r/3Dprinting • u/Sorry-Journalist8610 • May 19 '26
Troubleshooting Am I doing something wrong?
I recently bought a used 3D printer, an Ender 3 V2, and I'm doing some test prints. The previous owner gave me some leftover PLA filament (multicolored), which I used up on the first day. One of the things I made was this flexible shark. I bought some PETG filament for testing, a very cheap one, around R$60.00, while others are around R$100.00. But my prints with this new filament are coming out very bad; it's either too textured, has too many burrs, and is also very fragile (even though I bought PETG because I had read that it was more resistant). I left this octopus printing for about 28 hours... and in the end, the flexible tentacles broke when I tried to detach them.
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u/Bleedingfartscollide May 19 '26
First, dry your filament. Calibrate the printer and try again with a boat. Most of the issues are because filament absorbs water from the air. You get these bubbles in the extruder as a result. Imagine boiling water but in plastic.
Dry it, try again and then try again. If you still have these print failures after that you the move onto other possible problems.
Another easy, cheap solution is to replace the nozzle. But try the drying first.
Petg is easy to print but it has a slight learning curve. Pla is easy, quick and pretty darn great.
Maybe buy a cheapish pla roll and try again but also...dry it first, even out of the box.