A complete 180
Oct. 9th, 2012 11:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rbandrewsCelsius, that is.
Last weekend I didn't print anything, but last night I cranked it up again. I had a roll of a different kind of blue tape, and a couple more things I wanted to try.
The tape thing, the original blue tape I bought was the "delicate surfaces" kind. This has three problems:
1. It has orange writing on top that says "3M Blue Tape", and the height of the ink is about 0.05mm, which is high enough that it scrapes the nozzle on the first layer, and comes off with the print leaving orange spots on the bottom.
2. It doesn't stick well to the bed, which is intentional (that's what makes it "delicate surfaces") but makes me have to replace it a lot more often.
3. The surface is smoother, which makes a nicer-feeling print but also makes it hard to stick plastic to it.
So I got "standard" blue tape, and that works much better. I'll probably lower the bed some now actually.
The other thing I tried was printing at 180 instead of 230. Oh wow. Much better. Less oozing, less stringing, the Naef blocks I made as a test look beautiful. PLA holds heat really well, like well enough that you have to let it cool for a few minutes after the print even, so the nozzle was spreading around lower layers and making blobby edges. Much better now. I also bought a small fan last weekend, I want to figure out a way to mount it to the printer to cool the prints as it makes them.
Oh yeah, and I used new filament too: I have some transparent blue (didn't actually know it was transparent when I bought it, but it looks cool anyway) that comes out really nice, and white PLA, and some red PLA that looks suspiciously orange. The blue especially makes really sharp prints.
Last weekend I didn't print anything, but last night I cranked it up again. I had a roll of a different kind of blue tape, and a couple more things I wanted to try.
The tape thing, the original blue tape I bought was the "delicate surfaces" kind. This has three problems:
1. It has orange writing on top that says "3M Blue Tape", and the height of the ink is about 0.05mm, which is high enough that it scrapes the nozzle on the first layer, and comes off with the print leaving orange spots on the bottom.
2. It doesn't stick well to the bed, which is intentional (that's what makes it "delicate surfaces") but makes me have to replace it a lot more often.
3. The surface is smoother, which makes a nicer-feeling print but also makes it hard to stick plastic to it.
So I got "standard" blue tape, and that works much better. I'll probably lower the bed some now actually.
The other thing I tried was printing at 180 instead of 230. Oh wow. Much better. Less oozing, less stringing, the Naef blocks I made as a test look beautiful. PLA holds heat really well, like well enough that you have to let it cool for a few minutes after the print even, so the nozzle was spreading around lower layers and making blobby edges. Much better now. I also bought a small fan last weekend, I want to figure out a way to mount it to the printer to cool the prints as it makes them.
Oh yeah, and I used new filament too: I have some transparent blue (didn't actually know it was transparent when I bought it, but it looks cool anyway) that comes out really nice, and white PLA, and some red PLA that looks suspiciously orange. The blue especially makes really sharp prints.
