Hi everyone - I recently upgraded from a Solidoodle 2 to the Flashforge Creator Pro and I’ve been impressed with the big boost in quality. However, often when I check up on prints, I’m finding they are failing with a big blob of plastic which is coming off the wall of the print and also usually engulfing the extruder.
I’m using the PLA profile in Simplify 3D and have just been using the PLA recommended setting and not tweaking temperatures or any other parameters. The clear PLA is BuMat brand and the blue PLA is SainSmart.
Has anyone seen this before? Any tips for a quick fix? My instinct is to lower the temperatures but curious what you guys think. Thanks for your help!!!
Okay so what I see from the pictures is that the plastic isn’t sticking between layers and getting caught on the print head, where it builds up and melts as it comes out of the extruder. Share your print setting because Marvin looks great up to where it fails and melts, I don’t think it is your speed or layer thickness, but I think it looks like a heat issue. But I need some more details before I can says for sure.
So some general info that may help, PLA should be printed at 190 to 210 degrees C. Higher than this and it gets stringy and you can have poor adhesion or melting issues, printing too cool means gaps in the layers and uneven or a rough and uneven surface. The heated bed should be no higher than 60 degrees with PLA, I’ve found at normal room temperature heating the bed to between 40 and 50 degrees works best… though on smaller prints I just leave it off. If the bed is too warm it caused the plastic not to fully harden and the heat doesn’t dissipate fast enough between layers which leads to the print warping and melting as it prints. Lastly PLA needs to cool quicker than ABS, so don’t use the plexi-glass enclosure on top the printer or close the door the air flow will help to cool the plastic allowing it to keep from melting into a gooy mess as the layers get hotter from the print head and the layers below not cooling enough. Finally if you can add an active cooling duct to your printer head. It takes some wiring but it is worth it (Active Cooling Fan Duct v2 for Replicator 1 / Duplicator 4 / FlashForge / CTC by thruit00 - Thingiverse 14).
