pla sticking problem

Yeah +1 to the above.

If your nozzle is not low enough to the bed then this can cause many issues.

Also for adhesion we use Pritt Stick glue. Smear a coating on the bed just before you print and the part should stick very well

Hope this helps,
Cheers,
www.3dexfilament.co.uk

I don't know what i was thinking. Last paragraph above i meant PLA not sticking when moist not kapton.  i edited my previous post.

-------------------------

I am preparing a soaked hairspray plate as i saw recommended elsewhere.   A light spray did nothing for me.    I have to go buy some printer tape.

The best I've gotten so far is 220c first layer extrusion, 195c rest with a 60c first layer bed and 50c rest.  This allows a single line to stick, but when extruder goes back over the area, the PLA still sticks better to the nozzle than the bed (causing ripples and detachs) I pretty much cant print anything with a brim since it ripples and collides with extruder on future passes.

The extruded line is nice and flat as it should be. so i don't thing the gap is the issue.

I just recalibrated my extrusion rate which helps some, I was over-extruding quite a bit.

One more time:

Don't heat the bed, and line it with blue painter's tape (not printer).  Then print on that.  It won't come off.  In fact you might have a hard time removing the print from the tape

blue tape doesn't work either (sorry i meant painters before.. i cant type today).  I am quite a troublemaker aren't I.   I tried the 'soaked hair spray" plate and got a decent stick (nowhere near what i consider good enough for for anything but a simple cubic print though.

Pictures!  (sorry they are high res for zoomability)

1:  blue tape attempt. first layer 220c, bed cold. rest 190c, cold (blue tape screwed up white balance horribly, sorry my camera wouldn't allow overriding, tape is deep blue, filament is brownish/bronze):

Some notes:
* the glob on the skirt loop is the "tip cleaning anchor" I typically extrude which obviously didn't stick.  This is not really needed for  e3dv6, but I've not bothered removing it from my custom gcode.
* the skirt thickness is less than 0.1MM (measured via caliper) to give you an idea where my bed sits.   is this not close enough?
*I aborted the print after the brim popped off on second loop.

2:  calibration cube progression (focus sucks..hate my camera sometimes. Let me know if you need individual retakes)

Left to right (black sharpie dot indicates front of printer):
a. First attempt that stuck...barely.  temp 195, bed plain glass at 50c. Print delaminated while removing from printer (note removal included tapping slightly iwth finger).  Single hull no fill.
b: temp 220 c, glass 50c, again print barely stuck.  top bridging pulled the walls together.
c: bed: gluestick.  20% honeycomb fill 3 hulls. First layer 220 extrude, 60c rest 190c, 50c.  significant over exxtrusion causing buldging at corners. Note what I mentioned in previous post for brim.
d: Same as 3 except post extrusion steps calibration.
e: same as 4 except on hairspray plate at 90C first, 80c rest and no brim.  Note severe pulling on walls. Not sure what caused that.

I am guessing most of the deformation issues is because i don't have a cooling fan  I don't remember having such issues when i was printing from this roll ~4 yrs ago.

3: a better quality closeup of b and c

4:  Why is the only thing at lowe's in metric is the only thing i need in SAE?

edit .. i really cant type today.  bluetape was on cold bed

edit 2:  All i can figure out is my supposed PLA filament isnt PLA.... or something unnatural happened to it.   other than not sticking it behaves like PLA.  smells like buttered popcorn jelly beans when extruded,  has a huge "melting" range.  from rubbery at 60c to almost water like at around 230c,   Acetone just makes it rubbery.  the static cling of small parts is insane (skirts printed cling to my painted wall for weeks. it was a convient place to put them.. of course this was 4 yrs ago when i was having success from this spool)
Hhrm...

On the other hand the lawsy extruder isn't collapsing anymore and the e3d is working great with abs except for minor moire.  In fact the reason i switched to PLA is to try to print a POT screw driver for the 1/32 step driver upgrade.

I finally got it to stick to bluetape. i found some youtube video that mentions rubbing new bluetape with alchohol.  Adhesion seems much better.

unfortunately, i accidently left repetier host's slic3r override enabled.  i had it set to slice at .1mm and use honeycomb fill at 20%.  the honeycomb cells seem to scale proportionally to layer height instead of fill density..wierd.

Anyway, this is resulting in the calibration cube to take over an hour to print instead of 10 minutes.   Also it is printing oddly.  the walls are the tiniest threads surrounding the honeycomb.  the overall affect is that of sponge .. kind of interesting. I need to save this setting for future tinkering.

Once this is print is complete ill know how well it actually attached.

As close as i can get with a sharpie and a piece of wire insulation cut to length as a guide can get.  For ABS things are working great. (in fact the brim i printed on a vase last night was so nice and smooth i left it attached. )

I got my potentiometer screwdriver printed (well. got a couple of sticks printed i was able to sharpen back into a screwdriver). Anything printed with PLA at .1 MM still looks like a sponge, but i think I'm going to give up for now.  i obviously need a fan to print PLA properly so I guess that will be my next upgrade ( post coming soon to a forum near you )

I'm going to rant a bit.  I'm not sure if this deserves a separate topic yet or not. Please note I don't mean to offend anyone on here (or elsewhere for that matter).  All you guys have given me some great advice. Just because it didn't work for me, doesn't mean it isn't good advice. Again, I'm not angry, just a little frustrated at all the unknown variables. (Again you guys are great!)

Call this a post-mortem analysis of the issue we were discussing.

First off lets talk about my PLA.  it worked more or less predictably about 4 yrs ago.  Now it wont stick to anything, including blue tape until i stripped it down to paper fibers with alcohol. 

The unanswered question is why? Some say the PLA goes bad.  Again why?   

The leading answer to that is it absorbs moisture, which is quite probable and something i plan on testing later.  I will bake the spool as directed (around 40c i think?)  and store it in my new moisture resistant zip-lock branded storage tub (standard tub with integrated weather stripping) and a jar of calcium chloride desiccant (damp-rid brand. Although cheap is still a ripoff, $5 gets me 10 pound of active ingredient as driveway deicer. the cup was $3)

PLA is biodegradable.  It is possible that the plastic was munched on by some airborne microorganism.  Being that it was being stored in cool dry place, it would be kind of disturbing to think our PLA prints will eventually be eaten into dust.  Some kind of PLA mite would be crazy.

PLA is a huge category of plastics. There are lots of grades each with separate properties. Although I'm sure it has to be regulated at some point (it is used for food storage/distribution).  In my other topic, i was trying to find the linear thermal coefficient for PLA and was faced with 100 MSDS docs each describing something seemingly completely different.

So, as a community, how do we find someone working on a doctorate in materials engineering to write up a paper on why 3d printing results vary so much as remedies appear to be effectively random?