4 ms·

> How noob you mean? I successfully printed a hollow cube yesterday, my first ever print, and failed on about 6 attempts at a "mario ring" file. It's PETG and

by qup 4y ago

> How noob you mean? I successfully printed a hollow cube yesterday, my first ever print, and failed on about 6 attempts at a "mario ring" file. It's PETG and I'm just fiddling with settings, getting a lot of stringing etc. Anyway, very new, but I'm prepared for the learning curve. I'm a good debugger, and I don't give up easily, so hopefully that'll carry through to the printing.

wkat4242 4y ago
Like the others said, forget about petg until you know what you're doing. Just use PLA :)
filoleg 4y ago
I got into 3D printing from zero knowledge a couple of months ago, and i found PETG an absolute nightmare to deal with compared to PLA. Mind you, i only bought filament from Prusa and AtomicFilament, two very respectable manufacturers. Had zero issues with their PLA, and it looked beautiful. With PETG, no matter how much i tried adjusting live-z levels or playing in PrusaSlicer with print speed levels, temperature, layer height, etc., it all would mess up at some point. Out of 5 prints of the same object, I finally managed to get one great print out of PETG. But when I tried printing another one, I would start having various issues again and would have to adjust things again in hopes of eventually getting it right. I just went back to PLA and had zero issues at all since then. Even though I am aware of PLA disadvantages compared to PETG, I simply realized that for my purposes, they didn't matter nearly as much as consistency and ease of good prints.
- qup 4y ago
  I'll check out PLA if I can't get PETG going properly. I also have some TPU to play with, but haven't yet. Thanks! I'm also going to re-run the cube to see if the same settings work a second time, prompted by your comment. I've really only had failures with the one model.
- mitthrowaway2 4y ago
  I don't want to deny your experience but I want to provide a counterpoint. I actually find PETG easier and more reliable to print with than PLA, aside from a little bit more stringing. It's especially good for large objects because the warping is very minimal, and it has more strength and flexibility than PLA, and better inter-layer bonding strength, so I don't have to worry as much about brittle failures or print orientation. I use a Prusa MK3S+, with Prusa's textured sheet. After setting the first-layer Z height properly and cleaning the bed with an alcohol pad, it works flawlessly basically every time. I've used both Prusa's PETG and 3rd party filaments with equal success. After many years of falling out of love with 3D printing, PETG helped me fall back in love with it.
  - krisoft 4y ago
    > I don't want to deny your experience but I want to provide a counterpoint. I heard that PETG is more sensitive to humidity from the air than PLA. So maybe that is the difference? Maybe you live in a dryer climate and the person you are responding to has more moisture in the air?
    - mitthrowaway2 4y ago
      It's a reasonable thought, but I live in the pacific northwest, which is one of the wettest climates in North America... it's possible, though.
    - filoleg 4y ago
      Could have been, but they just replied that they live in the pacific northwest, which is, incidentally, where I live as well. So that shouldn't be a factor.
  - filoleg 4y ago
    Thanks for providing a detailed counterpoint, gave me some ideas. Next thing I will try is a textured sheet. For additional context, my main issues with PETG were prints detaching from the printing bed midway through (but i fixed that one by adding brims to my prints + using printing glue on the bed, and a textured sheet would help with that even more), and a more major one was the nozzle getting strings and eventually the material sticking to it and accummulating to the point of the nozzle getting clogged on the outside/unusuable (recovering from which would require aborting the print and doing the 10-min long cleaning ritual with heating up, rubbing alcohol, brushes, etc).
ehsankia 4y ago
I'm also pretty new, and in my experience, when it gets tricky is support. Quality models for 3d printers are made to print without supports, but a lot of these normal models have a lot of weird details and geometries that require supports. And then you gotta fiddle with a bunch of settings to find the right parameters for it.

by qup 4y ago

wkat4242 4y ago

Like the others said, forget about petg until you know what you're doing. Just use PLA :)

filoleg 4y ago

I got into 3D printing from zero knowledge a couple of months ago, and i found PETG an absolute nightmare to deal with compared to PLA. Mind you, i only bought filament from Prusa and AtomicFilament, two very respectable manufacturers. Had zero issues with their PLA, and it looked beautiful. With PETG, no matter how much i tried adjusting live-z levels or playing in PrusaSlicer with print speed levels, temperature, layer height, etc., it all would mess up at some point. Out of 5 prints of the same object, I finally managed to get one great print out of PETG. But when I tried printing another one, I would start having various issues again and would have to adjust things again in hopes of eventually getting it right. I just went back to PLA and had zero issues at all since then. Even though I am aware of PLA disadvantages compared to PETG, I simply realized that for my purposes, they didn't matter nearly as much as consistency and ease of good prints.

qup 4y ago
I'll check out PLA if I can't get PETG going properly. I also have some TPU to play with, but haven't yet. Thanks! I'm also going to re-run the cube to see if the same settings work a second time, prompted by your comment. I've really only had failures with the one model.
mitthrowaway2 4y ago
I don't want to deny your experience but I want to provide a counterpoint. I actually find PETG easier and more reliable to print with than PLA, aside from a little bit more stringing. It's especially good for large objects because the warping is very minimal, and it has more strength and flexibility than PLA, and better inter-layer bonding strength, so I don't have to worry as much about brittle failures or print orientation. I use a Prusa MK3S+, with Prusa's textured sheet. After setting the first-layer Z height properly and cleaning the bed with an alcohol pad, it works flawlessly basically every time. I've used both Prusa's PETG and 3rd party filaments with equal success. After many years of falling out of love with 3D printing, PETG helped me fall back in love with it.
- krisoft 4y ago
  > I don't want to deny your experience but I want to provide a counterpoint. I heard that PETG is more sensitive to humidity from the air than PLA. So maybe that is the difference? Maybe you live in a dryer climate and the person you are responding to has more moisture in the air?
  - mitthrowaway2 4y ago
    It's a reasonable thought, but I live in the pacific northwest, which is one of the wettest climates in North America... it's possible, though.
  - filoleg 4y ago
    Could have been, but they just replied that they live in the pacific northwest, which is, incidentally, where I live as well. So that shouldn't be a factor.
- filoleg 4y ago
  Thanks for providing a detailed counterpoint, gave me some ideas. Next thing I will try is a textured sheet. For additional context, my main issues with PETG were prints detaching from the printing bed midway through (but i fixed that one by adding brims to my prints + using printing glue on the bed, and a textured sheet would help with that even more), and a more major one was the nozzle getting strings and eventually the material sticking to it and accummulating to the point of the nozzle getting clogged on the outside/unusuable (recovering from which would require aborting the print and doing the 10-min long cleaning ritual with heating up, rubbing alcohol, brushes, etc).

ehsankia 4y ago

I'm also pretty new, and in my experience, when it gets tricky is support. Quality models for 3d printers are made to print without supports, but a lot of these normal models have a lot of weird details and geometries that require supports. And then you gotta fiddle with a bunch of settings to find the right parameters for it.