I’ll have to try my PEI again with the lower temps. I wonder if I was just running things too hot? I’ve also noticed that the bottom of my first layer never has the same “striped” appearance that your prints do (comparing my prints to the MP3DP printed parts I bought from you).
I know you won’t like this but now you are a little too close to the bed. You can tell two ways. The top picture shows that the filament smashed out hit the bed then oozed out to the sides and up the side of the nozzle. It leaves behind those thin razor like ridges as the nozzle is sculpting the plastic that goes up. Then from underneath you can see that the first bead smashed flat and was in the way of the next bead. So it isn’t the clean lines. They are overlapping and jagged. So you need to go up just a tiny bit.
The way I see it, any advice/info is useful and helpful and I appreciate it! I did lower my Z for this print, I’ll raise it up again for the next test. Thanks Aaryn!
2 possible causes:
-glass is either too clean (I mean that there might be some spots where it is microscopically too flat for stuff to correctly stick), or there are some greasy spots on it. I recommend you to use glue stick, it costs close to nothing and gives nice results. Put the glue just right before the autolevel (so around 1 minute before it actually prints), it works better when it is not completely dry but just a bit tacky. No need to put 25 layers, just one or two is fine.
What I found out is that the dirtier my glass plate is, the better the adhesion. Except of course if there is any kind of oil/grease on it. The only problem with the glass being dirty is that, at some point, it will impact the looks of the first layer.
To clean the glass, I only use water and soap. I never used any alcohol on it, don’t think it hurts but water and soap are just fine. Then, dry it thouroughly with a paper tissue (this is important) and avoid touching the glass with your fingers (important too)
-An other possibility is that you are over extruding a little or that the diameter of your nozzle is slightly larger in reality than what you’ve set in the slicer, or that your step per mm is slightly incorrect. In which case, when printing long lines, the extruder will tend to print wider lines than necessary, which will lead to the nozzle printing over already printed lines. This doesn’t cause much problem when the lines are short, so it usually doesn’t affect the small parts, but it becomes very important when you print large infill areas, because the nozzle will tend to move around, hit already printed stuff and sometimes print on already existing material, sometimes being pushed and printing again on glass. It leaves horrible results just like the ones you got on your square and sometimes will lead to bubbles or spots where it won’t stick. It is easy to spot on big nozzles because you can see it clearly, but much harder to see with smaller nozzles.
I’m 99% sure this is over extrusion, but anyway the first possibility is very easy to check so I recommend you to start with this one (careful cleaning + glue stick). This should at least solve the issues of adhesion, but I suspect you will still have visually unappealing results. So to fix this problem, try to increase the extrusion diameter in the software by maybe 10-20% (from 0.4mm to 0.44 or 0.46) and see if it improves this specific issue. This is not a fix, just a way to diagnose. In which case, you’ll have to tweak either your extruder step per mm, measure your actual extrusion diameter (the diameter of the filament that is actually coming out from the nozzle: measure it with good calipers at different locations) or correct your X-Y steps per mm. Some slicers offer the possibility to set different nozzle diameters for the infill and the perimeters, in which case you’re golden. That’s how I solved the same problem you have on my machine, I’ve set 1.2mm for the perimeters and 1.3 mm for the infill and it did the trick. I finally narrowed it down to a slight over extrusion and corrected my extrusion factor, now the problem is gone.
From what I see of the pictures my vote would go for the over extrusion.
Do not touch your Z height, closer will create elephant foot issues and you will have even more problems with over extrusion. Higher just won’t stick correctly. I don’t recommend to set a different height on the first layer from whatever height you are printing the others layers. If your printer is properly tuned those values should be the same, otherwise you’re using a band aid to poorly solve deeper issues which will be noticeable elsewhere in your prints.
Thanks for the help Dui! Glue stick is easy, I have them already (young kids art projects) so I will give that a shot.
Over extrusion is something I need to check because I have been seeing what you are describing, it looking like it’s printing over itself. I have calipers, not good one, but better then nothing. I will give it a shot at measuring. Seems like I’m 90-95% of the way there, it those few extra percentage points take a lot of testing and tweaking to get just right.
Now, if only my pesky job didn’t get in the way, I would have more time to play with this. Lol.