Ender 3 Pro - Bed Adhesion Issue with Cura

[GregValiant 1,351]

One by one is better but this is a frustrating hobby and the impulse to just start changing things can overwhelm.  When the machine is working correctly, and you've got the feel for leveling, the filament is fresh, the first layers go down like they were ironed on, it's all good.  Then the nozzle hits a lip and pushes the print and breaks it loose.  Oh well.

 

Thick first layers take care of things like slight variations in the surface and being slightly off on leveling.  At the start of the second layer the build surface is pretty darn flat and level.  Glad to see you are getting a handle on it.  It took me a couple of months to get a routine down.  Now it's all automatic.  Occasionally a first layer might lift.  Then it's a quick abort and a fresh start.  Remember to practice emergency pauses and restarts.  It's something a bad first layer or the end of a filament spool can be used for.

[sandman416 1]

I have been living in this thread all weekend. I got the Ender 3 on Friday, built it Friday night (had my share of WTF moments) and tried the first print on Saturday using Cura to slice as the provided software only works on Windows. Thanks to this thread I discovered I was leveling too close to the end rather than over the screws. Center was level so all good and why was nothing sticking? It looked liked the hot end was moving the object around the bed. Checked and level was off again. Ran the level STL again, cleaned with IPA a dust of hair spray and finally my test print worked. 

 

Using your information I created a specific listing under material for the brand of PLA I am using.

 

So for all the misfortune everyone here had you made it easier for me to solve the problems that kept me from tossing the printer out the window.

[GregValiant 1,351]

It's a good hobby when things work.  When the printer is in tune and the particular model is a good one for printing (not all are) then it's fine.  The problem with these printers is that the "tune" is on a knife edge and when it falls out of tune, it can be tough to sort out exactly what went wrong and how to fix it.

If you took care to insure that all 3 axes are exactly perpendicular to each other, and that all the trolley wheels are adjusted so that you can just turn each one with your fingers, and your E-steps are calibrated, the printer can turn out very nice and extremely accurate prints.

On the other hand, people who just bolt them together without regard to alignment, or who assume that because some parts came pre-assembled from the manufacturer that they were actually assembled correctly, those folks always have trouble.

 

The weakest point on the machine is the extruder assembly that sits on top of the E motor.  If your printer came with a plastic one then that needs to be changed to an aluminum one at the first chance.  The plastic ones crack and the machine will start to under-extrude.  Those plastic arms have a 100% failure rate.  There are cases where they were cracked right out of the box.

The second weak point is the hot end assembly.  It is the nature of the Creality hot ends on the Enders and CR-10's (same model hot ends) to clog at the bottom of the bowden tube.  Personally, I don't know that I've ever seen a "clogged nozzle".  It has always been a partial plug that develops between the bottom of the bowden and the back end of the nozzle.  At some point - moving to a Micro-Swiss all-metal hot end will become necessary.  They don't clog anywhere near as often.