfectionism vs. Progress
Restarting a print because it's 80 percent good is one of the most expensive habits in this hobby. Time, resin, filament, and patience all pay the price. Keep a simple print log. Write down the settings, the result, and what you'd change. A photo journal works even better. After ten entries, you'll have a personal troubleshooting database that no YouTube video can replicate.
Choosing Your Next Project: How to Keep Growing
Finishing these five projects means you have a foundation. What you build on it is entirely up to you, but choosing the right next project matters more than most beginners realize.
The Project Difficulty Ladder
A useful framework for picking progressively harder projects looks at four factors: geometry complexity, functional requirements, material demands, and post-processing needs. A decorative figurine scores low on function but high on geometry. A replacement hinge scores high on function and material precision. Stack the factors deliberately. Don't jump from a phone stand to a fully articulated mechanical assembly. Bridge the gap with something in between.
Where to Find Inspiration and Free Models
Thingiverse remains the largest repository by sheer volume, though search quality varies. Printables (run by Prusa) has better curation and an active community that posts make photos. MyMiniFactory skews toward high-quality designer models, many free, some paid. Cults3D has a strong selection of functional and artistic files, with a healthy premium market for detailed work. All four are worth bookmarking.
Remixing existing models is the most underrated skill bridge in this hobby. Take a model that's 90 percent what you need, import it into your CAD tool, and modify the remaining 10 percent. That's faster than designing from scratch and more instructive than just downloading.
When to Design vs. When to Download
Download when the model exists, fits your needs closely, and your time is better spent printing than designing. Design when you need exact dimensions, custom branding, or a part that simply doesn't exist yet. Five good next projects for where you are right now: a cable organizer, a custom keycap, a cosplay prop piece, a replacement household part, or a handmade gift for someone who'd appreciate it. Share your makes on Printables or Reddit. The feedback loop from a community that actually prints things is genuinely motivating.
Your Part 7 Project Checklist
What's Coming in Part 8: Troubleshooting and Optimization
Part 8 is where the series gets surgical. If Part 7 was about building things and learning through doing, Part 8 is about understanding exactly why something went wrong and fixing it with precision instead of guesswork.
The centerpiece is a visual failure guide. You'll learn to look at a failed print and immediately recognize the symptom: under-extrusion, layer separation, stringing, warping, elephant foot, suction cupping in resin. No more posting photos to Reddit and waiting for a diagnosis. You'll know what you're looking at.
Part 8 also covers the eternal balancing act of 3D printing: quality versus speed. Dialing in settings for both simultaneously is a skill, and it's one most guides skip entirely. You'll get a practical framework for it.
Here's the thing worth saying plainly: troubleshooting is not a sign that you're doing it wrong. Every experienced maker deals with print failures regularly. The difference between a beginner and a seasoned maker isn't the absence of problems. It's the speed and confidence of the response to them.
By this point in the series, you're not a beginner anymore. You've designed, printed, post-processed, and documented real objects. That's a maker.
