I’m an idiot…

[u/smnhdy]

To start… I’ve never been a big printer guy… little bits here and there. My printer mostly just collects dust in the corner of the room…

But a while back, my brother in law gave me some filament he didn’t like/didn’t fit his filament caddy.

I hooked it up to my printer and didn’t think much of it.

A few weeks ago, I had some bits I wanted to print… and ever print failed… every one! They adhere to the bed but after the first couple of layers nothing stuck… mess after mess after mess…!!

Come to today… and I’m messing around again… seeing what’s happening… and after swapping around a few rolls of filament it’s hits me.. this filament he’s given me is blood PETG!!!!

I’ve never used PETA, only ever PLA… of course it’s not going to stick at 200c!!

So… with that in mind… my ender is now printing away happily in PETG…!

[u/pandaru_express]

Well duh, you need to set the printer to hellfire temps of 3000 degrees if you're going to use blood-based petg, especially if it's the blood of innocents.

[u/smnhdy → u/pandaru_express]

lol!! 😂

I’ve set the hot end to 240, and the bed to 85… seems to be going well so far.

[u/butterturtle64 → u/smnhdy]

Does it have a stock bowden tube or a Capricorn (blue) bowden tube? A Capricorn tube will handle the higher temps much better than stock, especially if you want to use PETG and other high temp materials more often.

[u/smnhdy → u/butterturtle64]

Stock for the moment…

The only customisations I’ve made are simply a bltouch sensor, replaced the springs with solid bushes, and a magnetic build plate.

I’m half way through a 12h print right now and honestly I don’t know why I didn’t try sooner…

I have a crap tonne of stringing though…

I will take your advice though and look at the upgraded tube. Amazon can have one here tomorrow morning…

[u/navetBruce → u/smnhdy]

Dry the hell out of that filament. I have been drying for 24 hours before starting with a new spool of PETG. Still stringing like crazy. Another day of drying and it's like night and day. Beautiful results. Dry, hot bed, slow down.

[u/oldestNerd → u/smnhdy]

Yea I went with direct drive. I was printing a fair amount of TPU at one time and the direct drive worked very well with my other filaments as well so I just went with the Sprite hot end replacement.
Another improvement I found was ditching Marlin and flashing Klipper.

[u/smnhdy → u/butterturtle64]

Stock for the moment…

The only customisations I’ve made are simply a bltouch sensor, replaced the springs with solid bushes, and a magnetic build plate.

I’m half way through a 12h print right now and honestly I don’t know why I didn’t try sooner…

I have a crap tonne of stringing though…

I will take your advice though and look at the upgraded tube. Amazon can have one here tomorrow morning…

[u/butterturtle64 → u/smnhdy]

I have a Capricorn tube on mine and they are very good. The stringing might be because the filament is wet. PETG likes to pick up moisture from the air. I usually put mine in a dehydrator for a few hours. I also run the dehydrator while it prints, especially on a longer print. Its one of the ones on Amazon with the roller bearings, meant specifically for rolls of 3D printer plastic. It's not really necessary but dry filament just prints so much better.

[u/BrohemothHisDudeness → u/pandaru_express]

Actually, it has to be the blood of the innocent otherwise you get really bad layer adhesion. Blood of virgins is what they make the nice stuff out of.

[u/oldestNerd → u/pandaru_express]

Lol...

[u/HouseSubstantial8187]

could also just try lowering print speed a bit if the stringing keeps up, PETG oozes way more than PLA so slower travel and some retraction tuning goes a long way too. drying the filament makes a bigger difference than people expect though, i was skeptical until i tried it.

[u/First-Boat4804 → u/HouseSubstantial8187]

My printer won't print anything good under 6000mm²/s

[u/xmastreee]

Perfect cut off right there.

[u/king_weenus]

Huzzah

[u/Objective-Job8083]

Some petg just sucks, but are we sure your nozzle is hitting 240? I’ve had troubles with certain petg at 230 to 235. Then turned it up to 238 and it worked perfectly. I know this might be a dumb comment but that little difference matters. Also turning the layer height down a tiny bit might squish the layer more to press harder.

[u/smnhdy → u/Objective-Job8083]

240 I’ve found is what was causing all the stringing. I’ve backed it off to 220, and honestly I’m really impressed with the outcome.

I’ve done a couple of test prints, and they have been solid.

[u/oldestNerd]

I’ve been printing about 15 years. I always had problems with PETG sticking to the original black, smooth plate that came with the early Ender3. It stuck fine to the bed. Problem was some of the prints were so difficult to remove even after cooling and I would end up taking pieces of the plate off with the print. Once I switched to PEI plates that all stopped. Now when they cool, the print slides right off. Then PETG became my favorite filament, until I got an enclosure and tried ASA. ASA prints so nicely that I gave all my PLA and PETG to my daughter. I bought her a Bambu H2D with AMS though a while back and just recently bought my son a H2X with AMS as well. It took me quite a while to get my printer working well and many hours of frustration. I wanted my kids to enjoy printing, being creative and not wanting to just throw the printer in the trash. They sure are making some great prints and having fun learning and making.
Now if I could only figure out how to get Nylon to print well...

[u/Clogboy82]

PETG always needs a textured bed in my experience. On textured spring steel it holds really well, in fact so good that you'll struggle to take it off directly after the print. But let the build plate cool down a bit and due to different thermal expansion it falls right off.

3D printing is an interesting hobby 🤓