My 3D printing honeymoon was over, but the Fedi mind helped me fix my problems
In the previous post about 3D printing I wrote how amazed I was that I could just start printing, without any calibration, and the prints would be perfect each time.
And that was true for a while, I went through the first roll of filament without any issues.
But mid through the second roll, the prints started to lose quality, the corners were lifting up from the print bed, but still the print would finish and be acceptable, especially with things like Gridfinity, that are more usage and less looks.
Fast forward a few weeks and my printing has reached the point when every single print was failing. After a few initial layers, the prints were just peeling off the bed. The printing continued, leaving a spaghetti mess on the printer.
My Ender 3V3 SE has automatic levelling, so rerunning it was my first attempt to fix the issue. No change.
The second attempt was cleaning the print bed. I've read somewhere that cleaning it with IPA, the thing that I was doing before, was not great on the bed, and that dish soap was much better. So I did give it a good scrub with dish soap and a sponge, and that made things a tiny bit better, but still most prints would fail.
Finally, I did the right thing and asked ~Claude Copilot Chat of GPT~ the Fediverse.
Here is the full thread. Some replies are not visible, as some people have limited access to their toots. The great beautiful mind of the combined Fediverse did not disappoint, the responses were many, and I got a lot of useful feedback.
Among the answers, few common topics could be found. One was that there was an issue with the leveling, but that I tried first with recallibrating the printer. The second suggestion was that my filament had too much moisture, and that I found plausible, because that spool has been out in the open for a few weeks, and it has been raining a lot in the last weeks.
So I went out to buy a filament dryer. I could DIY something, but I didn't feel like building something myself, so I looked for an off-the-shelf solution. And alas, I bought the Creality Space Pi Filament Dryer, for which I spent 195 PLN (~45EUR). Not the cheapest thing, but I hope it will last me for a long time, and save me from throwing away half used spools of filament.
The dryer arrived the next day, I put the spool that I had currently opened inside, left the cover slightly opened as one person suggested, and left it running for three hours.
That spool is Creality Hyper PLA filament, green.
And? And looks like that was the issue! Here's the comparison of printing before and after drying the filament:
The print is a wall cable clip from Thingiverse that I have been using a lot in my attic homelab, and also as a test print to validate my printer setup. The print finished without any issues, and it looks a lot better than before the drying.
So yeah, first important lesson learned, even PLA needs to be properly dry to print.
Also, by the temptation of free shipping, I ordered two spools of PETG, because I want to experiment with something other than PLA. I also ordered a stick of Creality Glue, in case the prints would still peel off. Of course I could have just bought some paper glue in a stick, but that would mean driving to the nearest city and finding a shop selling paper utensils, and that is much more work than just adding another thing to the virtual basket. This is living in the countryside where any shopping is a journey.
The next thing I want to do is find a place to permanently put the dryer next to the printer, because this model of dryer allows pulling the filament straight from the dryer into the printer, but for that I will need to reorder the technical room. So something for the future.
That's it, not much else to say. I hope somebody in the future that has the same problem will benefit from this post.
And many, many thanks to everyone who contributed to the thread, you are the best Fedicians!
Previous: The decline of Google and rise of alternative searches as the source of traffic