If you’ve been 3D printing for more than five minutes, you’ve probably heard a lot of advice. Some of it’s great. Some of it’s outdated. And some of it has been copy-pasted across the internet since about 2013 without anyone stopping to ask, “Wait… is this actually true?”
Today we’re breaking down five of the most common 3D printing myths—why they sound right, why they’re wrong (or at least incomplete), and what actually matters if you want better prints.
Myth #1: More Infill = Stronger Prints
This one might be the king of bad 3D printing advice.
More infill does not automatically make your print stronger. In most cases, the outer walls are the first thing to fail—not the infill. Infill mostly exists to support the walls and prevent collapse, kind of like emotional support plastic.
Once you push infill past roughly 40%, you hit a point of diminishing returns. You’re using more filament, increasing print time, and often gaining almost no real-world strength.
We’ve tested this extensively, and the results are consistent:
Strength lives in the walls.
Think of infill like packing a box with Styrofoam peanuts and expecting it to survive a drop kick. If you want stronger prints, add walls—not stuffing.
Pro tip: Increase wall count before increasing infill percentage.
Myth #2: Smaller Nozzles Automatically Mean Better Quality
A smaller nozzle does not guarantee better print quality.
A poorly tuned 0.4 mm nozzle can easily lose to a well-tuned 0.6 mm nozzle. The same goes for 0.2 mm versus 0.4 mm—often all you’re adding is print time, not meaningful quality.
Bigger nozzles can push more plastic, which often results in:
-
Better layer adhesion
-
Fewer weak spots
-
More durable functional parts
Most people aren’t printing museum-grade miniatures. They’re printing brackets, mounts, and parts that might get dropped on concrete five minutes after finishing.
If nozzle size alone fixed quality, slicers wouldn’t need settings.
Now, to be fair—if a smaller nozzle is just as well tuned as a larger one, it can produce finer detail. But tuning matters more than diameter.
Myth #3: Texture Removes Layer Lines
Textures don’t remove layer lines.
They hide them.
That’s an important difference.
If your layer lines are bad enough, adding texture just gives you layer lines with texture. Textures work best when the print is already decent. They break up light, add variation, and trick the human eye into seeing higher quality.
But textures do not fix bad settings.
This is like putting wallpaper over a cracked wall. From far away, it looks fine. Up close? You still see the crack.
Think of texture as seasoning, not structural engineering.
Myth #4: PLA Is Weak
PLA gets a lot of undeserved hate.
PLA isn’t weak—it’s stiff.
For example:
-
PLA is rigid and holds shape extremely well
-
PETG is more flexible and bendable
PLA tends to snap instead of bend, but that doesn’t make it bad. It just means it fails differently.
Most “weak” PLA prints weren’t actually weak—they were doing a job PLA never applied for.
PLA is:
-
Beginner-friendly
-
Affordable
-
Easy to print
-
Compatible with almost every printer
You don’t need upgrades, hardened nozzles, or special enclosures to get great results with PLA.
Myth #5: Auto Calibration Fixes Everything
Auto calibration is great. I love it on modern printers.
But it’s not magic.
Auto calibration helps with consistency and speed, but:
-
Flow rates still matter
-
Material differences still matter
-
Your printer doesn’t know what PLA you bought at 2 a.m. on sale
Unless you’re using filament with RFID tags inside a supported ecosystem (like an AMS setup), your printer still needs help from you.
Even high-end printers expect users to tune settings. That’s why slicer settings still exist.
Auto calibration gets you close.
You still finish the job.
Final Thoughts
If this saved you filament, time, or sanity—mission accomplished.
Most great prints don’t come from one magic setting. They come from understanding what actually matters and ignoring bad advice that’s been echoing around the internet for a decade.
And remember:
The difference between a good print and a great print is usually one setting and a little patience.
Keep on making. 👊🖨️