Bad Print Quality

[Khilborn]

Alright I finally was able to print something but it's not right obviously from the pictures.

What I am printing: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:31705

My slicer settings are from here: http://www.geeetech.com/forum/viewtopic ... 099#p21861

Here are the pictures:

[zhangxueyou]

1. I can see the gaps are too wide on the first layer. No gap is the best. First layer is the most important, it may influence the whole printing. So please adjust the distance between nozzle and hot bed.
2. The extrusion multiplier should be 1. Sorry I ignore it for ABS. Is your nozzle diameter 0.3, filament diameter 1.75?

[Zorce]

Loose Belts can cause this also. Make sure you belts are good and tight.

[orest]

I have been having problems with the first layer not sticking to the bed and being dragged around by the extruder. Since there are no explicit directions on how to get this going, would it be possible to get information about extruded distance from the bed and other settings that might improve the PLA sticking properly to the bed?

Thanks much...

[Zorce]

Extruder needs to be down far enough that you can just slide a piece of paper under it. not loosely but snug.
As for the piece moving, everyone has this issue and there are different ways to fix it. It only seems to happen on thicker parts for me. Once method is blue basking tape on the glass. Others use kaplon tape. Some use the purple glue sticks that your kids use in school. I find this works pretty good. Some make what is called ABS paste when printing with ABS. There are many methods and videos all over youtube showing what is working for people. I to have the same issue when printing straight to glass.

[orest]

Thanks very much for the information. I tried the hairspray technique and it worked beautifully. I also changed the slicer parameters to what is suggested here and that helped a lot. Now the bottom layer goes down very nicely. There is still roughness around edges on small objects. Since my belts are tight I think that it may be a flow problem.

[Khilborn]

After more calibration last night this is what we get now. The bottom 4-5 layers just are not right yet. We put the 1st layer height at .24mm which is 80% of the nozzle diameter and changed the heat for the hot end to 245 and the bed to 110. Any ideas on why these 1st 5 layers look like poo?

[zhangxueyou]

The distance between nozzle and hot bed is still not low enough. No gap between the lines of first layer is the best.

[Zorce]

Hmm not sure. 245 for the extruder seems pretty high. I keep mine about 205 and bed at 100 first layer and 95 the rest.
My theory from looking at it is there is too much heat between the extruder and bed causing a warp effect. If course when you go up in payers the heat between the extruder and bed is further apart and layers seem to do ok once it reaches the cooler point. I am just making an guess judging from your picture.

[orest]

I am having a problem with the first couple of layers as well. I am using the Geeetech PLA and the temperatures of the extruder/bed were 210/85 for the first layer and 200/80 for the other layers. The extruder was about 0.25mm from the bed before heating. Clearly, the bottom is terrible, but the quality improves as we go up. What should I try next? The attached pictures show the expected object and the bottom and top layers.