Each brand and color are technically different. Drying PETG is very important and the cause of most issues with it. The ooze caused by moisture expansion then causes stringing, except PETG is much more sticky than other filaments. This stickiness causes more and thicker strings and wisps than other filaments. These cause more material to get pulled from the tip and they tend to ground themselves harder to whatever they come in contact with. Ultimately these effects lead to inconsistent starts and ends for your perimeter seams and it is this issue that causes ugliness, bad tolerances, and print failures. You can mitigate with drying but if you are not able to print from a dry box, you can lessen the issues by manually placing all of your seams on the inside surfaces of some prints. Indeed I only use PETG when I am designing for it in the CAD phase and I choose PETG only when I can hide the seams manually.
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Yeah I'm having issues right now with material being super sticky and building up on the nozzle. after 30min of printing it has this blob of filament buildup on the nozzle which hits the print.
I do actually print from a dryer, but it has been stored in a non-sealing box for a while without silica, so maybe it's just too wet. I'm just not hearing the usual crackling of wet filament at all.
Getting the first layer height correct is another key with PETG. You generally don’t want to have your Z offset further down than it takes to get an even layer. Find that level, then adjust the extrusion multiplier on your filament in order to fill in any minor gaps. Lowering your Z offset to fill in those gaps is going to contribute to buildup on your nozzle. As far away from the build plate as possible has been the right level for me.
I can definitely print closer to the bed with other materials than I can with PETG.
Sometimes I get crackling sometimes not but it is still usually moisture. It takes a long time to drive out all the moisture from PETG IME
I'll give it 24h in the dryer before trying again then.
What fixed this for me was raising the z offset (as in making the nozzle further away from the bed)
PETG benefits a bit from drying. Though I don't really get too excited unless I see stringing.
Adjust your retractions. Look at your retraction settings. You might need a bit longer and faster retraction. Or you might not want any retraction at all. YMMV per machine and filament and print. I like the scarf joint over straight retractions.
Wipe at the start and during a reaction.
Lower your print speeds a bit. I find running a bit slower helps with quality.
Lower your cooling fan speeds. PETG doesn't play well in a hurricane. Even keeping it off completely has helped me on certain prints.
Use temp towers to choose the best temp for minimal stringing.
Notice I didn't provide any numbers. That's because every machine and the environment it works in is a rule unto itself. But your slicer will give you a baseline to start from. It's up to you to figure out how to tune the settings you need to get the best results for your printer. There are no shortcuts here.
Yup, listen to this. I had problems with my PETG layers coming apart, especially the first few. I lowered the print and fan speed drastically. Fixed all the problems I had.
A lot of good avi e from others but definitely don’t discount drying it out, especially if you live somewhere that the air RH is over 20% as it will definitely suck it out of the air and act all kinds of odd in my experience.
It's been in my dryer for close to 36h @51°C, it's acting the exact same as before, no change, so I'm not sure it's moisture related TBH.
Ah yeah that is good, just making sure because it has caused me a lot of strange issues hah.
One thing that prob doesn’t matter but I usually dry PETG at 55 or 60, not sure how much of a difference that will make, 51 might be warm enough though. From what I have learned, it has to be warm enough that the moisture can escape the plastic (usually just below the glass transition temp) so you might try turning it up a bit if nothing else works because the moisture might not be escaping.
51C us just the default setting for PETG on my dryer, but I could try cranking it up a bit 🤷♂️
Reading that, i really need to tune my settings.... Pla 60mm/s and PETG 70-80mm/s
Sidenote: i mostly print petg and dobt really like pla
the primary limiter on my PLA speed is my cooling, I can't cool well enough. I've managed to push it to 500mm/s with 10.000mm/s2 accelerations, but then my cooling is way too underpowered.
Retraction and a nozzle condom are usually the first things to look for on PETG.
nozzle condom
What the hell is that?
https://www.amazon.com/ender-3-silicone-sock/s?k=ender+3+silicone+sock
But you'll need to get whatever is specific to your machine's nozzle, probably. Prevents buildup of petg strings on the nozzle and helps a lot to get clean prints.
Oh those, i already have that it makes no difference to the issues I'm having.
So, I can't print PETG in a cold room without extra effort.
I also can't print it on smooth build plates very well.
And I can't print it very fast or with surface layers that are super complex.
PETG needs a good surface that it's close to and can adhere to and it needs to be warm.
I set my build plate to 50°C for at least an hour before printing and leave a fan running in the enclosure to spread the heat around. Bed is set to 70 and I only use the textured build plate and make sure the nozzle is clean before it prints cause if it starts sticking elsewhere it won't stop.
Oh and if I open the enclosure part way through the print and cold air hits it I find I usually lose the print.
Open the enclosure and a window