Experiencing Warping with Prusament Gentlemen's Grey PLA
Hello, I've recently bought a roll of Gentlemen's Grey PLA Prusament and I'm having a real hard time getting it to stick to my bed properly. No matter what kind of object I print, the corners end up lifting. The middle of the object is stuck pretty good, but compared to the silver PLA that came with the MK3, the difference in "steadfast-ness" is qualitatively different. In fact, I have an open roll of the silver PLA to compare and it sticks pretty much perfectly under a wide range of conditions. Also, I'd like to note that this is my first roll of Prusament and my first roll of filament other than the silver that came with the printer.
Could I get some tips on this? Here's what I've tried so far:
* 5 layer first layer calibration test -> turned out to be -1.607 z offset for both the silver and grey (this seems to be the perfect value, or really, really close to it. If I try and get closer for extra "stick", the first layer turns out uneven due to the extra material, or it all balls up on the nozzle and ruins the print)
* Washed smooth PEI sheet with dish soap; handled with gloves, and dried with clean paper towels
* Did an acetone refresh on two separate occasions
* Tried 215 C nozzle temp and 60 C bed temp for first layer then 207 C nozzle temp and 50 C bed temp after that
* Tried 207 C nozzle temp and 50 C bed temp for everything (seemed to give slightly better results, but I did not have a direct comparison from the previous one since I cleaned the bed)
This is in an 18-19C ambient temperature room with 67% humidity and no enclosure. For the silver PLA, in every situation above it performs perfectly. This is even when I alternate prints back to back with the two colors, the grey warps and the silver is fine.
Thanks for your attention!
RE: Experiencing Warping with Prusament Gentlemen's Grey PLA
Can you post your first layer from the top and bottom?
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Chuck H
3D Printer Review Blog
RE: Experiencing Warping with Prusament Gentlemen's Grey PLA
Sounds like you covered the basics... As Chuck proposed: Pictures of the first layer would be helpful to rule out the usual suspects and move on to further troubleshooting.
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RE: Experiencing Warping with Prusament Gentlemen's Grey PLA
Sure thing. I've made the pictures small in the post, but to see them at full size (in chrome), right click and select "Open image in new tab".
The print I'm using is here. The print is 5 single 0.2mm layers on top of each other that should result in steps that are 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, and 1.0mm in height. My measurements on this are 0.21, 0.41, 0.60, 0.80, and 1.01mm.
Also for some extra info, I've included the last print I did. This is the print I made with 207C nozzle temp and 50C bed temp the whole way through:
RE: Experiencing Warping with Prusament Gentlemen's Grey PLA
So I tried some more things in the meantime. I've got this impression that, in general, when the bed is too cold, things can start to lift and when the bed is too hot, an elephants foot may form. So I've tried 50C for the bed so I went with 70C this time for the first layer and 65 C after that.
The results are quite different. The warping is confined to a much smaller area, though it is more intense (as you can see from the front corner). I think this looks promising though.
Would this warping be related to the ambient room temperature? I'm unenclosed and my casual glances at the thermometer shows a variance between 17.1 - 17.8 C, I think. Maybe a little lower and a little higher at the extremes.
I'm going to try 70C bed for the entire print.
RE: Experiencing Warping with Prusament Gentlemen's Grey PLA
Update:
70C for the bed didn't change anything from the previous run.
I gave up and used a brim and everything came out really well. (All the sidewall artifacts disappeared). I could still see that the part had an almost imperceptible lift at the sides (<=0.1mm) even with the brim.
I dunno, man. 😕 I think I'll buy a different color prusament roll later to see if this was a fluke, fingers crossed.