3D Printer FYIFEATURED CREATORS · SKILL ISSUE
UNDERSTAND IT
Part of SKILL ISSUE. Channel: Made with Layers. Site: Tom’s 3D.
The manual your printer forgot to ship with.
Thomas Sanladerer has been answering the question you were about to post in a forum for more than a decade — usually more clearly, with fewer superstitions, and without telling you to replace half the printer first.
If 3D printing has tribal knowledge, Thomas has spent years converting it into actual documentation.
Why this makes you a better maker
When he rebranded the channel as Made with Layers, Thomas wrote that the entire reason for starting a YouTube presence was a need for information: the same questions kept appearing, so the efficient move was a compact, understandable video instead of typing the same explanation forever. Source
That origin story still explains why the back catalog is useful. He is unusually good at taking a topic that has accumulated years of forum mythology — extrusion, slicer settings, supports, materials, maintenance, hardware, threaded connections — and reducing it to the parts that actually matter.
His 3D Printing Basics project is a ten-part, freely available series covering what a printer actually does, how to choose one, slicers, maintenance, common failures, and where to go once the machine works. It was built to consolidate knowledge newcomers otherwise had to piece together. Source
This is not only beginner material. Some of the most useful videos are the ones where he looks at a normal workflow and asks, “Why are we doing it that way?”
In 2025 he published a collection of slicer hacks showing how negative volumes, infill behavior, bridging, and other slicer features can be deliberately abused to create geometry or test sections that would otherwise require extra CAD work. Source
He also compared practical ways to put reusable threads into printed parts and highlighted a zero-cost option: a deliberately designed hole that lets a machine screw form its own usable thread — the kind of tiny design trick that lodges in your brain once you see it. Source
When Thomas reviews hardware, his published review guidelines spell out how testing and compensation are supposed to work. Read that page before treating any review as an endorsement.
3D Printer FYI take
Thomas is the person you send to a friend immediately after they announce they bought a printer.
Not because he will teach a bag of magic calibration rituals, but because he tends to do the opposite: explain enough of the machine that they stop treating it like a haunted box.
He has a particular talent for producing the sentence that makes you stop the video and go:
“Oh. So that’s what that setting actually does.”
Then three months later you repeat the explanation to someone else like you discovered it yourself.
We will not tell Thomas.
He has already answered the question you’re about to post.
What you’ll accidentally learn
- Why slicer settings behave the way they do instead of which magic number to copy
- How to diagnose common extrusion and mechanical problems
- How to design around the strengths and limits of FDM — start with first printer setup
- When a clever slicer trick can replace unnecessary CAD work
- Better ways to join printed parts with screws and threads
- How filament combinations can be exploited for multi-material supports
- How to think about printers as tools instead of permanent tinkering projects — including when an upgrade is actually a new machine
Start here
3D Printing Basics
A ten-part fundamentals course covering printers, resin vs. filament, machine components, slicers, workflow, common issues, and next steps.
Why feature it: This is the “send this to the new printer owner before they discover random TikTok calibration advice” link.
Slicer Hacks to Improve Your 3D Printing Game
Creative uses of slicer features including negative volumes, infill tricks, bridge geometry, and targeted test sections.
Why feature it: Even experienced users are likely to steal at least one trick.
A Better Way to Add Threads to Your 3D Prints
A comparison of ways to create threaded connections, including simple geometry that works directly with machine screws.
Why feature it: Small technique, huge practical value. This is the “why did nobody tell me this?” slot.
Try These Filament Combinations for Multi-Material and Supports
Experiments with material-to-material adhesion and separation for cleaner support interfaces and useful multi-material combinations.
Why feature it: Turns “multi-material” from color swapping into an engineering tool.