Hi All,
I love the 3d print community and how we help one another. I’d like to share my settings here. This is my first contribution. It may or not may help you. I’ve been using Elegoo Rapid PETG in grey, green, black, and white. I must’ve used up about 3.5 rolls of wasted filament trying to figure things out. I’ve used up about five rolls of Elegoo Rapid PETG filament and have over 10 rolls of the Rapid PETG on hand. One setting might be sufficient for one project but not good for something small with in kit cards. I’m currently printing out several “Dummy 13” models and I’m also printing out a life size B1 battle droid. I’ve had my printer for about 6 months now. I’ve been printing 24/7 non-stop for the past month now; mostly with Elegoo PETG Rapid Gray, White, and Black. I really like that the spools are the same diameter as the Bambu Lab plastic spools. I just rip off the cardboard sides and slide the cardboard inner spool onto a Bambu Lab plastic spool. Unfortunately, Overture’s spools are oversized and do not fit.
The smaller parts of my Dummy 13 model were printing out very brittle. In fact, the large parts of the B1 Droid were breaking too. I found that PETG in the X1C likes to print in the highest temperature ranges. I started out with 255C (recommended is 230-260C). It was way too brittle and seemed to be under-extruding with huge missing layers and holes. I took it up to 265 and it was much stronger, but the gaps were still not filled in. There was little stringing, but the added heat was working. I believe I’ve taken it up to 270 before.
To fill in the holes, I jumped from a flow ratio of .8 and worked my way up to 1.05 &1.07. This filled in the holes, gaps, and partial missing layers. I also worked my way up with the retraction to avoid the stringing. I’m at 45mm/s, but there’s pretty much no change between 37-45mm/s. I’m willing to live with the small spiderwebs as long as my prints are strong. I recommend 100% infill if it’s a small part (Rectilinear or Concentric). I also want to add that I used Novamaker cleaning filament before printing the Dummy 13 in the photo below.
I’d like to make a note that you must have the parts fan running. Not fast, but I’ve ruined a lot of prints because I took some bad advice from forums. The general advice was “hot and slow” for PETG, so I ended up using little to no "parts fan. The parts fan for overhangs is the most important. Having the parts fan at zero can really mess up your print. Too much fan will contribute to the brittleness. I was doing two pass-through chess sets from two different contributors at MakerWorld. Everything seemed to print out perfectly. However the inner parts (with thinner structures) were melting while the outer parts were perfect. I couldn’t separate the two pass-through parts. The problem was that I had no parts cooling, so the thicker parts held their structure while the thinner structure melted while it naturally cooled. I threw away over 36 chess pieces before I figured out it was the lack of a fan. Now I set the parts fan to 30-40%. After the fan adjustment, the pass-through parts fell apart from one another with zero friction. It was a very ASMR satisfying feel and sound.
I found that the print speed maxes out at about 250mm/s before it started to leave holes. However, with Rapid PETG green, I was about to get it to 350mm/s for a pass-through Christmas tree upsized about 200%.
I know my current settings are not “normal” and outside the recommended range, but I do this regularly due to strength and quality issues. At first I thought it was the hot end temperature sensor being off. However, I replaced it with a new thermistor and the temp settings are still the same and consistent.
I’ve been using both smooth and textured Bambu PEI plates. I use the Bambu Lab 3D Printing Adhesive or Layerneer Original Bed Weld for the smooth plate. For the textured plate, I use the Bambu Lab adhesive only. It works way better and stickier than the Bed Weld. BedWeld claims that it will not work for textured plates anyway. I would say BedWeld works about 70% of the time on textured plates if you have large parts. Small parts (and prime towers) will come right off with BedWeld on textured plates.
Also, I have a Sunlu S4 dryer. I usually dry them between 12-24 hours before I use them. I store my filament in a PrintDry vacuum container once they are out of the factory packaging.
I’ve printed other PETG/PLA products (Sunlu, Overture, Giantarm, Jarees, Lovoon, Mika3d, Ataraxia, and more), and I’ve always had it at the upper end or slightly higher than recommended temperatures for the X1C. Silk PLA or metallic PETG filaments like the upper end to get shiny. It could add stringing or some other complication, but I don’t think it will hurt to experiment.
I hope this helps you all. I haven’t seen anyone in forums similar to my experience so I’m sharing mine. U-shaped parts are now bendy instead of shattering. No guarantees, but hopefully this will save you from my “Battle with Brittleness” in the missing layers of the “Holy War”.
