Full brims, mouse ears, with glue, without glue, higher bed temperature, lower bed temperature, flat base, concentric cutout base - whatever I try, I seem to be getting wank adhesion, major warping, and ultimately this shitshow.
Dry PLA, warm room, no draught, plate cleaned with IPA. I’m going to fucking punch this thing in its stupid fucking face.
Edit: Prevailing advice very much seems to be to bust out the Fairy liquid and give it a good scrub, so I’ll try that. It’s a Kobra Neo 2 so is auto-levelling, so I can’t piss around with any of that stuff (as far as I know). Another quick question while I think about it, does everyone always print onto the bed at ~60°C? Because Orca Slicer’s default for a textured PEI plate is 45°C, which seems mad. I think I tried it once and it was shite so turned it back up to 60.
does everyone always print onto the bed at ~60°C?
That depends entirely on the result you get and the Filament you use. Also, keep in mind that whatever you set your bed temperature to and what the printer reports, very likely isn’t what you actually print on. For example, on my Ender 5 Plus, I have a glass bed and had to set my printer to 75°C while on my Voron 2.4, I can simply set it to 66°C and get the surface temperature to around 60°C.
which means that you need to measure the temperature on the surface of the printer and not rely on what the printer is reporting (unless you actually measured the temperature and can guess the actual temperature). The more mass that the print has to heat up, the longer it will take for the print surface to actually reach that temperature.
Personally, I aim for around 60-65°C for the print surface for PLA. I always had good adhesion for my prints at that temperature.
I feel you… Been there… Too many times until the hobby was just a frustration and not a hobby anymore.
Are you sure you can’t fix the z offset? My old printer was as bad, I had to manually level it (because the auto sucked )every time and I need to do it a bit closer than the auto level wanted it to and the instructions said. It was so close the first layer was extremely flattened, and I had to try many times to level it. First did I only need to do the bed leveling perfectly (a bit too close) then after I switched to glass did I have to play with the sensor (screwing it a bit further away than their instructions). I did both calibration for like 15 min to an hour… But when I had got it right did it print beautifully! I think if I let it on until next time then I wouldn’t need to do the calibration, but it was loud so I had to turn it off. Btw i think mine was just weird that it calibrated it self only when I started, as in how high up it should be for the first layer so I could just screw up the bed to get it closer.
But now have I switched to bambu lab (enclosed) and it is so easy that it is scary, now I actually trust it and can do big prints that will take more than 3h. I only hit print and it works right away it felt so weird the first 10 prints. I felt empty, my job had been taken away by a robot. Should it be this easy? Why can I use the default values in the slicer? What do you mean I can have it on its default speed and not needing to do it super slow in the beginning? Crazy stuff. It feels like an adult and my other printer was a chaotic 6 years old, they can if they try but they didnt try most of the time…
Also have you tried placing your creation in any other z axes rotation or moved it a bit from the center? I had one print that worked ape shit every time in one direction, switched it a bit and rotated it and then it worked right away. But yours seem to have worked well until it start lifting off from the bed so I think playing with the z offset is the way to go. Be careful tho I switched to glass because it was hard to get it off afterwards, with glass did it pop off right way when the bed wasn’t heating up anymore.
Other stuff: I had heat on at 60 at all time and it was pretty hot in there because of the printer (the room is normal room temperature otherwise), maybe your room is too cold for it, could you build an enclosures? Or is the table it is on shaking a lot? Glue and tape and whatnot never worked for me.
I fucking love it! I have been there so many fucking times to the point of putting a hole in a wall. Best part is I’d give up walk away for a month or so then literally turn the stupid fuck on and press print and it would print just fine. I just use glass on one printer and carbon fiber on the other. I had pei once threw that shit right in the garbage. A good scuff with 80 grit sand paper on both and wash off with rubbing alcohol. I did have an issue once with a bent touch probe that would fuck my z offset so the first layer wouldn’t actualy be low enough.
Dude thats so fuckin frustrating :/
I had similar issues tho on a custom designed printer. The issue ultimately was the adhesive for the silicone heater for the bed was failing ans slowly delaminating from the bed. When I felt the heater it was plenty warm… But when I felt the center of the bed where it prints it was a lot cooler. I had to replace the whole heat pad. I don’t know what yours uses to heat the bed but my guess would be that it is also on the way out.
I had a similar issue with an Ender 3, it wouldnt adhere no matter what. My solution was to level the bed real close to the nozzle using thinner paper or whatnot. From there you can start tweaking your first layer height
Ender 3 as well and had issues with adhesion until I did that. My first layer is practically injected into the plate it’s so smooshed down.
When I had my old printer I had way better luck setting my Z height with receipt paper than with normal printer paper.
Have you tried cleaning the plate with dawn dish soap vs IPA? Soap is much better IMO at actually cleaning. I do this with nitrile gloves to make sure I’m not getting any oil on my print surface but there are definitely a lot of variables so you may have already tried my suggestion.
This time of year I like to use something darker than IPA, like a porter or stout
Mmmmm, love me a good stout! I believe February is stout month. :)
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I do this too. IPA is great (beer and chemical) but soap and hot water work best for me
After all that maybe your bed has degraded or perhaps a temperature probe has come loose somewhere and needs new paste.
3 Thoughts as I had simular Issues!
Is the Bed Leveling correct? A Loose Print Head can give false results, big issue I had once with my P1S.
Try Changing the width and Hight of the First Layer to smaller Values, no clue Why, but it Fixed this kinda issue before for me!
In Software, Is the Model Properly put on the Ground and not floating? Happened to me before, since Supports where turned off I didn’t notice it
Try Changing the width and Hight of the First Layer to smaller Values, no clue Why, but it Fixed this kinda issue before for me!
reducing the width of the first layer seems counter intuitive to me. usually adhession is improved by using widths wider than the nozzle since the plastic has to get smooshiefied into the surface. I don’t know there’s much difference on the first layer 125%-200% of the nozzle width, but I find going over definitely helps. (I use 150% for stronger parts in general.)
or at least that’s been my experience. nozzle height/z offset would be the first thing for me to check, but PLA shouldn’t be warping that bad, IMO, so there might be some thermal issues as well.
I had similar issues. Turns out I was using 70% ipa. Switching to 90% fixed it.
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You have already gotten a ton of good suggestions already but I’d like to vouch for the Ellis 3d printing tuning guide and Suave Mega Hold Hairspray (huge pink can).
If you follow it from beginning to end you will have those prints coming out looking clean and actually sticking to the bed. It will take you a few hours but I promise you won’t regret it.
I find in 3d printing, sometimes it actually matters in what order you do your tuning.
Hot tip: Read the instructions first before you start doing anything. I kept making mistakes because I didn’t do that
I need to point out, IPA isn’t magical. If you’re just giving it a quick swipe, or mopping it around, you’re not actually cleaning it you’re just moving the mess around. It’s fine for some in between stuff, but scrubbing with soap and warm water is going to be much more efficient at cleaning the plate.
I tried the dish soap method and ipa, and what eventuslly got my pei bed to actually work was a quick wipe with acetone. You’re not supposed to use it on textured PEI, but I have been for about a year now and it’s still going strong with one bed
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You can dry it with a microfiber cloth too
