add north 3062 Filament E-PLA Instructions
- June 12, 2024
- add north
Table of Contents
23/22, 3:26 Pi E-PLA – add:north
2021-11-13
E-PLA
How to print with E-PLA
Recommended printing temperature: 195-225°C nozzle temp and no or up to 60°C
on the bed Our E-PLA is our most easy to print filament and should print
trouble free on any 3D-printer.
Regular print issues that you can run into printing with PLA are: Stringing
caused by improper retractions settings or too high temperatures. Bad bed
adhesion caused by a dirty/greasy bed.
Improper bed leveling. Bridges and overhangs that sag caused by insufficient
part cooling or too high print temperatures.
General tips on 3D-printing temperatures
Finding the right printing temperature for any filament could be a compromise
between visual laoks and strength. With lowered nozzle temp you often get rid
of problems like oozing, stringing and are able to handle cleaner bridging and
steeper overhangs. However lowered temps will affect layer adhesion, providing
weaker parts. Every printer is different so to get the best result experiment
with nozzle temperature until you’re satisfied with the result. A good advice
is to start in the middle of the recommended temperature span and work your
way down if needed for greater visual looks or the other way around for
increased strength. With some patience and tuning you can achieve both. It’s
always a good idea to print a temp-tower whenever you test a new filament. You
can find numerous of them over at “Thingiverse’, this one for example link.
How to get E-PLA to stick to the bed
E-PLA sticks well to most bed surfaces. If you need increased adhesion or to
prevent warping when printing large objects, use glue stick, hairspray or
Magigoo. A PEl-sheet, smooth or textured is a really good investment to help
your prints to stick.
General tips on bed adhesion/leveling
The first rule of 3D-printing – always get a perfect first layer, o Not too
close, not too far, just perfect. If the printed plastic strings overlap each-
other and plastic oozes out to the sides, the nozzle is too close to the bed.
The opposite would be that the plastic has a hard time sticking to the bed and
that you’ll see gaps between the printed lines. A perfect first layer is
smooth to the touch, without any gaps. Filaments like PLA often like to be a
bit squished to the bed for a good first layer. PETG on the other hand needs
more clearance to prevent residue buildup on the nozzle.
If you have trouble with warping, check your surroundings for drafts or low
temperatures. At least 20°C ambient temperature is recommended. If needed, try
an enclosure for better results. If you plan on printing an especially
complicated model with a lot of details on the first layer, lower your first
layer printing speed to 15-20mm/s to ensure a good first layer.
For extra bed adhesion, if needed, bump up the first layer hotend and bed
temperature 5-10°C and use a brim.
Improve visual quality of your 3D-prints
The second rule of 3D-printing — lowered print speeds will produce better
looking prints.
Regardless of what printer you use, you’ll most likely get better results and
improved visual quality if you lower your print speeds. This along with
decreased layer heights of course. For good visual results we recommend a
layer height of no more than 0,15mm and a printing speed that doesn’t exceed
SOmmy/s.
To further improve visual quality, tune your retractions speeds and distances
to get rid of unwanted strings or blobs. If you still have problems, try
lowering your nozzle temp in 5°C increments.
Check that your part cooling fan is optimized and working correctly. Cooling
is needed to handle overhangs and bridging and can make a world of difference
to improve visual part quality.
For a nicer surface finish on your top layer, you can enable “ironing” in your
slicer software, it could make major improvements on especially PLA-prints.
(Works only on flat surfaces).
Increase the mechanical strength of your 3D-prints
Rule number three in 3D-printing – Maximal strength is achieved with as high
layer height and temperature as possible, and as little layer cooling as
possible.
Are you willing to sacrifice a bit of the visual quality for maximum strength
of your part? Then you should instead use as high layer height and printing
temperature as possible and as little cooling fan as possible. The higher
layer height you have, the longer the extruded string will remain warm and the
bigger the contact surface between the layers become when the string is
extruded. The higher the temperature, the harder the bonding between the
layers. And finally, less layer cooling flattens the cooling curve of each
layer which gives the material more time to bond firmly to the layer below.
This also means that bigger nozzles produce stronger prints, and is also the
reason why an elevated print chamber temperature is useful sometimes.
If you want both strong and visually good prints you need to find a compromise
that will balance both strength and overhangs/bridging/detail resolution. Then
slicer settings like minimum layer time with dynamic cooling fan, bridge fan
override etc. comes into play, which is part of the somewhat higher school of
3D-printing, which it is impossible to give general advice on since it differs
a lot from case to case.
https://addnorth.com/knowledge/articles/e-pla-print-guide