I bought some coloured Elegoo PLA filament as it matches the colour of a boardgame I’m printing pieces for. Specifically orange, sky blue, red and a tan colour.
The filament has been dried for 12+ hours.
I’m having really problems with warping on the corners. Especially orange.
The plate is cleaned between each try. I have systematically used different bed and hot end temps. Ranging from 50c to 70c bed temp and 190c to 230c hot end. I printed a temp tower and calibration cube.
Used brims and adhesive as well, tried with and without elephant foot compensation to ensure brim is attached, nothing works.
The most success I have had is with 190c hotend and 50c bed temp. *Edit 195c dropping to 190c and 55c dropping to 50c
Plate being used in smooth PEI.
The designer of the model tried to help, however still having problems.
The key temperature regarding warping is chamber temp. For PLA, I usually keep it between 35 and 39°C by propping the lid open depending on temp.
However, when having large flat surfaces, doing ironing or having a lot of retracts, I try to stay at or below 35°C to prevent heat creep.
Water and dishwashing liquid? That should do it. You may also want to add a few lines of glue stick, take a moist/wet paper towel to distribute a fine film across the plate. A dash of IPA at this stage will help distribution.
In extreme cases, you may need to lower the brim gap to 0mm.
That sounds good against warping, not so good for layer adhesion. Best stick to the centre of the manufacturer recommendations.
To further improve 1st layer adhesion, you can increase the bed temp by 5° and nozzle temp by 10°C above recommendations.
Finally, both speed and layer height reductions are effective when battling warping and curling as they even out the warp inducing cooling. But with PLA, you should really be fine with a warmish chamber, a clean build plate with a film of PVA glue and some brims/mouse ears.
In order of points:
The last (and most successful print (before I cancelled it as it was still bad)).
Chamber temp never exceeded 34c
Water and dish soap. I have a 3d printing only brush and towel. Then warmed in x1 for 10mins to ensure dry.
Brim was set to 0mm and warping still occured.
To be honest I only tried 5c drops between first layer for plate temp and hotend
Used 220c dropping to 215 and 60 dropping to 55 with the glass lid off and got better results, still a little warp on the end. I don’t know if it is enough to bother me though.
I have used many spools of Elegoo PLA with no issues. What if you just use the Generic PLA profile? I started with that and used 6+ rolls before I calibrated for pressure advance and flow ratio for some more involved models.
When you clean your build plates, are you using a dish soap (without lotions, etc) and warm water?
If it’s a one-time print, maybe a new build plate isn’t worth the money, but if you plan on printing this type of thing often it might be a good idea to check out some other build plate options
Take a look at BIQU, they have a Frostbite plate that might solve the issues, but that plate is only for PLA and PETG.
Also look at the JUUPINE GECO plate, this is for PLA only.
Both of those plates stick well and can consume less energy because of not needing to heat the bed as warm while printing.
Might not help here, but 1.6 Max Volumetric Speed is pretty slow, you can probably bump that up. Again. not for the warping issue, just in general. For example Bambu Lab sets their default matt PLA to a MVS of 21.
So the Generic PLA is nearly the same as the Custom one I created. Difference between generic and mine: mine is 5c higher printing temp and 5c higher plate temp and cooling on generic is 100% for part fan and 70% for aux. Mine is 10% for 100 second layer time and 70% for 4 second layer time.
I was always told the cooling is too much on the generic profile.
I have a bambu cool plate already. Until now I always found PLA working better with PEI plate. These are the first filaments (Bambu, SUNLU, eSun in both PLA and PETG) that I’ve ever had problems with.
I’m using a 0.2mm nozzle so is’t 1.6 volumetiric speed the norm?
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