YALE70

Yeah at 225-235C with the gold Overture PETG, I'd be able to pull the layers apart with little to no effort. I'm honestly convinced the stuff is kind of garbage. Maybe it's the "silk" elastomers in it giving me trouble? I ordered a spool of orange Hatchbox PETG so I'll try things out again once that shows up.

So, quick update on what I've done. I bumped my maximum resolution setting from 0.25 to 0.5 and installed Arc Welder. I also set up the glass bed and put down a layer of glue stick. No other changes to the setup. First thing I did was print another Benchy and there wasn't a noticeable change in quality. The first layer was more flat but there was still the same warping on the bow, holes all over the walls, and the weird extrusion artifact after the layer start point. You can see it in this picture; the off-colored regions the left of the opening in the cabin: Other than that, it's an okay Benchy. I'll at least be able to print something functional with a little bit of post print cleanup, though it won't win any beauty contests (which kind of defeats the purpose of having a snazzy gold filament imo). I decided to devote my attention to fixing those stupid tiny holes in the wall for the time being and printed six AA battery sized test cylinders to try and nail what the cause was: From left to right: Temp: 245C, Flow: 80% Temp: 245C, Flow: 100% (No discernable difference) Temp: 245C, Flow: 100%, Retraction: Off (No more holes!) Temp: 245C, Flow: 100%, Retraction: 0.6mm (Still no holes!!!!) Temp: 245C, Flow: 100%, Retraction: 0.8mm (Holes started to appear, so back to 0.6) Temp: 240C, Flow: 100%, Retraction: 0.6mm (I was able to break this one in half, so back to 245C) So the holes were caused by having too high of a retraction distance, though there might be more to it like retraction/prime speeds but I don't really want to crank those lower if I can help it. The Z seam is unavoidable on these cylinders, but I'll just have to move them in practice. Also @GregValiant, going to 100% flow did not seem to hurt anything like you mentioned. I guess it's kind of funny that they have you nail the flow percentage with a vase cube, but if you see underextrusion on an actual model (which, you probably will), the solution is just to turn it back up again. So... what's the point? I'll have to try the bigger model again once I fix the STL since I messed up the dimensions, and maybe another Benchy before that. EDIT: I'm actually going to call it quits with this specific PETG spool. I tried printing some smaller, more thin prints with it after my initial conclusions and the layer adhesion is still way too weak. I'm not sure I want to keep raising the temps in search of that number for ideal strength, especially not when the best I can get away with is 0.6mm of retraction. Oh well. Time to roll the dice with another brand I suppose.

Gotcha. I can't say I've been convinced flow calibration was doing much good since it mostly makes my top skins look like garbage unless I increase it (I keep the initial at 100% for adhesion... which I'll get to in a second). I do get sharper corners out of it though; normally they bulge a bit, though in most cases I'd imagine that's a problem better served by linear advance. Which I can't do (at least not easily?) because of how Creality decided to configure the stepper drivers on the S1. I guess it's more of a band-aid than an actual "fix". I'll give the E-steps another once over. This time with a pair of calipers and a sharp hobby knife instead of fudging it with the Sharpie haha. RE Warping/Cooling: Looking at the Benchies again, definitely not a flat first layer. Not even close. If you put the three I have with this filament on a flat surface, the bottoms are all slightly bowed out, especially in the front. I wouldn't be shocked if that weird warping area that's consistent between the three just cascades from that initial, barely perceptible curl. Honestly though, I find myself having problems with my prints sticking too well to the bed, just not everywhere it seems. I've ruined my second spring steel build surface, partly because I was an idiot but it pulled chunks of the coating right off it. I did try the spare glass bed I have after the first spring steel surface bit the dust, and I'm certainly not trying that again without a layer of glue stick. First layer tests stuck to that thing like they were JB Welded to the surface. 😩 RE Maximum Resolution: How do I go about calibrating/tuning that? Based on the stuff I'm seeing out there, increasing those values should hopefully improve a good chunk of the weirdness on the exterior. I also found the Arc Welder plugin which looks like it would accomplish a similar end goal. (GitHub - fieldOfView/Cura-ArcWelderPlugin: Cura plugin which wraps ArcWelderLib to convert multiple G0/G1 moves to G2/G3 arcs.) Also, I appreciate your detailed responses. I wasn't expecting this hobby to be a walk in the park but man, I feel like I need all the help I can get at this point (I was trying to get help from Reddit prior, which... yeah). Thanks a lot!

The maximum resolution is set at 0.25 right now. Out of curiosity, are there any cases where you'd want this to be set low? Maybe for a high detail print? Or is one value typically good for most applications? Regarding the Benchy; I did initially have the corner preference setting on smart hiding for a previous Benchy and it generated that nasty Z-seam that ran about halfway up the bow (see pic) along with the kind of haphazard placement of the seam along the stack. Hide seam made the one I posted above a lot better looking visually like you said, since the seam is now along one of the back corners but I still got that warping in the bottom of the bow. I will say, having run temp towers on this specific PETG; it loves to curl on thin overhangs regardless of what temp I print it at. I'm still a bit perplexed on what's considered ideal cooling for this stuff. Everybody seems to have a different take: no fan, a little fan, or full fans. Of course it all depends on the exact filament and fan setup, but what's considered generally correct? Is 40% fans for PETG too much? Too little? The flow calibration was done per Teaching Tech's guide with the vase cube, and because I wanted to improve dimensional accuracy. However, like cooling PETG, I see a lot of mixed opinions on if messing with flow is a necessary/good thing or not. I had it initially set to about ~72% (I was getting roughly ~0.52mm on a 0.4mm line width setting) but I was having issues with my walls not sticking to each other, so I gradually bumped it up to 80% to try and alleviate that. The E-steps were calibrated since I replaced the hotend though this time around I did it with the nozzle removed and it was only slightly off from what I had it set to previously. That said, I probably shouldn't be doing it with the whole Sharpie + ruler thing if I'm going for utmost accuracy.

Hi all, I recently switched over to Cura 5.0.0 and I've been struggling to clean up the PETG prints out of my Ender-3 S1 with a full metal hotend. This prints themselves look mostly good but I'm seeing all kinds of surface artifacts that I believe are temperature and/or travel related. The Overture gold PETG I'm using prints rather hot and anything lower than a 240C nozzle temp has caused bad underextrusion at the layer start points and brittle parts. With my present settings, right now the most visible issue is the Z-seam which looks like a complete mess on the cylindrical portions of the part I printed. The seam feels slightly raised when you run you finger across it, like it's slightly overextruded and it leaves this "shadowy" artifact as it progresses into the layer which you can hopefully better see on the areas I highlighted in the photos, especially the Benchy. On the larger part, the far right cylinder has a ton of rough surface imperfections following the Z-seam. Based on the how the printer behaves before the print starts; it oozes over an inch of filament that I have to quickly swipe away before the print starts, I wonder if I'm printing too hot/cooling too much or need to try adjusting my retract/prime settings or enable coasting. The second issue is there is a lot of small raised blobs between the cylinders on the large print, as well as lots of smooth holes/bubbles in the layers all over the print. The bubbles have persisted even at lower temps so I halfway wonder if they're a filament drying issue (I did dry this roll initially, but it has been sitting on the printer for a few days now), or if it's related to retraction/travel or overlap setting. The blobbing I'm less sure about. It only occurs on the cylindrical sections next to the center bracing piece on the part and they occur in a repeating diagonal pattern until the bracing piece ends. There's a lot of variables at play here and I'm not really sure where to start since I'm still fairly inexperienced at 3D printing. What might be some solutions here? My relevent slicer settings and Cura profile are below. Thanks! Settings: Printing Temp: 245C Bed temp: 75C Flow: 80% Initial layer flow: 100% Layer height: 0.2mm Wall thickness: 1.2 Wall line count: 3 Z-seam alignment: Sharpest corner Seam corner preference: Hide seam Top/bottom layers: 5 Skin overlap percentage: 10% Infill: 20% Cubic Infill overlap percentage: 20% Print speed, infill speed: 30 mm/s Wall, Top/bottom, initial layer speed: 18 mm/s Travel speed: 150 mm/s Acceleration control: On (defaults) Jerk control: On (default) Retract at layer change: No Retraction distance: 1 mm Retraction speed: 45.0 mm/s Prime speed: 90.0 mm/s Retraction minimum travel: 1.5 mm Retract before outer wall: Yes Z-hop: Off Fan speed: 40% (0% on initial layer) PETG Test New.curaprofile