MatterHackers Build Series Settings?
I've been trying to standardize a bit on filaments. I was using Bamtack! and some of their filaments printed really well (both on the Prusa and my old printer) and some...not so much. I was hoping the MatterHacker's BuildSeries might be more consistent but it's taken some tweaks. I have decent (if not amazing) settings for my .8mm nickel/copper nozzle. I had some iffy results on the standard .4mm brass and now have a .4mm hardened steel (I plan on printing glow in the dark very soon).
What I found is that my first layer is good at 220 (65 on the bed). But I've had to crank the other layers up to 215 or else once the fan comes on, filament stops adhering to the previous layers and I start making a spaghetti monster. I thought about turning the fan down, but then it can buzz annoyingly and I read that PLA likes as much fan as possible. The Prusa PLA presets use 100% fan as well. 215 seems a bit high to me and, sure enough, I do get a lot of stringing. This is at a .15mm layer height. Parts look pretty good overall once I melt away the strings but they do seem a bit excessive. This is with the Black color. Blue seems to print ok at 215/200 (though that was with brass and haven't printed models that do a lot of bridging and retraction with it yet).
I will say the filament that comes with the printer prints awesome using the Prusa PLA preset and stock settings except I do slow down the first layer speed to 10mm/s (I do that with all prints regardless).
Any thoughts given the above?
Re: MatterHackers Build Series Settings?
why the hardened nozzle, shouldn't need it for glow-in-the-dark stuff. for what its worth, none of PLA i've used prints best at 200. everyone's thermistor is different, but my hatchbox and esun print happily up to 220 or so, and 3d870 from filastruder at 230 using the slic3r preset with increased wipe distance, retract speed and a different fan shroud.
Re: MatterHackers Build Series Settings?
From what I've read additives like zinc sulfide or strontium aluminate are added to make the filament glow and these particles can wear down a brass nozzle more quickly. MatterHackers has conflicting information there but seems like the majority opinion is to use a hardened nozzle.
I've got my settings dialed in for the BuildSeries except for stringing. I noticed that BS tends to have a hard time sticking once the fan kicks in if it goes at 100%, so I've set the range to be 50-100% and also run 215C. I think the higher temp likely explains some of the stringing. Parts look pretty great apart from that though. My next step is to try calibrating linear advance to see if that helps stringing and then to finally play with retraction (I've avoided trying to do that since the consensus seems to be the Prusa profiles are about where you want to be).