Help First layer woes

[GregValiant 1,246]

I am not 100% sure but it would seem that if you are using the same heater and thermistor that you should not have to run the Auto-Tune.

I saw those curls and it does look like there was not enough grip.  That's why I mentioned the "Inside to Outside" setting.  If the outer wall goes down first on a circle and there isn't enough bed adhesion then you can get those curlies as the filament gets dragged around by the nozzle rather than sticking to the bed.

There are a lot of things that can effect initial layer bed adhesion.  One thing you can do is to increase the "Initial Layer Flow" in Cura.  I set it to 105% for PLA and 110% for PETG.  It's kind of a crutch but I manually level my bed and the extra flow can compensate for variations that might occur with the leveling.

[gr5 2,167]

those curls are "bed adhesion" issues.  The typical fixes are:

1) Clean the bed from oils

2) heat the bed

3) brim (unrelated in this case)

4) leveling/squish

5) glues/treatments like magigoo

6) special surfaces like PEI

 

The most important of all of the ones above is #4.  In my opinion you need a little more squish.  I don't know your particular printer and how you level but you should level a little closer.  Or there is a hack in Cura where you can increase the flow for the first layer.  If you put 0.3mm thick of filament into a gap of 0.3mm (where the nozzle is 0.3mm above the bed) versus if you have a gap of 0.15mm then you get something like 10X more stick.  It's really hard to believe until you've experimented with it.

 

Cura also has options to make the line width farther apart but that doesn't help with squish at all.  I think that defaults to 120% or something.  It's not going to help with squish.  Only initial layer "flow", of cura features will help you here.  But really you should fix this on the printer - have it level a little lower/closer.

[gr5 2,167]

To prove I'm right, when it is drawing those circles push the bed up (or the nozzle down) just slightly - the thickness of a sheet of paper is enough so it shouldn't take much force at all.  And you should find those circles stick properly.

[stejan 1]

24 minutes ago, gr5 said:

To prove I'm right, when it is drawing those circles push the bed up (or the nozzle down) just slightly - the thickness of a sheet of paper is enough so it shouldn't take much force at all.  And you should find those circles stick properly.

 

I will give it a try and report back 👍