I’m new to 3D printing and of course there has to be done a lot of calibration to my K8200.
But why is there such a big difference between the standard black PLA (PLA3B1), which comes with the K8200 and the orange PLA (PLA301)?
The black PLA sticks acceptable on the original printer-bed, even without glue stick, masking tape, or whatever. It shows only les warping due to the fan.
The orange PLA shows a lot of warping and finally the printing gets loose.
Even small objects with 1 by 1 cm dosent stick for more than 4 layers.
Bed temperature is set to 70°C and reaches something around 68 °C
I’ve made several tests with different filament temperatures from 186 °C to 220°C (as recommend at the board)
I have varied the printing speed also between 60 and 180. But none of this does really help. The fan is more a problem than a help so I put it aside.
Now I’m using masking tape that is better but not good.
The masking tape sticks very tight on printer’s bed, but sometimes the printing deform and removes the tape from the bed.
Have you made similar experience with orange or other colors?
it is normal, that filament with different colors have different properties, even from the same manufacturer. If you find good settings for a sort of filament, it is a good idea to store them in it’s own profile.
Have you sanded the bed as recommended by Velleman? There should be no problem with PLA adhesion at 50C without any kind of tape. I had successfull print with this setup in the beginning, but soon switched to a glass plate because of even level.
Objects with a small footprint like 1x1cm will not stick reliable, but you can easy compensate this by printing some brim, this works really great here.
Don’t print too fast. I’m using speeds between 20 and 50 mm/s. Some say this too slow, but I don’t think you can print any faster than 100 without losing too much quality. What experiences did you make with speeds greater than 100 mm/s.
Just in the moment I’m printing with orange PLA from NuNus. It is softer than black and shows a little warping when printing overhangs but fortunately I did’nt have crashed prints because of this until now. But the extruder bolt is grinding the filament sometimes, you always have to look.
Cooling is not a bad idea when printing PLA. But I really recommend to use a different nozzle. The one that you can download and print from Velleman is better than nothing - but not that much. There are some nice designs on thingiverse, where you can find some other stuff to improve your printer. Important for cooling: Take care that the airflow cools your print and not the heating block.
Well, the black filament sticks without any problem. I just did not expect such a huge difference for the orange one. I have made some progress on the orange filament. It seems to depend very much on the object you want to print. I have printed a large object with good quality and a small one with the same setting that was terrible.
I read about, that warping is caused by too fast cool down of the previous layer(s). So I tried to print fast. But it made no difference to the warping effect, and the quality was much lower.
For the orange filament 50 to 70 mm/s @ 195-200°C seems to be a good choice. If the K8200 runs faster there is a danger to get drops, especially on the topside of your printing. For slower speeds the quality is not better. At the moment I’m still testing different speeds for the black filament. 100 mm/s looks ugly. Currently the machine is running at 65 mm/s (to print a better fan nozzle) but compared with the orange filament, the quality is poor. The black filament sticks very good but it pulls strings. I’ve already tried to decrease the travelling speed to 50% but the problem is still there.
Another problem is that the printings don’t fit. I’ve printed the cute octopus SD holder and the large gear for the extruder but all holes are too small. Did you make the same experience?
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Another problem is that the printings don’t fit. I’ve printed the cute octopus SD holder and the large gear for the extruder but all holes are too small. Did you make the same experience?[/quote]
Holes being to small is a known problem in 3d printing. As far as I know it is not being finally solved.
One part is the slicing: Your CAD software may support “real” roundings but when sliced they are aproximated with polygons.
Another problem occurs when printing because of the wall thickness. You can find some interesting information about that here: http://reprap.org/wiki/ArcCompensation.
When printing objects with small holes (e.g. for screws) it helps to calibrate flow carefully to avoid overextrusion. And always have a drill nearby, just in case.
