3DPrinting

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3DPrinting is a place where makers of all skill levels and walks of life can learn about and discuss 3D printing and development of 3D printed parts and devices.

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I dried my filament, and it printed a lot better (self.3dprinting)

submitted 2 years ago by zipsglacier to c/3dprinting

12 comments fedilink hide all child comments

If only there was some way I could have known to try this sooner! /s

Story: I wanted to try printing with petg, since I've read how much easier it is. But with a new roll I just had a really hard time. Lots of stringing, poor adhesion, and it just seemed like no amount of my usual fiddling would really make it better.

Somewhere I read that even new filament can benefit from drying, because maybe it wasn't stored in the best way, or maybe it's older than you think. I also read about putting the roll on the print bed, heating it up and covering it for a long time, since I don't have a filament dryer. I did that for about half a day, and then sealed the roll in a ziptop bag with a silica packet because I needed a break from it. A week later and, it seems much better!?

Either the drying, the break, or something else seems to have helped a lot! Happy printing everyone.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

@galaxi

@zipsglacier

Drying is part of the process when raw plastic pellets are used in injection molding. The only reason it's not more common in 3DP is that common materials like PLA and ABS arent particularly hygroscopic. PETG is slightly more hygroscopic, but materials like TPU, PET, nylons, etc are highly hygroscopic and definitely need drying to print well.

Also remember that PETG needs more room between the nozzle and the build plate (higher z offset) so that the filament doesn't stick to the nozzle and make a mess

This is one of those pieces of 3DP lore that isn't correct. If Z offset is set accurately, it doesn't need to be changed for any material, but extrusion multiplier/flow does.

The reason why bumping z offset bandaids the problem is because PETs are highly incompressible, i.e., they don't respond well to being squeezed and will displace under pressure. Raising the z offset means you're putting the same amount of material into a larger physical volume. This effectively lowers EM for the first layer, but introduces accuracy issues in the rest of the print.

Instead, it's better to make sure z offset is dead on accurate and then adjust EM down so that flow is correct throughout the print.