3D printing has its own vocabulary and most beginner guides assume you already know it. This glossary covers every term you’ll encounter in the first few months of printing, defined plainly without unnecessary jargon. Bookmark it and refer back when a tutorial mentions something unfamiliar.
Essential 3D Printing Terms A-G
AMS (Automatic Material System): Bambu Lab’s multi-color filament hub. Holds 4 spools and swaps automatically during printing.
Bed adhesion: How well the first layer sticks to the print surface. Full guide at bed adhesion guide.
Bowden: Extruder configuration where the motor is mounted remotely and feeds filament through a PTFE tube.
Brim: Extra flat material printed around the model’s base to increase bed adhesion and prevent warping.
Direct drive: Extruder mounted directly on the print head, right above the hotend.
Elephant’s foot: Outward flare at the base of a print caused by excessive first layer squish.
Extruder: The motor and gear assembly that feeds filament toward the hotend.
FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling): The most common 3D printing technology. Melts and deposits plastic filament layer by layer.
Filament: The plastic feedstock for FDM printers, sold on spools. Most commonly 1.75mm diameter.
G-code: The machine instruction language that 3D printers read. Generated by slicers from 3D model files.
Essential 3D Printing Terms H-Z
Heat creep: When hotend heat migrates into the cold zone, softening filament before it reaches the melt zone. Causes gradual underextrusion.
Hotend: The heating assembly that melts filament. Contains heat block, nozzle, heatbreak, and heatsink.
Infill: The internal structure of a printed object. Expressed as a percentage of solid fill. More at infill guide.
Layer height: The thickness of each deposited layer. Typically 0.1-0.3mm for a 0.4mm nozzle.
Nozzle: The small tip at the end of the hotend that extrudes melted filament.
PEI: Polyetherimide. The standard print bed coating material. Grips at temperature, releases when cooled.
Retraction: Pulling filament back into the nozzle slightly before travel moves to prevent stringing.
Slicer: Software that converts 3D model files into G-code for your printer. Full guide at slicer guide.
STL: Standard Tessellation Language. The most common 3D model file format.
Stringing: Thin wisps of plastic between printed sections caused by insufficient retraction.
Supports: Scaffolding structure generated to hold up overhanging areas during printing. More at supports guide.
Warping: When print corners lift off the bed during printing due to differential cooling.
Z-offset: The gap between the nozzle tip and bed surface at the start of layer one.
3MF: A container file format that stores geometry plus print settings. Preferred over STL for Bambu Studio workflows.
