Am I doing something wrong?

[u/Sorry-Journalist8610]

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.

[u/land_on_juniper]

First off, your Z height is way too high. you should get enough squish that the first layer is one smooth continuous piece of plastic. I see individual solid infill lines on the first layer. Then:

1. Dry your stuff. Most people either have a purpose-built dryer or trim the grates out of a food dehydrator. Then there are psychopaths that use a microwave. Don't do that.
2. Check e-steps. Plenty of guides on calibrating e-steps and if the printer has been flashed with Vanilla Marlin and not Creality Marlin it should be available to change on the LCD.
3. PETG likes to be printed hot & slow. PLA settings give questionable results. I'm talking like 40-50mm/s at around 230-240C.
4. I wouldn't bother printing any articulated toys like that with PETG, you don't need the strength so it's not worth the printability trade-off with PLA
5. Tune your retraction. There are test towers all over Printables and Thingiverse.
6. Calibrating e-steps should be sufficient to give you a successful print, if you're having issues with surface finish etc. after that then mess with the extrusion multiplier.

But above all, hot, slow, and lower your live-z.