So I just got my KE up and running and it’s printing good all except for that last few prints. I’ve been going almost non-stop since Wednesday. I’m now having first layer adhesion issues. I’ve tried everything and still have issues sometimes. auto-level auto-z axis offset. Cleaned my bed many time with soap and water making sure it was dry. Wiping the build plate with alcohol before printing. Playing with all the extruding settings and build plate temps. I only printing with PLA from Creality at this point.
My biggest question is could my filament be contaminated with water this soon? I bought a dryer but it’s not here yet. Other than that the first prints I made came out great. Just lately have I had this problem
I’ve been pondering “how dry is dry enough” a lot lately. I had a similar problem with PLA and I can’t tell you if it was fixed by drying or cleaning (hit them both at the same time)
I have used a few different brands and the manufacturer’s idea of dry seems to be around 30%. My idea of dry is under 10%. I’d add a dry box to that dryer. It does make a difference, but mostly the difference between 30% and 10% for me at least is smoothness of finish. You may have just gotten a wet spool out of the box and had it out just long enough to “cross the line”.
If your dryer hasn’t delivered yet, you can use an oven, toaster oven, or even the chamber heat to dry out the filament. There are lots of good write up’s on that. google is your friend.
I also switched to the smooth side of the build plate. People say that can cause the print to stick too much, but that has never been a problem for me. I still have to use brim to keep the print stable.
I have the Creality value pack which came with one roll of black and one of white. I opened the black when I got it just to check it out and before I learned they will absorb moisture and mess up printing if they get too wet. I was printing with the small roll that came with the printer but that ran out pretty quick. I then switched over to the black PLA roll (which had been sitting out of it package for almost a week. I had some success with the black at first then all of a sudden I’m having first layer sticking issues. I’ve been thorough all the printer checks and changed temps on first layer extrusion and bed temp but still getting mixed results. Not like I was getting with the white that came with the printer and was left in the air tight package until I was setup and ready to print. I’m going to see if the dryer helps.
I upgraded my hot end to the upgraded ceramic heating block kit so I’m going to have to reset my z-off to compensate. My z-off was around -1.98 with the old hot end and now it’s close to -3. I’m going to do the paper test setup then go from there and find tune my z-off manually to get the .02 gap. My dryer came and I’ve dried and vacuum sealed both my rolls of PLA so they are ready to go. On the dryer relative humidity was around 14% when packaging them
Thanks for helping this noob. It’s been a lot of fun getting into this and I’ve learned a lot but still have 99.99% to go.