So I am curious, after printing out MANY parts over the past week I have been playing with Temperatures. I am using PLA and most things I have seen show PLA being printed at 200-210C… however I find that this gives me very stringy prints with lots of overhangs and misses. I tend to use 185C. What do others use and is it common to have a wide range of best temps to use? What have others found?
Temps will vary by printer/hot end, filament manufacturer, actual filament diameter, even filament color or batch! Best to test each and find what works best for you.
I have one roll of natural that prints best at 195C, and a roll of black that is best at 205C. We are still at the trial-and-error stage for many aspects of home 3D printing.
I’m usually at 190 regardless of manufacturer, batch, color, etc. But I largely only get from places that use the same manufacturer.
Part of it is inconsistencies in actual temp vs read temp I think. Different hot ends with different sensor placements , it is probably those differences you notice , assuming its the same pla. Where one reads 185, it might be reading it closer to the nozzle , where it sees 210 perhaps it is farther from the nozzle, or just a poorer connection.
There is a group of us trying to fix this problem. If you are interested in helping out jump on over, we are testing our solution, but some vendors have expressed interest in using our system when the bugs are worked out. for now you can print the codes and slap them on spools just to keep track of things.
I have 2 open bugs to fix (holiday season is messing with productivity 
), but i think we are getting close.
DIfferent hotends, different plastics – they all play a role. There may also be systematic errors in temperature reporting between different designs.
That said, one thing I have learned is that longer-necked hot-ends have more dwell time of plastic in the hot-zone, so that a lower temperature setting can get the plastic to a melted state compared to a shorter hot-ends which uses hotter temperatures with a shorter dwell time to get the plastic into the same melted state.
The key thing is to calibrate the setup to your own printer, playing with temperature and extrusion rates until you find your printer’s sweet spot. Then adjust up and down from there for the variation between rolls of plastic.
@Camerin_hahn thanks for the link. I have joined the group and am looking at this I’d system. I like it. I am also very interested in the sensor I saw on there for looking at filament size. I would love to come up with a way to hook it in line to the printer so prints are much more accurate.
230 with a fan. No strings on my prints. Though the PLA I am using requires a higher temp. Depending on where you get it the temp may change as well.
Thanks everyone for the feedback. Glad to see that it varies by manufacturer so its not just something I am doing wrong.