Re: PLA not sticking???
One of my best test prints so far -820 on the Z. As you can see it does not look good
Re: PLA not sticking???
One of my best test prints so far -820 on the Z. As you can see it does not look good
It looks like the nozzle is digging in. Try backing it out (less negative numbers) in 0.02 increments until it stops tearing like that. You want to find the balance between the nozzle digging in and it being too lose.
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Re: PLA not sticking???
I don't know. I can't get any 2 consecutive prints to look the same. Here is one calibration square that was looking good but as you can see............. I had this printer running great for 3 months now I dont know what the issue is. I keep trying to adjust the Z but seems like I have been from 0 to -900 and still not sticking/stringing
Re: PLA not sticking???
here is more
Re: PLA not sticking???
As user kai.r3 said in an earlier post, Did you try to clean your steel sheet with dish soap and water? That works very well removing oils and grease from the PEI surface, better than alcohol or acetone.
Re: PLA not sticking???
As user kai.r3 said in an earlier post, Did you try to clean your steel sheet with dish soap and water? That works very well removing oils and grease from the PEI surface, better than alcohol or acetone.
Yeah I tried this. Same problem..
Re: PLA not sticking???
Read all these threads, Travis. Virtually identical everything, except how mine started. Printer was perfect out of the box. Everything printed, stuck, you name it for 6 weeks. Then I was getting front fan faults and had to replace it. Support was great and I got the new fan in. After, it hung on calibration point 7, so I had to recalibrate. All downhill from there. Recalibrated a couple times and tried various Z settings. I could post my pics, but they look remarkably like yours. Filament ooze, strings across the whole sheet. PLA not sticking during calibration. And when I run a print, it get snagged on the hot end and tears off.
I have a couple things to try. 1. Soap and water on the shreet, although I never had an issue before. 2. The alternate gcode for setting the Z axis.
It's been unusually hot and a little humid out here in SoCal, so I'm wondering if that could be a factor?
Re: PLA not sticking???
Read all these threads, Travis. Virtually identical everything, except how mine started. Printer was perfect out of the box. Everything printed, stuck, you name it for 6 weeks. Then I was getting front fan faults and had to replace it. Support was great and I got the new fan in. After, it hung on calibration point 7, so I had to recalibrate. All downhill from there. Recalibrated a couple times and tried various Z settings. I could post my pics, but they look remarkably like yours. Filament ooze, strings across the whole sheet. PLA not sticking during calibration. And when I run a print, it get snagged on the hot end and tears off.
I have a couple things to try. 1. Soap and water on the shreet, although I never had an issue before. 2. The alternate gcode for setting the Z axis.
It's been unusually hot and a little humid out here in SoCal, so I'm wondering if that could be a factor?
I tried some new g codes thinking that might help, no it did not. I am on the west coast in the US and was thinking humidity could have been an issue to. When I received my printer it was late April (worked fine for 4-6 weeks). I do keep my house humidity at 50% and temps around 72 degrees so that factor really hasn't changed. I changed out the full hot-end and same problems exist. Maybe a full enclosure is what I need. Prusa support has been outstanding. I have to admit that their service is what will make me continue to be a prusa supporter when I purchase my second prusa mk3 and hoping for a large scale printer from them in the near future. How did you fix your problem?
Re: PLA not sticking???
I have had similar issues from the very start, although mild compared to yours (but still result in many failed prints). This is my first 3D printer (i3 MK3). I religiously use IPA (though not 99%) to clean the bed prior to every print. After many failed prints I think I have two issues. The first, I believe, is there is an almost constant bit of filament ooze from the nozzle as the printer preheats. This ooze creates whiskers during the first wipe that sometimes carry over to the skirt. Other times the first point of deposition has a small blob or whisker of filament that doesn't stick well and gets lifted by the nozzle and sticks up. When the nozzle comes back around to this point it hits these high points and carries the skirt into the print. The first point of filament down after the skirt also commonly has this blob that gets hit and carried into the print causing failure. I have been trying to remove the ooze prior to the print beginning but am not always successful (and I don't think I should have to do this - is the ooze normal?). There are also may times where I believe I have sufficiently removed the ooze but enough emerges between the initial wipe and the start of the skirt to create the blob.
The second issue is that there are areas of the bed where filament doesn't seem to adhere well. The area is where prints usually start, e.g. the left tip of the battarang, routinely lifts moderately if I am able to get a good first layer and finish the print. The rest of the battarang sticks fine. My first layer calibration is good. It is nice and uniform and sticks well.
Re: PLA not sticking???
I eventually have sent the machine off for repair. So I will not be getting it back anytime soon as I am in the US. I am overly confident it was some type of machine error causing this because the first two months it was working beautifully and then .......... I troubleshooted the hell out of it and still had the same problem thus makes me believe the problem lies elsewhere. Sometimes no matter the device there can be malfunctions and I know this and will wait patiently until I get my machine back up and running. I Just wish I had a second in the mean time 😉
Re: PLA not sticking???
Just a update: I e-mail support on the 20th and today finally got a reply (26th) and........
As for the filament not sticking, I would suggest two things.
1) Try preheating the bed form the LCD menu before the print. When at temparature, wait another 2 minutes before running the print.
2) If #1 doesn't make a difference, many people reported that washing the PEI sheet with dishsoap and using the green Scotch-Brite sponge to scrub it a bit has helped them a lot. Give it a try.
Its no better. I'm going to try cold pull...
"KEEP CALM" and find another hobby! 😳
Re: PLA not sticking???
wow so im not the only one with this problem … I feel so much better 🙄 I have a mk2s kit that I bought and I cannot get the PLA to stick either..
I cant get past Live Z adjustment, the filament will not stick at all, only a brief moment and then the print head just pulls it off,
and then it proceeds to ballup around the nozzle.. to make matters worse the filament gets jammed in the coldend of the pfte tube.
ive ran live z 5 times and every time it ends up in a jammed hotend
you can see pics in another post here
It cant be the bed not being clean because its a new bed
Ive already replaced the hotend (at my expense) so it cant be the hotend or the ptfe tube (also replaced at my expense)
ive tried two different spools of PLA (one that came with the kit, the other hatchbox )
im going to try pre-heating the bed and using calibration codes instead of Live z , after that im running out of Ideas the only
thing i can think of is the extrusion speed vs print speed is off... wish me luck
Re: PLA not sticking???
I finished building my kit mk3 yesterday. Calibration went OK. I printed the default First Layer Calibration and you could blow it off the platform. I wiped of the platfrom with isopropyl alcohol. No change. I messed with the settings for an hour or so, ruining several prints, and finally decided to come to this forum. After reading all the comments, I washed the sheet with soap and water. No change.
Then I decided to try something else. The line height on the default setting is 0.150mm. I grabbed my digital calipers, printed the pattern and measured the line thickness. 0.250mm - at a height of -.500mm. I lowered the hotend to -.600 and printed again. This time the thickness was -.190mm and the pattern looked better. Then i set the height to -.620mm and measured the thickness. It varied from .170-.140mm along the print, so I figured it was time to stop. The pattern stuck very well and I had to “scrape” it off.
Have printed several small objects with good result. Have my fingers crossed.
Re: PLA not sticking???
boleslaw.j wrote:
PEI from beginin was cleaned from time to time by universal solvent i do not use acetone. After few weeks i bought IPA99. Now i'm after tests with solvent, acetone, ipa - doesn't help.
I know I'm technologically challenged, but what is universal solvent? (Google/Wiki mention either water or some hypothetical alchemical substance).
I'm no chemist (nor al-chemist 😀 ) but I'd be hesitant to use anything not recommended/sanctioned, for fear it might damage/dissolve the PEI ("Well, we just don't know, Dude...")
Pure acetone, (not nail polish remover that may contain something else) I've gleaned, revitalizes the PEI after several cycles of using IPA. So far, I'm finding this to work, though I did have to resort to blue painter's tape in one instance (and I'm hoping the glue on the tape hasn't adversely affected the PEI coating 😳 ).
That's "MISTER Old Fart" to you!
Re: PLA not sticking???
The tip about lowering the Z value worked wonders for me. I just finished building my kit, and nothing I did would make the PLA stick to the bed. In an act of desperation I roughed up the bed sheet with a very light sanding using 600 grit paper. I then washed the sheet with dish soap and finally wiped it with acetone. It helped a little but I still couldn't get any working prints.
However, lowering the Z value to around -0.375 did the trick, and now everything is coming out beatifully. I did receive a tip from a friend with a Mk2, saying that the Z value should be lower than I would think 🙂
Re: PLA not sticking???
I finally got my PLA to stick but I had to use a 3M sticker board on top of the base plate to finally make it work... now the PLA sticks TOO good...
I just could not get it to stick to the stock base plate.. no matter how many times i ran Live Z or the calibration prints
Re: PLA not sticking???
My issue was completely related to bed cleanliness. Washing the bed plate with dish soap corrected the issue. Also not touching the bed plate with bare hands when removing prints has extended time between washes.
Re: PLA not sticking???
Just in case anyone else stumbles over here looking for answers...
I just ran into this issue today with the new textured/powder-coated (not PEI) sheet -- PLA was sticking in some places but in other places it would just roll/bead up off of the bed and build up around the nozzle. It has been great since early July but today I was trying to print something with small parts and it just didn't want to cooperate. I experimented for hours with different temperatures, speeds, and filaments, all to no avail. Finally Google kicked me over to the forums here where I found this thread. I followed some of the earlier suggestions and washed the sheet with dish soap and a sponge and it's back like it was new again. Even very small parts are sticking without issue. I can't believe I wasted hours and all I needed was a little soap and a sponge. 
When I washed it, I put the soap directly onto the sheet. I took a slightly damp sponge and used it to smear the soap over the entire surface (front and back) of the sheet. I gently went over it several times this way to be sure I covered it entirely and also to give the soap time to work. Then I wet the sponge and went over it all again for a couple of minutes. Finally I rinsed it thoroughly and made sure all the soap was gone. I dried it off and got back to printing and the results are fantastic! Very pleased. 😀
I hope this is helpful for someone else someday...
-kbx
Re: PLA not sticking???
+1 for washing the print plate with dish soap and water. I was getting great prints in PLA, then tried PETG which immediately killed the 240W power supply on my i3 Mk3. I replaced the power supply with a unit sent from my Canadian vendor, re-ran all the calibration and was consistently getting the not-sticking problem. As always with these things, I believe I had three problems:
1. I did the power supply replacement in the kitchen and cooked a dinner in there, likely putting a bit of grease/oil in the air. Wiping with alcohol didn't fix this, only a gentle wash with Dawn dish soap and paper towels got PLA sticking again.
2. The temporary kitchen location was against an outside wall, near a window and it's winter here in Canada. So consistent, warm ambient temperature was likely an issue, or at least was a change from the period of successful printing. Moving back to the centre of the house, away from furnace vents and outside walls got me back to success.
3. The first layer calibration was off by about 0.150 too high from where I got back to success. I think during the PS replacement the PINDA probe got bumped so I need to do a whole recalibration. I didn't find the built-in first-layer menu option very helpful, so I loaded a small job with a 10-row brim and then dialed in the first layer adjustment with the Live-Z menu option.
4. Ok, *4* problems: in replacing the power supply, some of the wires from the supply were periodically catching on the Y axis, resulting in a pretty obvious problem and leading me to the full recalibration. A tie wrap on the cable harness fixed this.
5. Yes *5* problems: after replacing the power supply, I preheated using the PETG setting and unloaded the filament and then loaded PLA with the PLA setting. I think this didn't completely purge out the PETG remaining in the extruder so I pre-heated back to PETG settings and dumped a bunch of PLA through the extruder, which seemed to result in a more consistent flow of plastic. Then I quickly reverted back to PLA settings so as not to cook the filament. I suspect this was also contributing to the print quality problems I observed.
Hope this helps someone. These forums have been extremely helpful to me in sorting out problems.
DW
Re: PLA not sticking???
With the textured PEI sheet I had similar issues, following the recommended IPA cleaning, but slowly getting worse and worse adhesion. I was about to take some sand paper to the sheet when instead I grabbed some Xylene (just because I had some) and gave it a good clean.
Total success. Full adhesion, night and day difference. 😀
Clearly the IPA is just not aggressive enough and some kind of additional cleaning should be done regularly, I'll just try soap and water next time since Xylene is stinky stuff.