5 Failed 1st Print Attempts  

RE: 5 Failed 1st Print Attempts

Some general guides:

First, use default settings in slicer. Your printer is no different than thousands of others and so, for example, (PLA) print should stick to the bed at 60°C.
And second, if it's winter where you live, make sure that you print at room temperature and that there's no draft.

If nozzle hits the print, then that's probably because object has warped (could be low room temperature?). Keep in mind, that layer is only 0.2mm thick (that's how much nozzle moves up at each layer). And so, not much warping is needed... If object warps only 1%, then that would make 0.2mm at 2cm print height -and nozzle will hit previous layer.
All that by assuming, that print looks good until nozzle hits the object.

Also make sure that vertical (Z) axis it totally perpendicular to print bed and that movements in Z direction are smooth.

RE: 5 Failed 1st Print Attempts

Making progress.  I went through the first layer print calibration, moving the nozzle down to the point of it flattening the filament on the bed and then turned it back the smallest possible amount (for the filament to come out as per the pictures in the instructions).  I've now successfully printed (using PLA) the frog from usb stick.  It is however covered in small "wispy" strands, as below:

Any thoughts?

As per my first post, any help is gratefully received.

Stuart

RE: 5 Failed 1st Print Attempts

...worth mentioning changing rooms was one of the many things tried, in attempting to print successfully.

RE: 5 Failed 1st Print Attempts

Posted by: @stuart

... It is however covered in small "wispy" strands...

Any thoughts?

 

 

Printing small objects with a lot of details (where nozzle travels a lot without actually printing), can be challenging enough and some stringing is always to be expected.
However the amount of stringing can be greatly reduced by following some basic "rules":

1. Make sure filament is dry!
-don't just assume it is dry (because you just opened the package). That is, you need a solution to dry filament properly. I highly recommend food dehydrator, because it's cheap and it works. In short: until you have it, don't even complain about stringing.

2. After rule Nr1 is solved
For smaller prints, you can try to reduce nozzle temperature for about 5°C (for example, if 215°C is recommended, try with 210°C or even slightly lower).

3. If rule Nr2 doesn't help much
Check amount of extrusion by making so called extrusion calibration. By doing that, you can make sure, that exactly the needed amount of filament is being extruded.

There are other settings in slicer that influence stringing, but they serve the fine tuning for special cases.

Don't skip rule Nr1 -if you don't follow it, then the rest is pointless.

RE: 5 Failed 1st Print Attempts

Right.  I think I've got it sorted.  In summary there were 3 things wrong:

1.  The 1st layer was too high (was -800, now -900 or so).

2.  The nozzle temperature was too high for the PLA I was using.

3.   The room temperature was too low and the room was too humid.

I've successfully printed 3 things now.  I have some PLA with that has a quoted temperature range of 180 - 210, so need to drop the nozzle temperature before re-trying, as am yet to have any success with this particular PLA.  This was the PLA used unsuccessfully in printing the sheep 5 times (now successful with different PLA) and the frog with the wispy strands.

Stuart

RE: 5 Failed 1st Print Attempts

I'm glad you sorted it out. In such cases it's very important to find the real cause of troubles 😉