I have been trying to print with PETG and have been having a problem that I can not seem to make go away. What happens is that my printer nozzle seems to pick up plastic as it moves. Then when enough accumulates it drops off into the print as a big lump causing the print to fail. I have tried reducing the flow resulting in a brittle prints that splits easily on the layer lines. I have been running my prints at 245 degrees, should I be printing at a lower temperature?
Have you tried printing slower?
No. That is not something I thought of. Not that I thought I was printing fast. Easy enough to try though.
Could be a leaky nozzle. If nozzle isn’t tightened against threaded barrel, while block is heated, plastic can ooze out and slowly seep down nozzle, building up to a blob.
Additionally, simply tightening the nozzle into the block, is not the same as tightening the nozzle against the threaded barrel. When tight to barrel, the nozzle should have a small gap, not being fully threaded into heater block, because it should hit the threaded barrel before the block.
goto 25:00 for re-assembly
Have to tried Coasting feature? Whenver there is a layer change, it will stop extruding filament before the end. This prevents some oozing.
What brand and print speed? Make sure your E steps and Z offset are properly calibrated.
It is not a leaky nozzle, I checked as I have had that problem before. Coasting, I will need to play with a different slicer as I don’t see that in the setup for Cura in Repetier. The filament I have been playing with is Esun and I have been printing at 35mm/s outer perimeter and 48mm/s for everything else.
I had that problem with abs. The filament coming out of the printhead was not sticking to the already printed layer. My solution was to increase the heated bed temp. I don’t know the temp settings for petg. There was also another problem that the internal nozzle of the print head was gouged from a plug that required a drill to clear. It caused the filament to spiral as it came out, and it would not print a decent layer after that. I had to replace the print head as well.
I’d been printing with some “Real Filament” PETG for a while (at about 235’C) and quite happy with the prints but yesterday I thought I should really do a temperature tower to see if I was using the right temps…
missing/deleted image from Google+
missing/deleted image from Google+
The upshot was, that this filament works really well at 195 and 200’C and is stringy and blobby at 220+. The layers are well bonded at 195 and the perimeter finish is cleaner too. You live and learn eh?
@Alan_Lord can you share the link to the model and a small howto?
@Panayiotis_Savva Sure. It’s all in the description here:
Reduce your extrusion width.
Check your E step calibration. I hate to ask, but can you double check that you actually have PETG loaded and not PLA? The manufacturer recommends 230-250 C and your results are right in their range of PLA (190-210 C).