[SOLVED] Bad quality when printing PETG

Sure, the minimal better Temperature withstanding and inaccuracy tolerance (better banding when things don’t fit).
And their farm cannot produce ASA or ABS parts reliable. :slight_smile:

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I meant from the optical standpoint. PLA is a very good material, variations are also good for functional parts. But PLA is a vampire, it don’t like the Sun.
But - since the X1 is a closed chamber printer - my opinion: don’t waste your time with PETG. Use ASA. Or even ABS. ASA is very easy to print, with very good results using the Generic ASA profile.
Prusa took PETG for their parts because they don’t have closed chambers in their farm.

Try ASA, and you will be surprised how easy it is in this printer. ASA (I’m using M4P ASA), Engineering plate, Dimafix stick for bed adhesion.
Throw away the glue stick. It’s wasting your time and money.

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For an enclosed printer like the X1C, is ASA a big enough improvement that it effectively makes PETG obsolete?

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I did a print yesterday with an old spool of Overture PETG and the generic profile - zero stringing. I have had stringing with some other PETG filaments.

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Sorry for the late reply.
For the temperature i normally use a temperature tower to dial that in.
To calibrate the flow rate i use a single wall cube, comparing the average wall thickness with what is defined in the slicer and adjust the flow rate accordingly.
The density can mostly be found on the manufacturer’s web site. I normally use this value at first. When i print a large object i compare the actual weight with what the slicer calculates, and adjust the density in the slicer if needed.

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Obviously no, it all depend on what you are targetting, if it is all about temperature ASA sustain as well as PETG and even a bit more.

For other use, PETG have this chewing gum effect that can help in some cases and also it can support chemical better than some other common plastics (for example it is a good candidate if you want to make roller for your vessel washing machine : temp + more chemical resistance).

Also PETG may be better to make object watertight like vase.

But ASA (like ABS) can be smoothed using acetone to get an astonishing injected plastic looking effect.

image

Etc… Etc… Etc…

From a very personal and non scientific point of view and based on my personal use cases, and because I am no doing NASA parts, I always wonder at first if I can do it using PLA+… (and basically the answer is often yes except when it need to sustian a little more temperature > 55°), If no, I switch to ABS or ASA, I personnaly dont like PETG due to its poor final aspect looking and rarely use it except in sepcial case as explained above.

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Yeah, this. I just got some Polymaker ASA, and some PolyMax PC a favorite of mine for strong parts. Both printed like a dream.

Polymaker is slightly more expensive (although they’ve come down recently perhaps because of scale) but they offer an incredible breath of filaments and excellent documentation. They’ve really started to grab market share lately.

For me personally? Yeah. I have run a little Priline PETG I’ve had since 2018 through my X1C and it was OK, little stringing and no blobs. I did dry it first.

But ASA is my new go to, and I’m liking Polymaker’s PC as well. I ran some Clear and did a Max Flow Rate test (in SoftFever’s newest Studio) since the BL preset for PC had it set for 16mm cubed/sec and I knew it could be higher.

I ran it from 15mm cubed/sec to 30mm. I was shocked to find the 30mm was absolutely fine, but it showed a bit of surface change - slightly ‘cloudy’ after 25mm. That said I could not break the layers on the 30mm! It was structurally fine. For fun I’m going to run it again and find the limits. If I remember I’ll edit it here.

I set mine to 28mm cubed/sec and saved the filament profile. Ran it to make a couple reels for respooling (on SPORT setting) and the only defects was a slight roughness to the top layers, I forgot to turn on ironing.

So for those of you who print with PC, you might play with the Max Flow Rate test, especially if you get a CHT nozzle setup.

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Does asa like abs also yellow and permanently stain all the internals over time? I found with my petg If i turned the part fan off or kept it very low I didnt get as much stringing. if that helps anyone?

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Guys, could you maybe use another thread for a general discussion regarding pros and cons of different filaments? This thread was actually meant to resolve the issue of the Bambulab X1 with PETG!

Thanks!

I can give an update, but no good news yet. I got a new extruder from Bambulab. I exchanged it today and did a testprint, but the issues are still there :frowning:

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You are absolutely right!

I, for one, did not intend to hijack the thread, Sometimes when people are discussing a problem associated solutions will be presented and take a life of it’s own, but you are certainly correct.

My apologies for my part! I’m sorry I have no more suggestions for your issue, best of luck.

Fair enough. We were just marking time until you had some kind of update. This has the benefit of keeping the thread alive with convivial discourse and a reason to remember the thread at all, but given how long it’s taking I agree that creating a separate thread is probably the better choice.

Anyhow, good luck with your problem.

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It’s ok, I thought I mention it because the last few posts were completely off topic.

I’m not the only one with the PETG problem. Bambulab seems to be a little clueless! Lets see what they propose next.

I might get a spool of ASA just to check. Maybe PETG is in general just a very poor material?

jeesh, just wanted to contribute to the fact that i found lower fans speeds helped with my PETG. pretty on topic for me. But whatever floats your boat there mate. :rofl:

Nah, he wasn’t referring to you, several of us started talking about alternatives to PETG and went a bit off subject. It wasn’t you! :grin:

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Ok guys, this might be the last attempt until I return the printer! I need your help!

Bambulab support is a waste of time! Seriously. I did everything they wanted. Last thing I had to do is to print a part without any features! Man, I know the printer prints ok if there are no features at all! I knew that 2 months ago!!!

So far its quite simple. My X1 prints PLA in perfect quality. Everything else does not work at all.
I even bought another spool of PETG from a different brand, same problem.
I even bought a spool of ASA filament, same problem.

Could you help me out printing the following part with PETG with generic profile on your X1 (or P1P) and then post an image?Dropbox - test_sample_15x15x30.stl - Simplify your life
I need to proof Bambulab that usually the X1 prints fine! But I need more than just 1 sample!

Thanks for your help!

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heres two pics, one is an in progress part printing out of esun cheap petg. First off i had a few issues but ended up going step by step bit by bit and got it working well.
the second pic is comparing pla vs cf nylon vs petg.
I have zero 3d printing experience and only used stock settings intially but then changed bit by bit based on what others have suggested and what i experimented with. i run it hot. hotter than esun suggest but it comes out nice.

my part fan is off on the first layer entirely with my chamber fan on 40% or higher and the aux fan comes onto 10/30% after the first few layers.
Again forgive me if this isnt really helpful for you, but i find mine is 99% of the way there so far to being spot on.

Okay, T_guttata, I printed the 15x15x30 file about 6-8 times to see what I could see. I have an MK3S+ and an X1C, so I wasn’t worried about moisture or color or whatever. I used grey since it shows everything.

Incidentally, I’ve been using an Eibos single roll filament dryer with a built-in fan. 45W and it works great. There’s a display which is actually just a battery-powered hygrometer, but operator setting consists of a simple knob to select the filament type (aka temperature knob). I put PETG in for a couple hours, so maybe 0.10 kWh to dry.

Anyway, did some test prints. I have 5 of them which are described here:

#1 As close to Prusa’s PETG technical data sheet as I could figure out (PrusaSlicer gcode specifies 0.080 PA!).
#2 Generic PETG profile with a pressure advance of 0.048 (determined from the SoftFever PA calibration lines).
#3 Generic PETG profile with 3dball’s settings and pressure advance of 0.048 (per my line test).
#4 Created using Prusa’s PETG technical data sheet but with pressure advance of 0.048 (per my line test).
#5 Created using Prusa’s PETG technical data sheet but with pressure advance of 0.020 (sheer curiosity since this is the PA used by generic PETG).

Ignore the horrible appearance of the base on #1. Using engineering plate and got lazy with the glue stick. First layer didn’t stick great, but it was the last print of many and I was tired.

And the settings for #2 and #3 are here (PA didn’t appear since it was 0.048 for both) :

Finally, here are generic PETG and the “Prusa TDS” compared:

Note that “temperature of vitrification” is sometimes called “solidification temperature” which is listed as “heat deflection temperature” in the TDS. 68°C FWIW, the TDS is where I got most of my settings data.

Also, it helps to slow down your first layer unless you’re using the textured plate. PETG is tough, but it will pull free from the smooth build plates without hesitation. Finally, I had to leave the door open per Bambu Studio’s software prompt. It seemed to work.

Last thing. Prusa has a guide on Linear Advance, and it has a bunch of images that may look familiar…

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I have exactly the same strange artifacts always starting at the top right corner of a hole. These were done in stock PETG settings with PolyLite PETG Gray.
I will try to adjust some settings, but this might well be a software problem.

Question: Did anyone try to slice the STL in anything other then Bambu Studio? Cura maybe?


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Ok,
I made some settings adjustments in the slicer and it solved my problem. Being an absolute newb in 3d printing maybe has some advantages. :slight_smile:




What I wondered was that the print always failed at the same point, either the line line right before the bridge of the hole or the bridge line itselt.
My first idea was acceleration and travel speed, so I reduced them to 200mm/s and 1000mm/s². I got the exact problems as before.
Next I disabled Slow down for overhangs and massively increased Bridge speed t0 200mm/s and all the artifacts had been gone.

From the damage to of those affected lines, I guessed it might be some filament oozing out of the nozzle and hardening too fast and either ripping the layer below apart or at least preventing the actually printing layer to stick. So I reduced the time spent for bridges and overhangs, fan speed settings might also help to finetune, but I left mine at stock.
It is just a guess, I would need a much better camera with lots more fps to validate this, but at least I can print this STL now. Its not perfect yet, but at least a good direction to improve on.

@T_guttata Would be great if you could validate the settings and get your results here as well

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Yup, for sure not a software problem or we’d all be having it. Glad to see you make such a big improvement with just a couple of tweaks, especially for being so new. It doesn’t take much to start building your confidence, you’ll be a pro in no time at this rate.

PETG is very sensitive to speed. Too fast and you get under extrusion and poor layer adhesion. Too slow and you get over extrusion and blobs.

The next settings you’ll want to work on to improve your finish will be the retraction speed and distance. So when the printer does overhangs, it stops printing filament. But, there is still liquid plastic in the nozzle that can ooze out when you don’t want it to because you’re doing an overhang (or traveling the nozzle it to another location while not printing). You can combat this by having the extruder retract the solid filament a certain amount and at a specific speed, which will pull it back and will suck the blobs back before they escape. You don’t want to pull back too much or two fast, as that can break the filament or cause other problems, so you’ll want to run some retraction tests to get your optimal amounts for this particular filament.

Fast Stringing / Retraction Tests

Retraction Test

Retraction Test 2

In the simplest terms, you want to print one of these quick tests and tweak the settings up or down until they keep improving. These are meant to show you stringing as the nozzle moves from one spot to the other. When your retraction settings are dialed in, you won’t have any strings.

Keep going, you got this.

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