FRC 3D Printing Guide

3D printing has become the most accessible CNC technology to FRC teams.

There are countless examples of 3D printed parts being used well by teams.

3D printing allows you to stock fewer parts and have fewer unused parts by only printing what you need.

Print spare parts before going to your competitions, and/or bring your printer to your pit so you can print more spares during the event.

Common Use Cases

• Electronics mounting (cameras, RSL, radio, sensors, etc.)
• Standoffs, spacers, shaft collars
• Timing belt pulleys
• Rollers/wheels
• Gears (herringbone, wide face)
• Mounting brackets or clamp mounts
• Motor mounts

Printed guard over the main breaker

Printed spacers setting roller spacing on a launcher

72D TPU timing belt pulley and roller hub

Printed herringbone gear

FRC Rules for 3D Printed Parts

• In FRC you can basically use any 3D printed parts that you like.
• Public designs can be reused season to season. If you are printing public designs, or designs you have made public, you can print and reuse those parts from season to season.
• Non-public designs have to be new. A design you keep private needs to have been created after kickoff of the season you are using the part in.

Buying Your First Printer

• Most FDM (filament) 3D printers will work for FRC. If your team already has access to 3D printers you likely don’t need to buy new ones. (Creality, Bambu Lab, Elegoo Centauri series, Snapmaker, etc. are all reasonable printers)
• More printers is better than a single expensive printer. If you can buy 2 or 3 of the same printer instead of 1 expensive printer you will be able to print more in the same amount of time, and when one of the printers eventually breaks you still have other printers to keep working while you fix the broken one. Even minor issues like filament jams or clogged nozzles will take down expensive printers. Multiple cheaper/smaller printers will almost always be better than fewer expensive printers.
• Don’t overspend on your first printers. It’s possible/likely you will break things. It’s a lot easier to replace or fix a $300 printer than a $2000+ printer. Most FRC parts can be made on $200-300 printers.

What You Don’t Need

• Avoid any printers that require you to buy a specific filament. Most modern FDM printers are open-filament printers but there are still some that require you to purchase their specific filaments. Markforged and Stratasys are examples. These are normally expensive industrial machines and FRC teams rarely make the most of them.
• Avoid resin 3D printers. They are more complicated and messy, and normally don’t make as strong of parts for FRC (there are exceptions but they shouldn’t be your first printer).
• You likely don’t need the multicolor systems (AMS, tool changer, etc.). These are very useful for making colorful prints but they don’t do very much for functional prints used on FRC robots.
• You don’t need fiber-filled filaments when starting out. Until you learn more don’t assume fiber-filled (carbon fiber or glass fiber) filaments automatically make parts better. They add cost you probably don’t need to spend when you are starting out.
• You don’t need to buy extra print beds. Most printers ship with some type of textured PEI print bed that will work with almost any material if you keep the bed clean and apply some type of adhesive.

Budget Recommendations

Affiliate links

Some product links on this page are Amazon affiliate links. Buying through them costs you nothing extra and sends a small commission to Spectrum, which goes back into the team.

Printers

• Bambu Lab A1 — New: ~$300 / Refurbished: ~$255
  • Bambu Lab printers are some of the most widely used, so it’s easy to get help if you have a problem.
  • Refurbished A1
• Elegoo Centauri Carbon 2 — $319
  • If you need a fully enclosed 3D printer, this is one of the best deals available.
  • It’s newer so it doesn’t have as many examples/tutorials online. The software isn’t as refined. You may end up needing to tweak things more.
  • Centauri Carbon 2

Other Options

• Bambu Lab P1S — $399
  • It’s outdated now (2023 release). If you have one it works great, but we wouldn’t buy one new — no touchscreen, old nozzles.
• Bambu Lab P2S — $549
  • Double the A1 price, and 2x A1 is better than 1 P2S. $100 more gets you the X2D.
• Bambu Lab X2D — $649
  • If you have enough budget, 2x X2D is a fantastic setup. But 2x A1 to start, and using the rest of the funds to buy other things, is probably better for most teams.

Filaments

• Rapid/High Speed/High Flow PETG — $10-15/kg
  • Rapid PETG is a good standard all-around filament. It can be purchased for as little as $10/kg so you won’t mind doing a lot of iterations as you learn to design parts. It prints nearly as fast as standard PLA but it’s stronger, stands up to heat better, and is a little better under impact. You can find it in a variety of colors so getting your team color is a good idea, or just get black/white — that’s also fine.
  • Elegoo Rapid PETG 4pk
• Rigid TPU (72D) — $22/kg
  • This hard/rigid TPU makes parts that are very impact resistant and still very stiff when printed nearly solid. This is a newer filament type so not many companies sell it yet. It prints much slower than PETG but it’s a great alternative for places where PETG may fail under impact. If you print with fewer perimeters/less infill the material can flex, which is useful in a variety of applications. This doesn’t have the jamming issues common with more flexible TPU.
  • CC3D 72D TPU or Elegoo TPU 72D

Bed Adhesion

• Glue stick is the cheapest option. Normal PVA (Elmer’s) glue stick will help prints stick and separate from the bed when the print is finished. This does mean you need to wash the bed with water semi-regularly to avoid clumps of glue.
• Vision Miner Nano Polymer Adhesive — We have used this for years and it’s worth its price. We bought 2x 120ml bottles 7 years ago, and probably have 80%+ of both bottles remaining. It goes on very thin and only needs to be reapplied every 10+ prints for PLA/PETG/etc.

Filament Dryers

• SUNLU S1 Plus — $32.29
  • A very well-priced filament dryer that will work well for PETG and TPU.
  • SUNLU S1 Plus
• Elegoo H1 HT — $70
  • A very good dryer for the price, half the price of the Bambu Lab AMS-HT.
  • Currently pre-order only, shipping October 31, 2026.
  • Elegoo H1 HT

Accessories

You don’t need many accessories for your printers, but these two we recommend heavily.

• Oil sticks make it very easy to lubricate the rods and screws on your printers. This is one of the main maintenance tasks for 3D printers and an oil stick simplifies it to where anyone can do it cleanly and easily.
  • OilStick 3-Pack
• Bed scraper — use the Bambu style bed scraper; you don’t need any other type of spatula. Print the handle and buy just the blades.
  • Blades: Bambu Scraper 3pk or generic versions on Amazon
  • Handle: Bambu Scraper Grip on MakerWorld

General Printing Tips

• A 3D print is a stack of melted layers. It is strong along the layers and weak between them. A printed part pulls apart between layers like string cheese when it fails. This means you need to think about which way your part will be pulled and print it with that direction sideways.
• Dry filament will be one of the biggest improvements to print quality and consistency. Moisture in filament boils as it prints and causes air bubbles that make your prints look and behave worse.
• More solid perimeters and top and bottom layers will increase part strength more than increasing the infill setting. Generally if you can just print with full solid perimeters (99 perimeters) your parts will be incredibly strong. You can print test prints with fewer perimeters to save material and time and to make sure they will work, and then print a nearly solid part for the ones you compete with.
• Tune your print settings for the filaments you are using. You can change a ton of settings so if there is something not working right it’s likely a setting that needs to be adjusted, including support removal, etc.
• Use metal hex inserts when putting prints on a hex shaft to transfer heavy loads. These inserts allow for much greater torque transfer. They aren’t always required but are recommended. Engaging the hex shaft over a longer length can help make it harder for the hex to spin inside of the print if you don’t have the metal inserts.
• Brass heat set inserts are very useful fasteners for 3D prints. Melting them into a printed hole with a soldering iron allows for simple reusable threads. You can tap 3D prints but the threads wear down after a few uses and get looser. We use the E-Z LOK brand but other brands work as well.
• Wash the plate with dish soap and water. Avoid touching the print surface so you do not transfer oil from your hands to it.

Slicer and Print Setting Recommendations

• Many modern printers use a version of Prusa/Bambu/Orca Slicer. They will often name it their own thing and they are all mostly fine. Using whatever your printer manufacturer recommends to start with is normally the right option.
• Print at the higher end of the manufacturer recommendations for your filament. This will normally increase your available print speed and increase layer bonding. For Rapid PETG this means printing at 260-270°C.
• You’ll often need to increase the size of holes in 3D printed parts because they shrink. A #10 thru hole should be designed at 0.205-0.210“ instead of the 0.201“ you would drill it out to. 3D prints normally print holes a little small for multiple reasons including plastic squish and cooling.
• Volumetric speed is the most important setting for each filament. This setting tells your slicer how fast the printer can actually melt the filament. The other speeds in the profile don’t matter as much, as volumetric speed will take priority and slow the printer down.
• Never use the faster print modes on the printer after you slice the print. Normally they just won’t work and they make your parts much weaker most of the time. Adjust your slicer settings to go faster if your printer/filament combination can actually print faster.
• Nozzle sizes: FRC teams can use standard 0.4mm nozzles without a problem. 0.6mm nozzles will allow you to increase part strength by putting down wider and thicker lines. They will also jam less often, especially on fiber-filled filaments if you ever experiment with those. It’s likely not worth it to experiment with 0.2mm and 0.8mm nozzles.
• Hardened nozzles are needed for printing abrasive filaments such as glass fiber or carbon fiber filaments. Brass nozzles will change diameter after only a few prints with abrasive filaments.

Spectrum’s 3D Printing Setup

Printers

• Bambu Lab H2D — Qty 1
  • Large dual nozzle printer. There are a few times the large build volume is needed but mostly it isn’t. You can normally split a print into multiple parts and attach them together.
• Bambu Lab X2D — Qty 5, $650
  • These are a great value for printing more complicated filaments that tend to warp if you don’t control heat. They are dual nozzle, heated chamber, high bed and nozzle temps, etc.
• Bambu Lab X1C — Qty 2
  • Bought one of them during the original Kickstarter and the other within the year. Very reliable and still working well over the past 4 years.
• Prusa Mini+ — Qty 6
  • We had 12 of these purchased in 2020 so students could take them home. These were able to print 95% of what we needed for FRC parts even though they are open frame and small build volume.

Nozzles

• Hardened steel or tungsten carbide 0.6mm nozzles on all of our printers.

Main Filaments

• Rapid PLA — We still like printing PLA for draft prints but don’t ever use it on the robot. We may switch to Rapid PETG at some point.
• PETG-GF — It’s a little stiffer than regular PETG and we like the stiffness and surface finish. A little more expensive than regular PETG. $18/kg
• 72D TPU — Have started using this for more and more things because it basically never cracks like other 3D prints. You can shear it at the layer lines under heavy loads/torque.
• PPA-GF — This is an extremely strong and stiff filament, one of the strongest you can print on consumer FDM printers. We use this when we want the strongest and stiffest prints possible. $50/kg

Filaments We Avoid

• ABS/ASA — They emit styrene into the air as they print. If you don’t have good ventilation this can cause headaches or worse. They are very low density filaments so there are reasons to use them, but you can normally just adjust the print settings of other filaments to get to a similar part density.
• Polycarbonate (PC) — We used to print in PC filaments a lot, but because polycarbonate reacts quickly and destructively to thread locker (Loctite) we have stopped using it in favor of other filaments.

Filament Dryer

• Bambu Lab AMS-HT — $140
  • It’s expensive but it integrates very well with the Bambu printers and makes loading and unloading filament very easy.