[Closed] 3d Printer software for eeejits?

Firstly if you are designing parts then it isn't specifically 3D printing software. For design you are looking for a CAD package. They usually have a pretty steep learning curve but there is plenty of help out there to get you going. Fusion360 is probably the standard for hobbyists these days so I'd have a look at that. There are simpler packages but if you can get to grips with basics of 360 you'll have room to grow.

Steeper learning curve than some of the more basic stuff but Fusion 360 is currently free for personal use, very powerful & easy to use once you get the hang of it.

Because it’s so popular there are LOADS of learning resources online. Look up “Lars Christensen” on YouTube. The Fusion 360 FB group is also extremely useful, lots of very knowledgeable & helpful people on there.

Personally, I prefer Free CAD to Fusion 360, but they are pretty similar in terms of capability. Very young school children seem to be taught with TinkerCAD which is a simpler learning curve for easy stuff but a ballache for anything complex or when you later realise you got a dimension wrong and need to change something.

Tinkercad is web based and an absolute piece of piss to use. 5 mins to be up and running. It seems to be fine for just general model making. I'd say start there (it's free) and then see how you get on before diving into other stuff.

Are any of these optimised for tablet/pen use? Tinkercad doesn't work properly in tablet mode (nor does Cura for that matter).

I've learnt particularly quickly with www.tinkercad.comwww.tinkercad.com

Free to use.
Multiple projects
easy to export to .stl or .obj files for printing.
also easy to import

Personally, I prefer Free CAD to Fusion 360, but they are pretty similar in terms of capability.

Tinkercad is web based and an absolute piece of piss to use. 5 mins to be up and running.

I suspected I might be best investing my time into F360, sounds like the way to go. Ta all

I recently got back into using CAD at home (do it at work a fair bit already) and have acquired an Ender 3.
For modelling at home on a typical desktop machine, I'm a fan of Fusion 360, it's pretty intuitive and the Free personal version has quite a few features and chucks out a decent enough STL file...

For slicing I never even bothered installing creality's bundled slicer, and went straight for Cura after a bit of googling/YT research (free to download also).

I'm mostly sticking to the simplified pre-sets already in Cura for the Ender 3, and just dial up/down Quality/infill/support based on what I'm after but there's options to tune pretty much everything....

I reckon Fusion 360 and Cura are all the software most users will ever require...

SolidWorks and Cura here, although I'm lucky enough to have a commercial version of SoldiWorks which I use at work.

@cookeaa my top tip for using Cura and the Ender 3 is to use the print profile of the C10 and change the print size to 235x235x250mm. Despite the Ender being physically able to print right to the edges of the print platform, the default profile doesn't let you use the outer ~15-20mm around each side. Just be careful where you place your bulldog clips, assuming you're using those to hold your print platform down, but it opens up quite a lot more potential in terms of size of stuff you can print.

Oooh nice tip, although I tend not to do very big prints for the most part and after having had a couple of failed nested prints recently (with 2 or more parts on the bed) I'm tending to stick to single component prints and a good long bed pre-heat and fastidious bed leveling.

It lives in the garage and I think low ambient temperature is having an exaggerated effect...

Actually that's a good point OP, the software is only half the equation, there's plenty of setup/adjustment/prep faff; think about where/how you intend to setup the machine almost as much as the design of the parts...

If I set the thing off on say a 6hr print I'll stand and watch the first few layers/raft go down for maybe 10-15mins. Once I'm satisfied it's not going to lift, I'll leave it... But I'm back every 30mins for the next 6hrs just to check it's not pissing filament everywhere, I need a cheap wireless camera really.

But it's really not a click 'n' go "printer"...

But it’s really not a click ‘n’ go “printer”…

That's one of the reason I went for the Flashforge Adventurer. It is pretty much click and go. Wireless uploads and a built in wifi camera mean I could actually use it without even going into the same room. It even looks like my laser printer. Still may end up with something bigger and mod-able for more exotic prints but as printer for printing stuff rather than tinkering with its pretty decent.

But I’m back every 30mins for the next 6hrs just to check it’s not pissing filament everywhere, I need a cheap wireless camera really.

I'm also running a plugin called Spaghetti Detective which uses machine learning to identify the "spaghetti" of failed prints and automatically pause & alert you! Having said that, my Prusa is so reliable it's not actually happened in the year I've been running the software, save for a couple of occasions where I engineered the failure as a test (which it detected very quickly!).

I'd definitely describe the Prusa as click n go too, very very few failures (mainly when I've done something wrong!), I'm quite happy to leave it doing very long prints (3 days is the longest so far!) or full bed/multi-component prints (although I can & do check on it remotely from my phone etc).

vs FreeCAD/F360/SolidWorks etc, plus the parametric capabilities of those easily pay back the time it takes to learn when you start designing & then tweaking more complex stuff to 3D print.

He did say 'for eejits' in the title though.

It lives in the garage and I think low ambient temperature is having an exaggerated effect…

I got an enclosure to help keep ambient more consistent.

My Ender 3 normally lives in the shed, however a month or so ago I get an error which I thought meant that the nozzle thermocouple had failed, however it was actually just too cold. Brought it inside and after a few hours to warm up it ran happily again. Not sure what temperature it gets upset at, but an enclosure with a little heater would help.

I've found mine to be pretty much click 'n' go tbh, but I am looking into Octoprint just to avoid needing to swap memory cards between machine and slicer all the time, one being at the bottom of the garden, the other being in the coverted loft...

It's currently printing a bunch of parts for this, a clothes rack

but I am looking into Octoprint just to avoid needing to swap memory cards between machine and slicer all the time, one being at the bottom of the garden, the other being in the coverted loft…

I've ordered a Raspberry Pi so hopefully Octoprint isn't too far away.

The last spars for my clothes rack is currently printing, illustrating how much of my build plate I'm using 😀

That's impressive! No issue with the prints lifting at the edge?
I think I would have added some custom brims into the model, to try to hold it down. Slicer brim wouldn't work as it would go over the extent of the build plate.

Regarding Octoprint, I have seen quite a lot of stuff on the forums about print quality being affected by it & also random print fails due to the Octoprint messing something up halfway through.
I am not sure if they are rare occurrences, but it put me off looking into it further.

I've got a new 'silent' fan for my hotend to install this weekend and stepper dampers for X & Y. Been meaning to do it for about 18 months!!

Regarding Octoprint, I have seen quite a lot of stuff on the forums about print quality being affected by it & also random print fails due to the Octoprint messing something up halfway through.

I've never had any issues with models lifting off mid print, apart from when I used the wrong bed temperature with ABS once. I generally turn off the brim option in Cura as it's just more to scrape off the bed and I don't see that it adds anything functional for me. I hadn't realised quite how close I was to the edge, but it certainly took a lot of precise shuffling of parts to get them on!

stepper dampers for X & Y

Can you post before and after samples?

I just got a anti-backlash spring for my Ender 3 to try and iron out uneven layers. It didn't have a huge effect but it made my cubes slightly taller.

I also have an auto bed levelling kit to install because I was trying to calibrate my bed height and could not get reproducable results at all. I set the bed height, then printed a big single layer and adjusted the z offset to get the best results. Then I did it again twice and got very different numbers.

maybe look into Octoprint, it’s a print server that most people run on a Raspberry Pi although you can run it on anything.

Also just took a punt on a Pi, just need a camera and I should be able to remotely kepe an eye on my prints...

@cookeaa think you can pretty much use any USB webcam, I used the official Pi cam, it’s cheap & very neat. Plus there are loads of different mounts for them you can download, I used one similar to this
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2736439

Yeah, looking at various how to's and other people's setups some have their camera mounted on the X travel motor pointed at the head, others seem to go for a wider angle looking at the whole bed, I'm not sure which I'd prefer it which is "better" TBH.

Does spaghetti detective have a preference do you know?

@molgrips. Before and after on the stepper dampers might be a bit tricky as I didn't do any specific before prints.

I could load up some old gcode I guess and run it again to compare to the original prints.
Thing is the stepper dampers are primarily to cut noise - not a performance upgrade.
Some people even report worse surface artefacts after installing them as the motor has some jiggle once it is only suspended by rubber. I think that is unlikely as the rubber is quite stiff and any movement will be tiny.

I fitted them last night and the reduction in noise is ridiculous. Amazing reduction! The thing is now the fans sound like jet engines. I've got a silent fan for the hot end but think I will end up doing all fans to try and quiet them down!

If I see any specific performance changes (good or bad) I'll update.

Does spaghetti detective have a preference do you know?

Cheers, yet another Mini project added to the list 🙂

Ah ok thanks stumpy. Mine is pretty quiet when moving, not very audible over the fans which are pretty whooshy but not too bad.

May fit my bl touch today while waiting for the snow to stick.

Well, I spent the weekend playing with Fusion360 and really enjoyed it, took a bit to get my head round it but once you get going it all starts to come together.

Designed a couple of things, checked, and then 3d printed them. Very Happy 🙂

molgrips
Full Member
Ah ok thanks stumpy. Mine is pretty quiet when moving, not very audible over the fans which are pretty whooshy but not too bad.

My control board is an old one without silent stepper drivers. I can't remember what version of Ender3 you have, but it probably has silent drivers; without them, the stepper motors really sing!

Tiger6791

Well, I spent the weekend playing with Fusion360 and really enjoyed it, took a bit to get my head round it but once you get going it all starts to come together.

Designed a couple of things, checked, and then 3d printed them. Very Happy

Nice one! Fusion 360 is generally great to use & you can achieve complicated things relatively easily.
I still struggle a bit with bodies/components/assemblies & constraints so tend to just ignore them. I don't need to worry about it too much for what I use it for, but it would be nice to have a better understanding of it all. Fusion360 works quite a lot different to the other 3-D CAD packages I have used for work & I can't really be arsed to learn yet another way of putting things together 🙂

Nice one! Fusion 360 is generally great to use & you can achieve complicated things relatively easily.

I still struggle a bit with bodies/components/assemblies & constraints so tend to just ignore them.

zilog6128

are you talking about sketch constraints?

No. Sketch constraints are very similar to every other 3D CAD package I've used. And I am always really anal about fully constraining my sketches.

My lack of understanding relates more to multiple parts within a file. With other packages I have used, you create a series of parts. If you want to create an assembly, you have to create a new document XYZ.asm for example & then bring the parts into that assembly, constraining them as you go - this surface co-incident with that surface, this bore inserted onto that shaft etc.
You CAN create new components within an active assembly, but it wouldn't be the way I would normally do it and those parts generally get saved as a part in their own right.

But, in Fusion360, you can just create a new component & start working away at it in the current file, but it doesn't have any constraints relative to other parts in the assembly, until you tell it you want them to be there. And you don't have to have them.
The newly created components exist only in that file as well, not as individual parts.

Then you can have multiple bodies in one component as well, which I do not really have experience of.
I've also struggled with copying components & keeping the model tree, but making it independent from the original. I can do it, but have to look it up every time. It's subtly different to how I would do it in other programs I am used to.

Pretty happy with the end result of my clothes rack 🙂

Yeah, that looks really good!

Those parts look too large for an Ender3 bed - obviously not!

I keep meaning to create a similar thing as a shoe rack for our under-stairs cupboard.
I drew up a few sketches of the various configurations that would work the best based on our requirements, but I never got round to doing it - too many other things on the go.

I was going to create a similar design using 12 or 15mm dowels. I used them on a thing to lift my Daughter's dining chair up a bit & it worked really well with dowels.

[url= https://live.staticflickr.com/1853/29589469827_49c11e8086_c.jp g" target="_blank">https://live.staticflickr.com/1853/29589469827_49c11e8086_c.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/M5HLuT ]IMG_20180903_214332[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/me96kka/ ]STW stumpy01[/url], on Flickr

I'm liking these multi-material ideas, a lot easier than learning proper woodworking 😂

I'm jealous, my printer is too small to have managed that and I get a 1 in 10 failed print as it is.

Good that you've had a crack at Fusion 360. It will feel like an investment (i.e. a bit of pain to begin with, but with rewards).
I used to use Sketchup for years and it always annoyed me.

As soon as I moved to F360, I loved the fact that you never really feel like you've done something permanent - you can always edit a sketch, roll back the timeline, etc.

When you start to use it with parameters and calculations, it feels really powerful.

I use it for CNC routing too, so it's manufacture section is fantastic.

Recently created a new type of CNC Routable finger joint and now it's become a box-generator where you type in the dimensions of the box and the thickness of the material and it spits out all the g-code.
Very impressive and the restrictions that come with the free version are currently just on the right side of manageable.

@AlexSimon - how is the Root3 CNC going?

You sent me your BOM ages ago as it was something I wanted to build myself but have never got round to.
I was going to build the DremelCNC as a starter project but I think that once it's built, the limitations will quickly become clear and make it obsolete apart from as a learning exercise.

I started looking again in the new year and found the RS32-cnc as an equivalent to the Root3 that looks like a good package.

https://www.makerfr.com/en/cnc/rs-cnc32/presentation-rs-cnc32/

One of my concerns about building one is lack of space in my garage. I think I need to get that cleared out and then come up with a storage solution for the CNC. I was thinking of detachable/folding legs and hoisting the body of it up to the roof when not in use.

@stumpy01 I looked at that one for a while too, but decided that it was similar to Root3 but with less standard profiles. Perhaps it takes up a little less space though.

I still hang mine on the wall, but it's a 2-person job, so it hardly ever gets done. A hoist would be much easier.

Absolutely love mine - sometimes it has to go a bit slower than ideal, but short of spending a couple of thousand £ I don't think I'd get much better.

There's a Root 4 now too with 40mm profiles, but it takes up even more space.

Couple of projects:

(let me know if you can't see images as it's shared from google photos which I've never done before)

@AlexSimon those wood parts look ace - I have a small milling machine which has been close to finished being converted to CNC for several years now, I really must pull my finger out and finish it off, then I could do similar stuff.

@Stumpy01 the biggest bits of my rack measure about 260mm at their longest, so needed to go at an angle on the bed of the Ender3, and I did need to change the settings in Cura to use the entire bed. The default settings lose about half an inch of the perimeter, which isn't very helpful. I did cram on quite a few parts to minimise the number of prints I'd have to run, but did realise that I hadn't paid quite as much attention as I should on one!

@alexsimon - I can't see the pics, but from the sounds of it, turboferret can so probably something at my end blocking it?
I remember you posting some camper van bits & some cupboard doors previously that looked really good.

My main concern with building one of these CNCs is the accuracy of cutting the parts. I don't have access to many tools & most people I see on Youtube building them seem to be using pillar drills & mitre saws etc.
I would be concerned about not getting it all accurately cut & drilled, so it wouldn't actually end up square & true.

@turboferret - it looks larger than that in your pics. One of the reasons I bought the CR10-Mini was because I wanted the rectangular build plate (it's basically a bit larger than A4).
I bet realising those parts were printed as one was a real D'oh moment!!? The kind of thing you only do once. 🙂

@stumpy01 I don't have any of those things either. Root 3 just needs accurate measuring when putting the 4 corner pillars in. Make sure those are square and you're all set.

Everything else is just down to the 3D prints. A good PETG profile is needed as well as good bed adhesion (purple elmers glue saved me there after lots of fails)

I had a chop saw for the aluminium profiles, but it isn't critical. A hacksaw and file should be able to do a good enough job. They are held in place by set screws, so the roughness of the ends doesn't matter.

Yeah. I think I over-think these things, rather than just getting on with it.

I should just give it a bash!

I also want to do the Astrotracker project (on Thingiverse) for tracking stars with my SLR. But again, it's finding the time.

@stumpy01 I probably only wasted a few grammes of filament and a few minutes of printing time, so no major loss, but good to make such a mistake on some small inconsequential bits than something bigger! I'd love a bigger machine, but given how capable my super cheap baby Ender 3 is, I'd struggle to justify it at the moment. Most things would happily split into a few bits with some creative joins if strength was required at the interface, and as virtually everything I print I design anyway, I can work around those constraints. If I was mainly downloading things to print and wasn't able to design from scratch I might think differently.

@stumpy Re:CNC one thing I would say is that if your hobby is woodworking and knackling in the shed and you don't like time at the computer, then it might not be for you.
I work at a computer all day long and sometimes doing CNC cad work afterwards is a bit of a pain. Then you finally get out into the shed and you mostly stand watching the machine (you can't leave it unlike 3DPrinter). I think if I had a larger workspace, I would prefer a table saw/router table/big workbench setup instead of the CNC - maybe. Perhaps have a 60W laser engraver too.

I still love it, but I thought I should point that aspect out.

I gave up videography for the same reason - every time I shot footage, I always knew it was another few hours processing/editing at the PC. SO I stopped taking footage 🙂

Then you finally get out into the shed and you mostly stand watching the machine (you can’t leave it unlike 3DPrinter). I think if I had a larger workspace, I would prefer a table saw/router table/big workbench setup instead of the CNC – maybe. Perhaps have a 60W laser engraver too.

I'd disagree with that to some extent. I have a mid range CNC and that can be left happily. I've got a webcam on it but its generally pretty reliable. I also quite like that I can do something else in the workshop so effectively getting two jobs for the time of one. Occasionally I'll get the power feed going on the lathe too, so three jobs at once. In terms of actual doing stuff its a lot less work. With outlines, slots and bolt holes all cut true the assembly stage is super quick. A track saw pretty much removes the need for a table saw, too. I would like a proper laser cutter for metal plates but that is a whole of another level.

You can definitely do something else in the same space, but my CNC is my workbench, so then I've just got a couple of sqm floor space for track sawing. All a bit tight, plus the vacuum is always being used on the cnc.
Neeeeeeed Mooooooor Spaaaaasss

appreciate it's probably out-of-budget for hobby use (although in the same ballpark as a top of the range Santa Cruz or eBike! so maybe not!) but I've been eyeing up a Yeti Smart Bench CNC for work use as we're pretty short on space - approx £5k, does 8' x 4' sheets and can be packed away very easily. The price is not bad at all considering the above, don't think there's actually anything else comparable - it's quite new though so I'm still trying to filter through all the info/opinions (some people seem to have had great success with it, others no end of trouble!) Manufacturer seems very responsive on the FB group tho.

AlexSimon
Full Member

Neeeeeeed Mooooooor Spaaaaasss

It's always the way.
In our old house, we had a large-ish shed & no garage. It was cramped for bikes, garden stuff & camping kit, but worked OK.

When we moved to this house, one of the stipulations was that it had to have a garage - preferably a double, but that was pushing it a bit so was happy to settle on a single.
Now the garage is stuffed to the gills and I look at my mate's double garage with envy 🙂

I fitted stepper dampers on the X & Y axis of my 3-D printer last week - I can't believe the difference in noise levels. I also swapped the hotend fan for a Gelid 4 silent fan which I was a bit concerned wouldn't be strong enough and lead to heat-creep but I've done a few prints since & have had no issue.

To further reduce noise, I've since bought:
- 60mm fan (Gelid 6 Silent) for the PSU and am planning on removing the poorly designed grilles on the PSU case & bottom of the control box.
- 50mm fan (Gelid 5 Silent) as a direct swap for the control board one
- 50mm fan (same as above) to replace the 40mm one that exhaust the control box. This will need a bit of dremelling. I have also made a fluted duct to stick on the back to try & soften the airflow. I don't think it will make any difference in reality, but it looks nice.
- I bought some 2mm adhesive foam that I am going to line the control box with to stop it vibrating
- Finally I got some conical anti-vibration feet that I am going to mount on a thick piece of MDF (18mm, I think). I'm tempted to double up on the thickness by gluing 2 pieces together to add some mass.

I can't help but feel I'm going OTT with this 🙂 but given the fact my printer is in my "office" and I often want to print while working, I see making it as quiet as possible a sensible (and relatively simple) thing to do.

stumpy01 - I guess it depends on whether you enjoy the process or not. I changed my fans for quiet ones, but then it's in the shed, so doesn't really matter (especially when I added the CNC which is crazy noisy at times).

@zilog6128 Interesting CNC design. Looks like Trend have rebranded it too, so hopefully that will get it noticed. Seems very clever. In about 10mins of research I've only heard good things. Price is about right probably. I always thought an Avid CNC would be my next move, but you end up at 3-5k with those too.

@AlexSimon yeah think Trend are the main distributor, I've been chatting with them about it. If you join the FB group there are a few moans, mainly about the extraction system which can be prone to clogging (although there are some workarounds and apparently an improved design is on the way). Likewise there's people consistently doing some great stuff with it!

If you're looking for a cheap CNC router which can cut 4x8s then Maslow might be worth a look, certainly a lot cheaper than Yeti.

@turboferret just googled that, props to the ingenious design, but it looks terrible tbh 🤣 very slow and not accurate. Plus a lot of users describe it as "scary", I guess if one of those chains comes off mid-cut you're gonna know about it 😂😂 Although I guess if you absolutely MUST roughly cut some full sheets on a shoestring budget and/or very tight space...

whilst googling though I discovered the Lowrider CNC which people were suggesting as an alternative, looks kind of like a ghetto version of the Yeti, with 3D printed parts - sounds a bit more sensible!
https://www.v1engineering.com/lowrider-cnc/

@zilog6128 I wasn't necessarily endorsing it, certainly looks a bit iffy!

Nice one! Fusion 360 is generally great to use & you can achieve complicated things relatively easily.
I still struggle a bit with bodies/components/assemblies & constraints so tend to just ignore them. I don’t need to worry about it too much for what I use it for, but it would be nice to have a better understanding of it all. Fusion360 works quite a lot different to the other 3-D CAD packages I have used for work & I can’t really be arsed to learn yet another way of putting things together 🙂

Yep, I found that because I'm used to modelling parts and assemblies the 'proper' way, not with multiple bodies in a single part file, that initially it did my nut!

You can actually do separate parts and assemblies, but the workflow is a bit clunky IMO, and of course if you're using F360 personal licence each part can help gobble up your allowance of 10 files (you can make things read only to help)...

I tend to only use F360 for stuff that's going to be printed now anyway so I have done a couple of parts with multiple bodies in, but I prefer to constrain each body from the datums only and drive related (mating) part dims by formula as it's neater than referencing another body's geometry in a sketch (IMO).

I still prefer to export each body to its own *.STL and arrange them on the bed in cuts, but you can export the lot, and even model things like sprues in, so there are benefits, it's just not the way I was taught to use parametric CAD packages...

@zilog6128 Yeah - I never understood the hype over the Maslow either. It cuts full sheets, but only if your machine is much much larger than a full sheet and it gets less accurate as it moves towards the edges. Then it's held down by bricks 🙂
The latest version looks a lot better, but I'm still not tempted and it's now trebled the price too.

The Lowrider is pretty decent but compared to the Yeti, it's always going to take up the full sheets sized area in your workshop (or whatever size you decide on). Very cheap though. I never got as far as seeing how good that Yeti was at the corners of a full sheet.

In the end I just decided that a full sheet cutter just wasn't available to me - my work area is 720x500mm, but the x-axis is along the long side, so I've done several projects that were 720xlots by moving the material down - I think it's called tiling.

If I were doing it again, I might be tempted by the Workbee or Scienci Longmill, but they are more than double what I paid for mine and maybe manage another 20-30% speed increase. But then there's a Root 4 CNC now (based on 40mm extrusions) which would probably do the same.

The problem with full sheet CNC cutting is you need full sheets to cut. That means a much bigger material store and space to move sheets around. Its not just the footprint of the machine. Don't get me wrong I'd have one in a heartbeat if I had the space but you do need a lot more space, and to keep that space clear, and probably someone to help you load the machine.

I recently upgraded to a magnetic print bed on my Ender 3, the advantages being eliminating the bulldog clips to hold the old bed which could potentially be hit by the nozzle and quicker and easier to remove prints with the flexible bed. Unfortunately the quality of my prints deteriorated massively immediately after. I played around with bed temperature as there are more layers between heater and bed, but to no avail. Adhesion of the first layer was fine though.

Suface finish was terrible

Also flatness

I realised that the issue was that the bed itself was lifting from the magnetic layer below, so despite the print being flush with the print surface, as it cooled and contracted, it wasn't staying flat. Corresponding layers would pay the price as the print surface was higher than the printer was expecting. This is why the quality was worst around the perimeter.

Went back to my old bed and running the same code gave me the near perfect results that I had become accustomed to.

Surface finish and flatness

Just goes to show that an upgrade can actually be a downgrade!

In case anyone was wondering, this is a base for my router to assist with cutting slots for lamello biscuits

Octoprint now running successfully too - no more fiddling about with micro-SD cards between printer and computer 🙂

I'm downloading Fusion 360.

I have bought some small sections of carbon fibre tube and I'm going to 3D print some tips and ends to make them into ultralight tent pegs. Ideally I'd have a CNC machined tip but a 3D printer is what I have.

I've bought some PETG filament to make weatherproof parts, but I've not actually tried it yet.

You don't really need PETG parts although they will be fine.
PLA would also be fine in all likelihood.

If you've not printed with PETG before it might be worth looking at some online guides before going ahead with it.
You need slightly different settings and less first layer squish.

I've known people print it with zero issues and other people who have found it a real ballache.
I've only ever printed in PLA. I should really give PETG a try at some point.

Yeah read some about PETG. Fortunately I have a popular and well supported printer which helps as there are lots of settings and profiles available.

I mainly print in PETG. Slightly less clean prints than PLA maybe but never had a problem. Personally I never bother to adjust the first layer squish! I prefer it for functional prints as it has slightly more flex so a bit less inclined to snap.

I wonder if some metal infused filament would work for the tips of these tent pegs? Of course it's never going to be as hard as a machined metal bit but you know, might be a laugh trying it out. But I got the PETG for a range of uses for example on the bike where I want weather resistance.

Re PETG, I've heard it sticks to the glass. I'm using 3D lac - there's a suggestion that as well as helping PLA stick to the glass it'll help PETG break free...?

As I understand it, the metal infused filaments can wear nozzles at an alarming rate.
I wouldn't bother.

Some thought about the design will see you with a perfectly suitable part that will easily be strong enough.

I really should give PETG a go.