3d printer help (Ender 3 v2)

[jpmxrider489]

Im hoping we have some 3d printer people on here. I have got the ender 3 v2 and cant get anything to adhere. I have got 3 things to actually print but even if I try to reprint the same thing that was successful, I cant pinpoint the cause of my issue. I have leveled it many times even right before the print. I tried hair spray and glue and 2 different beds. I am newish to the 3d printing. All the corners appear to be straight when checking with a right angle.

The only thing that I can see, is the 4 level knobs on the bottom. There is the knob with a spring. Two springs are straight. Then the two on the right seem to be at a angle. Not sure if this is causing any issue but the bed is level. I am positive.

I have tried the same print that worked before and cant find any common variable to pin point the issue. Im just using pla. The print speed i normally set to 30. Nozzle temp is 200. I tried bed temps ranging from 60 to 70.

Is there a chart or something that says what the bed temp should be if nozzle temp is xyz?

 

[steve]

Which beds do you have?

I haven't tried printing PLA only PETG on my Ender-3 Pro and that's usually harder to print. I'm using the stock magnetic bed cleaned with IPA, I assume at least one of your beds is the supplied glass on your V2.

PLA will print just fine to an unheated bed but I usually heat my MP Select Mini (what I have set up for PLA) a little and print on blue painters tape also cleaned with IPA.

If the bed is level the springs are fine. My printer came with small cupped washers that the springs sit in and allow them to move as they are compressed.

How much of a gap do you have when leveling the bed?

 

[jpmxrider489]

Which beds do you have?

I haven't tried printing PLA only PETG on my Ender-3 Pro and that's usually harder to print. I'm using the stock magnetic bed cleaned with IPA, I assume at least one of your beds is the supplied glass on your V2.

PLA will print just fine to an unheated bed but I usually heat my MP Select Mini (what I have set up for PLA) a little and print on blue painters tape also cleaned with IPA.

If the bed is level the springs are fine. My printer came with small cupped washers that the springs sit in and allow them to move as they are compressed.

How much of a gap do you have when leveling the bed?

So I have a gcode that I found and moves the machine over each leveling point multiple times. I am just using a credit cart to measure the gap. I might try printing on painters tape. Never heard of that yet. I did try the glue and hair spray and it doesnt work.

 

[steve]

A credit card is way too thick. It should be about a piece of copy/printer paper thickness. Make sure the head is clean and raise the bed until it just drags on the paper. Give that a try and see if it helps

 

[EC17PSE]

so you have a hotbed so they should be sticking well.

1 thing i do on all prints is clean the bed with 70% isopropyl alcohol and it helps massively
leveling is best using a feeler gauge, then you go into aux leveling and then use the same feeler gauge on all 4 corners then go maybe 2 or 3 times around to make sure its all level in equals

while this is an ender 5plus in the video he tells you a good way to adjust it all properly

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[Lucky13]

On my Creality CR-10S Pro I usually run my PLA at 205-210 ( depends on filament brand ) and the bed at 60. Rafts have been my go to for larger prints. It "wastes" filament and time, but haven't lost any prints since.

As for leveling I'd recommend getting a hold of .005 shim stock. Heat the bed to the temp that your going to print at before you start the leveling process. I use 5 pieces and use those to set bed level.

 

[jakelandry]

I have an ender 3 pro and print pla and petg. People will say use hair spray or painters tape or alcohol. 90% of your adhesion is in your level height. Don’t use a piece of paper or a credit card. Get a set of feeler gauges and experiment. As an example, petg printed at .0025” adheres well but at .003” it’s weaker. I’ve printed at .0005” before and the part literally fused to the bed so hard that I had to put the magnetic base on granite, hit it with a hammer, and scrape it flat again after ripping the part off.

I have the magnetic bed and the glass bed. The glass bed is hit or miss depending on manufacturing tolerances. They typically have too much variance in the thickness or flatness to use without a ubl mapping the profile out at 100+ points and, even then, they’re inferior to the magnet bed in terms of raw adhesion. That is probably all a little too much for you to bite off yet so here is what I recommend:

Use the magnetic bed

Level your bed with a .004” feeler gauge and print something that has an initial layer that covers a good bit of the bed.

Print around 60mm/s for starters.

As it is printing, watch the thickness of the bead as it goes through its first layer. Adjust the knobs on-the-fly until you get a very thin bead profile.

Repeat at .003”.

Repeat at .002”.

Mind you once you get this dialed in you will have to calibrate your e steps/flow because you are varying the layer “squish” which will alter the bead width.

 

[steve]

I don't know if the leveling process in this one is standard firmware for the V2 on if it depends on the update he does at the beginning but it shows using a 0.008in feeler gauge.

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I didn't mention heating the nozzle and bed but I do for the reason he states.

This is how I use painters tape on the aluminum bed of my MPSM.

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[jpmxrider489]

I just picked up some feeler gauges and will redo. I did relevel it with a piece of paper and ended with the same result. I did try and print the level thing, but cant get anything to work successfully. I just leveled at .005 at 60ms,60 bed temp, and 205 nozzle temp. The test print failed halfway in. Does anyone have a test file that they could give me that is a quick print that we knows works.

Also, my left level knobs dont have much tension. I wonder if there moving while the print is going on. Im retrying the same settings just at a .004 height.

If I got the auto level height sensor thats like 30 bucks, would that fix this issue?

 

[jpmxrider489]

So I have printed 4 small things successfully after going to a .004 gap. I also print using a raft. It will fail without the raft. Is this supposed to be my permanent settings? Is there like a trial and error chart?

 

[jakelandry]

Maybe I missed it but you never mentioned what type of printing surface you’re using or what brand and type of material you’re using.

Don’t get an auto bed leveler. They’re not a plug and play ordeal most of the time because you have to go in and configure firmware and whatnot. It seems like something you’d just install with a few screws and drop a flash drive in to update the firmware but it never fails that it turns into a 2 day ordeal to troubleshoot and whatnot.

I’m still betting your height isn’t right for your material or your bed is inadequate. You haven’t really described how it’s failing either. Is the entire part detaching from the plate mid-print?

 

[jpmxrider489]

Maybe I missed it but you never mentioned what type of printing surface you’re using or what brand and type of material you’re using.

Don’t get an auto bed leveler. They’re not a plug and play ordeal most of the time because you have to go in and configure firmware and whatnot. It seems like something you’d just install with a few screws and drop a flash drive in to update the firmware but it never fails that it turns into a 2 day ordeal to troubleshoot and whatnot.

I’m still betting your height isn’t right for your material or your bed is inadequate. You haven’t really described how it’s failing either. Is the entire part detaching from the plate mid-print?

My apologies. I didn't realize i never explained. Basically, I couldn't get anything to adhere to the bed. I was using a glass bed mainly. Also using the creality pla that came with the printer. I have successfully printed some things on rafts. With the raft, the adhesion is great. But without it, it would just string up and drag whatever it did print around or just ball up. Luckily, I never got past the testing phase. So never left anything overnight yet.

 

[EC17PSE]

My apologies. I didn't realize i never explained. Basically, I couldn't get anything to adhere to the bed. I was using a glass bed mainly. Also using the creality pla that came with the printer. I have successfully printed some things on rafts. With the raft, the adhesion is great. But without it, it would just string up and drag whatever it did print around or just ball up. Luckily, I never got past the testing phase. So never left anything overnight yet.

if its pulling it away your Z offset when printing needs adjusting then as its not pushing the filament into the base enough, this is the final part of leveling is a base print so see you getting the final Z offset correct under print conditions, you want it fairly flat and this will make sure the print stays stuck, i did a quick re level last night and ended up resetting my final z offset while the print was running to get it right.

i tried another brand of filament also from the same company i normaly buy my stuff from and it was junk and it was new out the package! so sometimes its the filament also. but most of the creality filament i used was great quality

 

[jakelandry]

Bobby brings up a good way to quickly try height settings. Going to the “tune” tab ( if your firmware version has it) and bumping the z axis down a little mid-print on the first layer will give you a quick and dirty way of determining if it is height based.

What software are you using? Maybe just start with a default cura profile (will already have speeds, retraction, z hop, etc in the ball park) where you can at least get a successful print with only manual bed height adjustments. Then you can tweak a few settings and save new profiles as you determine what settings work best for you.

Glass beds really just suck to me. I’ve also had adhesion issues with them that vary too much to ever get consistent results. It already sucks having to dial the printer in with different filaments and glass beds just always seem to make it worse. I’ve had prints that fell off mid process and prints that I’ve dang near broken the part getting it off, but I never had enough confidence to just be able to load up a print and walk away. I think glass is just more susceptible to thermal exposure from it’s environment and height changes. It’s kind of like a dsm with high compression where you knock it’s timing windows down to a 3* swing vs a low compression motor (magnetic base in this analogy) that gives you a little more resolution to work with and a little give before knocking.

If you’re dead set on the glass bed, most of the tricks everyone mentioned in the YouTube videos will help. Tape, glue sticks, alcohol, but really I recommend getting a magnetic bed until you really understand how everything works. They just have a much higher tolerance for everything if you don’t care about the slight texture they leave on the part (I actually prefer that texture).

To me, 3d printers are just a tool I want to use to get the end result so sorry if I seem opinionated. When mine doesnt work I always revert back to my magnetic bed cause it just works so that’s why I am so biased toward them. For some reason, I also don’t really like “tuning” mine like some people do as a hobby. There are people who spend 100+ hours and thousands of dollars on these 3d printers to get .0001% better results on a small dog figurine or something that to me is just trash, but I’m sure they would say the same thing about my dsm and well, they’d be right.

 

[EC17PSE]

So doing this print you can see the brim base is quite flat. I still use the stock heated base and seems good for me and not questioned about using it yet. You can tune it during the print and adjust it 0.01 at a time. I like it a bit more flatter then needed but it prints well and has great results.

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[jpmxrider489]

Bobby brings up a good way to quickly try height settings. Going to the “tune” tab ( if your firmware version has it) and bumping the z axis down a little mid-print on the first layer will give you a quick and dirty way of determining if it is height based.

What software are you using? Maybe just start with a default cura profile (will already have speeds, retraction, z hop, etc in the ball park) where you can at least get a successful print with only manual bed height adjustments. Then you can tweak a few settings and save new profiles as you determine what settings work best for you.

That brings up some other questions I have as well. I can adjust the speed on the printer and in cura. If I set a speed in cura, does the speed on the printer work? Seems better just to leave cura at 100 and adjust via the printer. I do have the tune tab and the z adjust. Im not sure if I have the latest firmware or not?

 

[EC17PSE]

That brings up some other questions I have as well. I can adjust the speed on the printer and in cura. If I set a speed in cura, does the speed on the printer work? Seems better just to leave cura at 100 and adjust via the printer. I do have the tune tab and the z adjust. Im not sure if I have the latest firmware or not?

you pre set it in cura and then can manually adjust in adjust tab on the printer but generally setup cura to what you want and it will do exactly that.

what print temps you going at and bed temps?

as for z offset while printing im on the stock software so it wont likely be that, have you tried doing a test square to manaully set it as your actually IN the print similar to what my pics show above

 

[jpmxrider489]

I been using 200 nozzle snd 60 bed temp. If I turn up the speed, I'll bump nozzle to 205.

So it seems to print fine when printing with a raft. I haven't had it fail yet. The raft takes a bit long. Can I change the thickness or how big the raft is?

However, printing with a brim or nothing ends up in failing by not adhering. What could be this cause?

If you see this picture (Keychain for father) one side is smooth and the other isn't. The side that isn't is the side facing the bed. Can this be smooth by changing settings?

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[curt-s]

I've been wanting to get one but I don't know if I have the patience nowadays..