What went wrong? (3D Printing mishap)

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askelon

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#319792 3-Jun-2025 08:20

I finished printing the last parts for a box last night, the top and the base. The base is fine, the 4 sides are fine but the lid is all sorts of screwed up. Taking it off the build plate its like it delaminated into three bits. Most unusual. I have printed the top previously without any issues on a previous roll of PLA - both rolls are creality branded, the current one first opened Saturday.

I'll try redoing it later when I get home. Or just not bother! I did change the infill / pattern from default but I wouldnt have thought that would make a big difference, at least it never has in the past.

The printer in question is a Ender3 V2. I print at 210 with a bed of 60. I have found that works well for that particular PLA after lots of trial and error.

The actual print looks correct on the top and the bottom. Maybe the STL was a little iffy. Not sure if I used that one the first time or another. The plan next is to print the whole box as one piece rather than 5 and the top separate. Just dont want to get to the end of a 24 hour print for it to fail!

What it should look like:

tehgerbil

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#3380121 3-Jun-2025 11:02

Hey there Askelon,

I've just given my Creality V3 a birthday after putting several thousand hours through it, here's what I can see from your print and what I've done on my printer which may help your situation too.

Just from your pics - Your bed levelling is off based on pic 3 having gaps in the first layer.
And your prints display ringing/ghosting caused by loose pulleys/loose frame.

-For the Z-offset make sure you're doing this with a hot bed and print head. For the love of God don't burn yourself, but a hot calibration will be more accurate than a cold one.

-Run a microfibre rag along all of the gantry V guide rails even miniscule print dust can build up and cause wavy prints too.

-You should be able to pluck your belts and they all make the same dull 'Dung' sound. If they don't sound even, tighten/loosen until they do.

-All your wheels should be able to be turned (with resistance) by hand, if you move your head, check for any wheels which don't rotate and loosen them. If there are any bald spots you'll need to replace them.

-Nozzles are consumable items, if you haven't replaced your nozzle after at most a few hundred hours of printing it's likely out of spec and likely larger than the original .4, you can try lowering your layer width to .38 and see if this helps compensate if your head is old and you don't have a spare.

-A little more complex, but personally worth it was dismantling the head and feed mechanism, my stepper motor cog was full of plastic dust and was causing inaccurate flow rates. I sprayed WD40 on an old toothbrush and went to town on that bad boy.

-Check your resistance screw and loosen it way the heck off then a few rotates to firmly but not tightly grip the filament. These are often way too tight from factory and cause big serrated chew marks in your fed filament which doesn't melt right.

-Run an e-steps calibration if you haven't already, it's really easy if a bit daunting at first.. Just measure 90mm, 100mm, 110mm and 120mm on the filament (a sharp knife V-notch works well) and then use the printers move menu to feed 100mm, measure the results and whack it into a free calculator in Google to get the right E-step calculation.

I hope all this helps a little. :)

askelon

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#3380129 3-Jun-2025 11:26

New nozzle might be in order. I have put a good few hundred hours thru it. I have a feeling it didn't like me printing two parts at once for whatever reason. Other wise it's pretty level, the glass bed is never perfect of course. I'll play with it more when I get some time. For the most part its worked pretty flawlessly. And all the other parts have been good.

michaelmurfy

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#3380130 3-Jun-2025 11:27

^^ spot on. Also lastly, do not ever clean your bed with IPA and instead just use dish soap and warm water. I know it isn't the case with this print but more people need to know!

I actually think in this case it could be a case of wet filament too. Have you dried the filament before printing?

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askelon

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#3380160 3-Jun-2025 13:08

I havent dried the filament but it really was a brand new roll opened a couple of days ago. Im actually thinking its alot to do with printing multiple parts at once, and an iffy stl file. The other print at the same time was the height of the clean looking piece.

As for the bed, I use the non textured side and I normally clean it off with soap and water, then a quick rub with iso, then liberal gluestick. Had too many problems with things getting stuck on the textured side of the bed - I cant remember if it was petg or pla I had major trouble with unsticking to the point of freezing the bed to get it to unattached!

I did have a bl touch kit but it decided to die one day so into the bin it went!

I'll reprint tomorrow and see. The only thing Ive been using thats different was switching to orcaslicer from cura. That and a new install of Octoprint as the old one boot looped its docker image.

michaelmurfy

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#3380167 3-Jun-2025 13:28

Even straight out of the bag filament can be “wet” - had it many times.

Worth giving it a dry before attempting again 😊

askelon

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#3387937 29-Jun-2025 11:55

Finally got around to redoing everything. Bed was all levelled perfectly - when both cold and hot. I do think theres a slight dip in the middle but Ive been moving my prints to the corners just in case. Printed the box as one piece without any real issues whatsoever which I was surprised about - a few wisps and stuff I need to clean up. The patterns on the sides of the box actually came out better than when I printed each side individually! The lid is currently printing and looking good.

In-between all of that I tried some different filament because I wanted it all to be purple. Big mistake. The new one was just such garbage. It printed one good print (a 15ish hour box) and everything since has been garbage failures. The filament seems to be inconsistent on the sizing and gets stuck in the feed tubes, then breaks. Fix that and it'll do it again. If it doesnt break it just wont stick to the bed no matter what. Wont be buying some no name brand of garbage again, it wasnt even like it was cheap! Ive had a good run with the creality branded filament so I'll stick to it.

Next thing will be to spray the whole thing purple with gold highlights Im thinking. Or try printing it bigger. Its all currently 8x8cm and Id rather it be 10x10cm. Then the trays for inside which I am still to design - the current design has no way to actually get the trays out without turning it all upside down!

geoffwnz

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#3389376 3-Jul-2025 08:52

michaelmurfy:

^^ spot on. Also lastly, do not ever clean your bed with IPA and instead just use dish soap and warm water. I know it isn't the case with this print but more people need to know!

Why is this? (Genuine question)

Been wiping down my glass print bed with IPA since day one with no issues. To the point where if I forget, the prints don't stick. Keen to know why it's now considered to be a bad idea after having been the main cleaning advice for years. :-)

I did just switch to a PEI magnetic bed this week and now wondering why I didn't switch to that sooner. Also, being magnetic, means that if soapy water wash is better, then it's far easier to pop off and wash than the glass bed which would need levelling after each wash.

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