3D Printer Bench Essentials: Springs, Gears, Tools, and Fasteners

A 3D printer bench needs a small stock of wear parts and tools. These six items cover the jobs that come up again and again: leveling, extrusion, soldering, and fastening printed parts together.

Bed leveling springs

The 3D printer heated bed leveling springs are 7mm OD x 20mm, nickel-plated carbon steel, 1.2mm wire, 9 turns. They sit under the bed, hold your level, and let you fine-tune each corner. They fit Ender-3, CR-10, RepRap, Anet A8 and other printers with heated-bed leveling screws. Available in 20, 30, 40, or 50-piece packs.

Extruder drive gear

The MK8 extruder drive gear is a brass toothed wheel — 26-tooth or 40-tooth, 5mm bore, 11mm outside diameter, 11mm long — that grips and feeds filament through the extruder. A worn gear slips and under-extrudes; a fresh brass gear restores a solid grip. It fits CR-10, CR-10S, S4, S5, Ender 3, Ender 3 Pro, Anet A8 / A6 and most standard 3D printers, and includes a 2.5 mm hex wrench for the set screw. Match the tooth count to your existing gear.

Tools: tweezers and flux

The precision ESD anti-static tweezers set is six stainless steel tweezers — ESD-10 to ESD-15, straight, curved, and flat fine-pointed tips — with a black anti-static coating and a storage pouch. The rosin flux paste is no-clean RMA-223 in a 10cc syringe with plunger and needle tip (1mm inner diameter) for BGA, PGA, and SMD soldering and rework. No-clean means no residue cleanup after.

Fastening prints: inserts and screws

The M3 brass heat-set threaded inserts press into a 3D print with a soldering iron and give you a strong, reusable M3 thread in PLA, ABS, PETG, and other plastics. M3 x 5.7 x 4.6mm, knurled brass, 100 pieces per pack. The M3 stainless steel screw kit is the matching hardware: 150 pieces of 304 stainless — 75 nuts and 15 each of M3x8, M3x12, M3x16, M3x20, and M3x25mm — in a compartmented organizer box. Together they are how printed parts get bolted together properly instead of glued and hoped for.

All parts in this guide ship from NY, USA. See the full list of guides on the Drone Guides page.