Study guide — what to focus on

This module is curated — the teaching is a top free resource (the Teaching Tech calibration guide linked in the card above, plus its companion g-code tool); our job is to point you at the right things, make you prove it, and certify you. This is the intermediate step: past "it printed" and on to "it holds".

The plan

1. Watch the course (the card above) and, when you can, run its g-code generator on your own printer. You don't need to memorise it — aim to understand the ideas below.
2. Focus on these — they're what the check tests and what you'll use for real:
   • Pick the material for the job — PLA (easy, stiff, low heat resistance), PETG (the tough, heat-tolerant go-to for functional parts), ABS/ASA (heat- and impact-resistant but warps — wants an enclosure), TPU (flexible/rubbery for gaskets, bumpers, grips).
   • Heat & warping — PLA's low glass transition (~55-60 °C) means it sags in a hot car; ABS shrinks as it cools, which is why it lifts corners without a heated bed and enclosure.
   • Calibrate extrusion — flow / extrusion multiplier and E-steps get the amount of plastic right (no over- or under-extrusion).
   • Tune per filament — a temperature tower finds the best nozzle temperature; retraction tuning kills stringing.
   • Design for strength — FDM parts are anisotropic: weakest between layers. Orient the part so load runs along the layers, add walls/perimeters (they carry most of the strength), and raise infill sensibly.
   • Annealing — controlled heating can raise a PLA part's heat resistance and stiffness, at the cost of some shrinkage.
3. Prove it in Forge (next section) — apply material choice + functional-strength thinking to a real load-bearing part.
4. Take the K-Check to earn your certificate.

Why this connects to building real products

Calibration and material choice are the difference between a demo part and a product part. In Forge Prototype, you describe a physical part and get a printable design with a real geometry — but whether that part survives depends on the same decisions this module drills: the filament you'd run it in, how you'd orient it on the plate, and how many walls and how much infill it needs to take the load. Knowing this lets you look at a Forge design and judge how it should print to actually work — not just whether it looks right.

Time to apply it. The course taught you how to pick a material and tune a print; now use that lens on a real load-bearing part.

Send the prompt below in the Forge 3D part designer to generate a wall-mount bracket — then reason about how you'd actually print it: which filament (PETG for toughness? PLA only if it never sees heat or heavy load?), which way to orient it so the load runs along the layers rather than peeling them apart, and how many walls and how much infill it needs to hold.

That mapping — material + orientation + walls/infill → a part that survives — is the whole point of this module.