My A1 3d printer has been working great, and for a while, nothing was wrong. But earlier in the year, i started printing large plates of tiny pieces, and everything went wrong. Currently, the nozzle seems to be scratching up against the heating bed, or at least that’s my theory, as the print will get about 1 layer in before all the filament seems to be stuck onto the nozzle. I’ve tried many things, such as:
Cleaning the printing plate
Changing the g-code
Swapping nozzles
Swapping filament
Checking extruder gear
Change print temp and speed
Extruding seems to be fine, i’ve been using a 0.2 mm stainless steel nozzle, and although it takes high amount of temperature, the nozzle always extrudes when I manually do it. But it always seems that once the print starts, the extruder either doesn’t work, or gets stuck on something.
My leading theory is a g-code issue, if anyone knows of something they think can help, please let me know.
What kind of plate? Are you using glue? And how are you drying?
Reason I ask about drying is too high of moisture content can affect how well the first layer sticks down. If the adhesion is low the nozzle can pull plastic free and just drag it around.
Build plates are considered consumables but I’m still using my original build plates from almost 3 years ago - with glue. PEI loses stiction over time but with glue it still works great for me. But no way could I print the things I print on PEI now without glue. At first they stuck great at temperature and just let go when cooled. Those days are gone for my PEI plates now. It’s glue or buy new for me.
I’m using a PEI textured plate, and I dry my filament with a Sunlu FilaDryer S2, and a upgrade unitak 3d printer enclosure to keep prints dry during the print process. I have never glued a plate, and don’t know whether that means adding glue to the top of the plate or gluing the bed to the heating bed, could you add what brand you use and what it means to glue a plate?
Sure. I use the Bambu liquid glue on textured PEI and Bambu stick glue on smooth plates. Others use other brands and I think most glues are basically the same. I’ve seen people mention Elmer’s glue sticks and using isopropyl alcohol to liquify glue sticks to use on textured plates instead of the Bambu stuff.
The glue is only applied to build plate on the side where you are printing. Don’t put anything between the plate and bed. I only apply the glue a little bigger than the footprint of what I’m about to print.
Many don’t like to use glue though. It’s a little messy, makes you need to clean plates (I clean and reapply glue between prints but YMMV), is a bit of a bother by adding steps, and you need to wash the glue off the bottoms of your prints.
If your root cause is just that the plate is losing its stiction, you can also just replace the plate with a new one and not need to mess with glue too.
Hopefully that’s all it is - plate losing stiction over time - but it’s hard to diagnose like this remotely so it might not actually be the problem.
And if it is the issue, you can either get a new build plate or go the glue route. That seems to be a personal choice and both have plusses and minuses.
I finally figured it out! Originally, I had been adjusting the temperature through the printer interface, and it always just reset to the default settings. Instead, I went into the slicer, went into filament settings, and changed the print temp there, and sure enough, it worked! I still want to thank you for your help, I will still definitely use this advice in the future. Before I mark this as solved, does anyone have any settings advice they have? Despite the prints coming out, the side touching the printing plate always comes out kind of fuzzy.