Help with 3D Print not sticking

[shinegull]

I picked up a 3D Printer a week or 2 ago, so its my first try into 3D Printing.

 

I have 2 problems with the printing.

 

1. The object I'm printing is not sticking properly. I've leveled the print surface to some extent. The printer says to have it level to .8 or less and they are are within the 0 to 0.5 at all points. I did have some trouble with the z-offset and made it as tight as I can. Another member and a youtube video mentioned that I should be able to slide a piece of paper under near with some resistance. I've also cleaned the surface with some alcohol before every print.

The first 3 prints were finally a sort of a success after those steps. but then after, it starting failing again. the item i would attempt to print would start sliding before it would reach 25%. (The current print said to take about 2.5 hrs).

 

2. The beginning of the print would be somewhat rough. Printed filament would not be sitting at the right spot. I would hope that prints would get better if i have it done more than once, but its actually getting worse.

 

First 2 pics with black background is the sort of successful print, as in it actually finished printing. but the 3rd pic is a failure. youll se that the filament is moving everywhere.

 

I'd like to think that my skills are lacking, since its the first time i've tried out 3D printers. If anyone has a solution or even a trick to help with printing, that would be great.

 

[ColinLTT]

Level your bed, ensure your first layer isnt too high/underextruded. https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Calibrate-the-3D-Printer-Bed-Levelling/

[tikker]

Yeah looks like your nozzle is too far from the bed.

19 hours ago, shinegull said:

I've leveled the print surface to some extent.

You'll have to do better than "to some extent". After the paper trick, I always run a bed tramming print (something that prints squares or circles at various locations) and do live adjustments. That way you fine tune it while it is printing.

[shinegull]

i've tried re leveling the bed and resetting the z-offset. it seemed to help a little.

 

but it also seemed to change the problems im getting a bit as well. I've noticed that on the curves/circles when printing, the filament gets dragged, sort of. instead of printing along the curve of design, filament gets pulled into a straight line, from near the beggining of the curve to the near the end of curve.

 

Not only that, it seems like the filament has some problems with sticking to the plate still. specifically the side. it looked like it was warping/curling upwards.

[ColinLTT]

This is all related to getting the right height between the nozzle and the bed so that the material squishes into the surface slightly. Ensure it is cleaned with alcohol, even residual hand oils will prevent pla from sticking. Ensure a piece of paper drags ever so slightly under each corner after the machine is homed. 

 

[shinegull]

5 hours ago, ColinLTT said:

This is all related to getting the right height between the nozzle and the bed so that the material squishes into the surface slightly. Ensure it is cleaned with alcohol, even residual hand oils will prevent pla from sticking. Ensure a piece of paper drags ever so slightly under each corner after the machine is homed. 

 

alright, i'll do what i can to dial it in as much as I can

[Badger906]

Buy some feeler guages and set your bed level to 0.1mm.

Set your first layer to 150% width to get the good squish. 

Apply pritt stick or similar paper glue to the bed. Can be removed with methylated sprites

[shinegull]

I'm going to take it apart and then rebuild it. if that doesnt work, i'll try the glue method. If that still doesnt work, and I've exhausted all patience and attempts, I guess last resort is to return it and get something else.

[tikker]

On 1/29/2021 at 7:15 AM, shinegull said:

i've tried re leveling the bed and resetting the z-offset. it seemed to help a little.

 

but it also seemed to change the problems im getting a bit as well. I've noticed that on the curves/circles when printing, the filament gets dragged, sort of. instead of printing along the curve of design, filament gets pulled into a straight line, from near the beggining of the curve to the near the end of curve.

 

Not only that, it seems like the filament has some problems with sticking to the plate still. specifically the side. it looked like it was warping/curling upwards.

Yep, still sounds like your nozzle is too far from the bed. What printer do you have and how are you leveling the bed? Do you just trust some number on the screen or do you actually watch and feel to check if the paper is dragging for example.

 

I'm assuming you have 4 screws in each corner to adjust the bed. When we say leveling the bed we usually mean physical adjustments using those screws. Any software based mesh leveling or z offset are best used as refinement on top of a good manual bed level.

 

Bed leveling can/will also differ between a cold/room-temperature bed or a hot bed due to the materials. If you are going to be printing with your bed at a certain temperature then it's best to also do your leveling at that temperature (be careful of course).

[shinegull]

2 hours ago, tikker said:

Yep, still sounds like your nozzle is too far from the bed. What printer do you have and how are you leveling the bed? Do you just trust some number on the screen or do you actually watch and feel to check if the paper is dragging for example.

 

I'm assuming you have 4 screws in each corner to adjust the bed. When we say leveling the bed we usually mean physical adjustments using those screws. Any software based mesh leveling or z offset are best used as refinement on top of a good manual bed level.

 

Bed leveling can/will also differ between a cold/room-temperature bed or a hot bed due to the materials. If you are going to be printing with your bed at a certain temperature then it's best to also do your leveling at that temperature (be careful of course).

theres a function for level and z offset. for the leveling, it checks 16 points, after which you can tune manually with the 4 corner screws.

the leveling function also says on screen to make sure there is less than .8 difference between the highest and lowest point.

for the z offset, you adjust manually as you need via the software, which i also use the paper thing for. it can go in .01, .1 and 1mm increments. i set it to the point when i feel resistance when moving paper under neath the nozzle. the printer I am using is a tronxy xy-2 titan, if its a bad printer, i should still be able to get a full refund.

 

[tikker]

9 hours ago, shinegull said:

the printer I am using is a tronxy xy-2 titan, if its a bad printer, i should still be able to get a full refund.

Not familiar with that specific printer so I can't speak for its quality, but it generally seems like any other clone out there.

9 hours ago, shinegull said:

theres a function for level and z offset. for the leveling, it checks 16 points, after which you can tune manually with the 4 corner screws.

Aha, now here you've got it backwards. You first use the corner screws to manually get the bed as level (technically trammed) as you can using e.g. the paper trick. Only then do you run the auto leveling. The auto leveling is only meant to compensate small irregularities due to imperfect leveling or a warped bed. See e.g. this video (timestamped) to get an idea about the manual bed leveling for (almost) this printer:

 

The steps to take are:

1. Home the printer (be carefule it doesn't crash into the bed)
2. Adjust the first corner screw until a piece of paper between the nozzle and the bed lightly drags
3. Move the nozzle to the net corner.
4. Repeat 1-2 for every corner and perhaps the center.
5. Run auto-leveling

Do NOT touch the z height during this, only adjust X-Y when moving to the corners.

[shinegull]

On 1/31/2021 at 4:30 AM, tikker said:

Not familiar with that specific printer so I can't speak for its quality, but it generally seems like any other clone out there.

Aha, now here you've got it backwards. You first use the corner screws to manually get the bed as level (technically trammed) as you can using e.g. the paper trick. Only then do you run the auto leveling. The auto leveling is only meant to compensate small irregularities due to imperfect leveling or a warped bed. See e.g. this video (timestamped) to get an idea about the manual bed leveling for (almost) this printer:

 

The steps to take are:

1. Home the printer (be carefule it doesn't crash into the bed)
2. Adjust the first corner screw until a piece of paper between the nozzle and the bed lightly drags
3. Move the nozzle to the net corner.
4. Repeat 1-2 for every corner and perhaps the center.
5. Run auto-leveling

Do NOT touch the z height during this, only adjust X-Y when moving to the corners.

 

just a quick update, since its finally my day off. I've rechecked the printer according the instruction from that video from the very beginning.

 

checked the screws, checked the belts and the platform stability, according to the order of the video.

manually checked the space between bed and nozzle. on all four corners. then did the auto level for checking( did it twice, pictures below, seems to be fairly close in accuracy according the screen and video), then z offset.

 

now printing and hope every goes well.

currently, its about 5 minutes in and it already looks better.

here goes print number 12, hopefully it works out well.

[tikker]

13 minutes ago, shinegull said:

 

just a quick update, since its finally my day off. I've rechecked the printer according the instruction from that video from the very beginning.

 

checked the screws, checked the belts and the platform stability, according to the order of the video.

manually checked the space between bed and nozzle. on all four corners. then did the auto level for checking( did it twice, pictures below, seems to be fairly close in accuracy according the screen and video), then z offset.

 

now printing and hope every goes well.

currently, its about 5 minutes in and it already looks better.

here goes print number 12, hopefully it works out well.

 

 

Great. Bed leveling should hold for a while. I redo it if it's been a while and there have been large temperature swings, I had  to be extra rough removing an unwilling print, or if I notice prints failing to stick often. Switching between printing on a heated or non-heated bed could introduce changes as well, but chances are the auto-leveling can be sufficient to accommodate those..

[shinegull]

 

53 minutes ago, tikker said:

Great. Bed leveling should hold for a while. I redo it if it's been a while and there have been large temperature swings, I had  to be extra rough removing an unwilling print, or if I notice prints failing to stick often. Switching between printing on a heated or non-heated bed could introduce changes as well, but chances are the auto-leveling can be sufficient to accommodate those..

I'll keep that in mind.

Currently its passed the one hr mark without anything major coming up. print seems to be sticking to bed, and there doesnt seem to be any issues with that anymore. I've made a few adjustments to bed heat and nozzle heat as well as some other minor things in print speed, layers, etc. it doubled the print time though, but maybe that's a good thing? about 4 more hrs before the print finishes, so hoping it doesnt just look good on the top but bottom as well.

[shinegull]

5 hours ago, tikker said:

Great. Bed leveling should hold for a while. I redo it if it's been a while and there have been large temperature swings, I had  to be extra rough removing an unwilling print, or if I notice prints failing to stick often. Switching between printing on a heated or non-heated bed could introduce changes as well, but chances are the auto-leveling can be sufficient to accommodate those..

 

On 1/29/2021 at 8:59 AM, ColinLTT said:

This is all related to getting the right height between the nozzle and the bed so that the material squishes into the surface slightly. Ensure it is cleaned with alcohol, even residual hand oils will prevent pla from sticking. Ensure a piece of paper drags ever so slightly under each corner after the machine is homed. 

 

 

Alright, The first piece finished printing. Now theres good news and bad news.

 

The good news is, the print is very good, way better than whatever crap i had before. and it sticks very well to the bed.

 

Which is where the bad news is as well. It may be sticking a little too well.... I removed the removable sheet and instantly realized its going to take a little more effort to remove the print. so i grabbed the scraper that came with the printer. which actually didnt help much. I had to use enough force that I almost snapped the entire print in half. as a result, there are now cracked in my print and a small piece broke off and got stuck on the removable sheet. Im also having some trouble removing any left over bits.

 

Any suggestions

[tikker]

6 hours ago, shinegull said:

 

 

Alright, The first piece finished printing. Now theres good news and bad news.

 

The good news is, the print is very good, way better than whatever crap i had before. and it sticks very well to the bed.

 

Which is where the bad news is as well. It may be sticking a little too well.... I removed the removable sheet and instantly realized its going to take a little more effort to remove the print. so i grabbed the scraper that came with the printer. which actually didnt help much. I had to use enough force that I almost snapped the entire print in half. as a result, there are now cracked in my print and a small piece broke off and got stuck on the removable sheet. Im also having some trouble removing any left over bits.

 

Any suggestions

Is that leftover plastaic on the bed or did the coating get ripped off along with the print? Try bending the sheet or cooling it in the fridge for a bit and carefully pry it off.

[shinegull]

9 hours ago, tikker said:

Is that leftover plastaic on the bed or did the coating get ripped off along with the print? Try bending the sheet or cooling it in the fridge for a bit and carefully pry it off.

its from the leftover filament, its super thin, thinner than paper. I tried bending it and it just bent with the platform. for now, i've scraped off as much as i could and then got rid of a bit more with a drill brush. any tips on what i can do to help it not stick so well after its done printing? or maybe a way to help removing it after without causing cracks in the print?

[tikker]

1 hour ago, shinegull said:

its from the leftover filament, its super thin, thinner than paper. I tried bending it and it just bent with the platform. for now, i've scraped off as much as i could and then got rid of a bit more with a drill brush. any tips on what i can do to help it not stick so well after its done printing? or maybe a way to help removing it after without causing cracks in the print?

Give z-offset a nudge so it's slightly further away from the bed. As for removing prints from the bed, letting them cool usually does the trick for me. The more stubborn ones go into the fridge for a bit (stuff contracts and will pop off usually).

[shinegull]

29 minutes ago, tikker said:

Give z-offset a nudge so it's slightly further away from the bed. As for removing prints from the bed, letting them cool usually does the trick for me. The more stubborn ones go into the fridge for a bit (stuff contracts and will pop off usually).

alright, i'll try pushing the z offset just a teeny bit. if that doesnt help, ill throw the next big print into a fridge