I’ve been trying to print this tool grid but after over a week I still can’t get the circles which print first to adhere properly. There are 256 “holes” in this grid and the first layer’s “circles” are the first that print. I left comments you’ll see in the link but no one has replied– there is a photo too.
After trying many different perimeters and settings (including raising the plate temp to 60) the best thing that has helped was switching to a different color. I originally tried Matte Blue blue which has been a disaster. Clumping from non-adhersion would happen almost immediately. Switching to gray is much better–on my current print only 2 out of the 256 circles failed to adhere.
Does someone have some advice? Do I need to add a brim to the first layer?? thanks
(Yes, I cleaned the build plate very carefully and finished it with 97% iso alcohol)
First and foremost as already mentioned, make sure the build plate is clean, dish soap , scrub brush and HOT water, wipe dry with a CLEAN something, the only first layer adhesion problems I have ever had were when the build plate got dirty. It might help the gurus here that have the most experience ( which is not me) if you say what settings you have tried.
Hi, I should have mentioned that I did. Yes, I cleaned it very carefully with soap and water and then even went over it with 97% ISO alcohol). I have a P1S that is 3 months old. Lightly used.
Hi, yes, I should have mentioned it but I did clean the plate very carefully. It still failed many more times after. But when I switched to gray it immediately performed 90% better.
I live in Colorado where it is very dry, and my PLA has been kept very dry anyhow. Not sure if that is important.
I have had this happen with lots of retractions/gaps like that grid has with PLA Matte. It might be something that needs adjusting in the profile for PLA Matte or the model itself. You might think its dry and it isnt as well since you mention that color doing it not just the filament type
Both those colors have been in my AMS for two weeks together. so moisture should be the same?
I did just switch back to blue and now it’s printing as good as the grey!? This was after 20 attempts. I have no idea.
I was about to start changing Z hop parameters but was taken back by how it worked with the grey.
if I cleaned the plate after the first ten fails, but it still failed the more times, is it possible something from the cleaning process (even though I was careful and deliberate cleaning and also rinsing) was left behind until enough PLA was put down to pull it off?
Sorry if you did this, its late Im kind of crosseyed and want to just cover the obvious.
Did you consider nozzle contamination and do a few cold pulls? I did that to all my nozzles recently when I had some clear PETG and I was surprised how much crap came out of what I thought were clean nozzles.
Also, I know you have cleaned the plate, but I want to point out lots of soap has lotions in it, so be 100% sure to check the ingredients in there. I never have to finish the plate with IA after cleaning, but with that % it shouldn’t be leaving residue. A good hot wash with basic Dawn and its own dedicated scrubber that nobody is allowed to even look at has worked 100% of the time for me cleaning the plate.
I have had oil on my hands from a lube job get on some filament and that drove me crazy till I realized what I did. I had some oil drip on a fresh maintained printer build plate and I didnt see it and smeared it all over.
One last thought, I have had filament start showing signs of being wet near the end of the spool if I start a very long print (Some are over 1k prints) and thankfully drying while printing has ended that for me.
Edit to add: You might have had some moisture in the spool that worked out too.
I have had great luck using glue stick and liquid glue. It makes release after printing easy but also keeps things stuck down. I print a lot of stuff on textured PEI plates but one lost its native stiction long ago. With liquid glue (I just use Bambu’s liquid glue) everything sticks great. I got reminded how much it matters with the build plate I’ve been using when I didn’t spread glue where a prime tower was being printed and had to stop the print because of it. With glue spread properly I got a perfect print.
The glue helps prints release but also helps things stick down. It does a lot to eliminate a trouble spot and minimize time/material waste. I use glue on most prints now. It really makes a difference.
They will be moving to a common moisture level in the AMS but that process is very slow unless it’s an AMS II with the drying feature. At room temperature most water in the filament will be stuck down pretty hard. It takes heat to help get water unstuck at any real rate.
Also, lots of anecdotes on using IPA for plate cleaning that without flooding it off the plate, it can redeposit oils. Important to rinse any “contaminated” IPA off instead of letting it evaporate on the plate and just re-deposit any oils.
I just use dish soap and warm water to clean with and have great results using glue stick or liquid glue depending on the plate and filament.
If it was me, I’d slice the exact same part with the two filaments being the only changes and then compare the gcode. I suspect there’s something going on that’s leading to these problems - possibly a first layer fan running that shouldn’t be.
Thanks for your help. I did not do any pulls. And now that it’s been over a week since I started trying to print this I can’t remember if that color was giving me issue earlier. It’s strange once I switched to grey it for the most part fixed it even when I switched back.
I’ve made sure the filaments both had the aux fan off for the entire first layers. But now the blue has been printing fine so I have no idea what caused that issue. It didn’t work for 20+ passes, but now fine….
How does one compare the gcode in case I wanted to try that in the future? I’m blanking as to where the gcode is located…
I wish I could change the title of this post because it seems this issue has gone away and I don’t know what the problem was. It may have been oil even thought I explained I washed it and it still continued to fail.
For whatever reason once I switched to a different color, it mostly fixed the issue even after I switched back….
Thanks to everyone who helped. I will be taking all your advice about cleanliness.
Instead of clicking “print”, you can export the print file, then change the print file to .zip and open it, you’ll see a number of items in there including the gcode.
Great hack. I’ll check this out sometime and see what it looks like. If it’s complicated code then I’ll need to learn the next step in figuring out what to look for.
This finally happened to my main build plate a couple months ago. Eventually I solved it by gently but firmly sanding the plate with very fine steel wool and a little soapy water from a spray bottle. This seems to both get remnants of plastic out of the low spots and adds some roughness back to the surface to give the print something to grab onto.