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Hi everyone, I'm extremely new to 3d printing, and have taken over a printer from a friend who doesn't use his. I'm trying to get those smooth prints I see people having, and I understand I need to get a smaller layer height to achieve the details. However my stuff keeps coming out looking like the pictures below.
Any idea what's going on and how I can start fixing it?
I'm printing PLA filament.
Thank you!
Underextrusion. You probably have burnt filament clogging your nozzle. Get your nozzle to 80C, then set it to 150C and start pulling the filament back out as the temperature climbs. It's called a cold pull and usually clears this sort of thing.
Set your initial builtplate temp to 70, and the builtplate temp to 55 for printing. At 70 the pla will hit glass transition, then when it cools to 55 the adherence will be very good.
If you want smooth walls, slow the speed to like 40mmps, and squish the layers down to 0.10 mm with a .4mm nozzle if you can.
Play with ironing for the top surface smoothing.
I don't recommend reducing your cooling much with pla. Maybe down to like 50% at the lowest.
Edit: your nozzle and later height should be fine, I glossed over that. Bring the nozzle down to 200 or so.
To add to this, I would highly recommend not worrying about using a .10mm layer height until you have reliable prints at .20mm height.
Trying to get finer detail is just compounding issues onto a print that looks to have quite a few things wrong.
I agree with you on underextruding. Easiest way to test would be for OP to measure 150mm of filament from the entrance of the extruder and mark it. Set nozzle temp to 215 or so, and manually extrude 100mm. Then re-measure to your mark and see how far off you are. If it's way off OP needs to calibrate his extruder motor steps.
Also as other people have said, might be worth trying a different filament, especially if that filament is really old.