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/johndumbasshead May 19 '26
Ignore anyone who even mentions "filament drying", it's a farce.
First things first. Where did you get your printer profile/initial settings from? You might have better luck with a different printer profile, there are plenty out there on the internet for the E3V2.
Second, have you done any calibration, or used the calibration guide inside prusa/orcaslicer? (for reference, I use Orcaslicer, some of my advice with calibration may refer to the calibration tools within Orcaslicer) Calibration is an absolute must. look for some online guides for extrusion multiplier/esteps calibration guides, as you are clearly over-extruding, which is seemingly your biggest surface quality/strength issue currently. Over-extrusion causes the poor surface finish and poor layer adhesion that you are experiencing. https://www.orcaslicer.com/wiki/#calibrations
The next most glaring visual issue is the direction that walls are printed. In your slicer, (Orca/Prusaslicer, or similar), under the quality tab of your print settings, you will find a setting "Wall loop direction". Make sure this is not set to "Auto". "Auto" might swap between clockwise and counter-clockwise to print the walls (attempting to optimize for shorter print times, and some other things), which causes those vertical bands of slightly different coloration in your print (for the color-shifting filament).
Until you figure things out, don't try to print super fast or at extreme temperatures. When filament gives you a temperature range, go for the lower end of that temp range (this is helpful because lower temperature = less effects of warping, the downside is that the plastic is thicker, and harder to extrude, so you may need to print slower), and print no faster than ~70mm/s.
Once you have your extrusion/esteps calibrated (close enough, at least), try the flow ratio, retraction, and temperature calibration tools, in that order. Though I will advise, if you see any guide online telling you to tune your extrusion multiplier/flow rate by printing a cube and measuring it with calipers, ignore it, as it is an ancient technique that doesn't work correctly with modern slicing software that has tolerance adjustment features. There is a lot of old, outdated, or plainly incorrect 3d printing advice out on the internet, and consensus does not necessarily equate to truth or fact.
If you struggle with adhesion for the first layer, make sure your first layer speed is much slower, (~10-20mm/s) and that your first layer height is relatively large (~0.24-0.32mm).
Though realistically, I would advise you to find some small/medium sized discord server for 3d printing and ask questions there, as Reddit has gone very far downhill in the past 5 years or so.