After some rookie mistakes, and a trip back to the Prusa repair shop for my printer, I finally am able to produce something worthwile on my printer. Or at least I could but not anymore. I’ll explain: I have successfully printed the 14cm moon surface nightlight from Thingiverse 187 once and now am trying to repeat this feat but keep failing (4 times already)
It seems to fail when I only have to complete a centimeter of the globe, the printer makes short stops and the vibration seems to wiggle the print loose and starts creating the well known spaghetti.
Things I tried: Increasing the brim or skirt size every print I tried, up to 3cm by now, degreasing the bed, 1st with 70% medical grade alcohol, later with aceton. Updated the firmware with the latest for my make and model. Also: Prusa recommends a bed temperature of 60° C for PLA, which does nothing adhesion wise for me, I’ve increased to 100° C, no results. I’ve placed the printer on a sturdy table now to minimize the vibrations, still no luck. I’ve ran the Live Z adjust and dialed in to 0,780, which gave me clean results at first but now don’t work. And last, I’ve set up a Raspberry Pi running Octoprint, which allowed me to monitor heat of both head and bed, no drops in temperature and everything seemed consistent but still the print failed.
Any suggestion for increasing my success rate is welcome, because it sucks having the print fail 25 hours into the print process, let alone the filament waste of each failure.
For quality finishes, you can get a heated bed 3D printer and cover it with Kapton Tape for a better adhesion and finish. Plus, you can enable retraction in your 3D printer and reduce the minimum travels for better results.
I run my bed at 65 for the first layer. You can run the extruder a little hotter for the first layer also to help with adhesion. Make sure you don’t have an air conditioning duct near by blowing cold air on it also.
You need to get a good squish for the first layer and slow the printer way down. If it is shaking then it is too fast.
Further to @wirlybird’s reply, also make sure you have the cooling fan turned off for the first layer. Run the z-calibration again and make sure you’re getting a good “flattened” layer on the bed - not too proud of the bed, not too thin. If the first layer onto the bed is very narrow (I don’t know the model shape), then you might need to use some adhesive like 3DLac spray. PLA usually adheres well to PEI, but if the only point of contact with the bed is small, it can be knocked loose.
Bed temp increase or extruder calibration (z height) made no difference to print sticking. What finally fixed it was setting the PLA first layer to 235. Use acetone to clean the print bed. Always set first layer print temp to 235.
I fit works but that is extremely hot for PLA. I still think the real issue is elsewhere.
Are you absolutely sure you are using PLA? Reason I ask is I threw a roll of orange on the other day and started a print going and after a few layers it was lifting up off the bed. Turns out I had grabbed ABS and not PLA!!
Try using supports. I’ve had similar issues with first layer bed adhesion and I solved it with supports. Part of the problem you have with this model is you have a very small adhesion area for the size of the model, so you need more and a brim simply won’t be enough.
