First layer woes

I will be very brief:

New PRUSA i3 user. Bed leveled but first layer is a mess more often than not.

I have upped the temperatures, increased the skirt printing, and are using all the other tips found on this site (and others).

I have noticed that after printing the skirt, things start to settle down but by then I have a mess in the middle of the print area.

How can I print the skirt away from the main print area and then have the extruder move to the print area to continue printing.

I have the skirt printing 5 loops and at 50 % speed. It appears that the extruder just isn't up for final printing until a fix portion of filament has been passed through.

I understand this is addressing a symptom rather than tackling the problem but I'm so frustrated. I am using 1.75 Hatchbox PLA with a recommended temperature of 180-210. I am printing at 210 with a bed temp of 65. Using blue painters tape. Have tried Z offsets of .1, .2 and .3 in both directions.

Thoughts/comments/ideas?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/07/2017 06:15PM by bobmorning.

Its hard to diagnose the problem when the only description is "a mess" Like say say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

As for printing the skirt away from the print im not sure if you can do that, but one thing you can do ass add a nozzle prime in the start g-code, this will push plastic through the hotend before moving from the home position, this will also mean you can reduce your skirts to 1 or 2 loops just to make sure the plastic is flowing nice and sticking to the bed.

G92 E0 ;zero the extruded length
G1 F200 E3 ;extrude 3mm of feed stock
G92 E0 ;zero the extruded length again

The above g-code is set for a 3mm prime but you can increase of decrees as needed.

In Slic3r there is a distance from object parameter. I typically run 1 loop at 6mm from objects and only 1 layer.

You don't say what your printing but if you are printing a single object that's less than about 25mm x 25mm you can run into issues with detail as well so print 2 parts at the same time. (Generates a larger skirt to help the 1st layer)

Do you mean skirt or brim ?
A skirt is normally printer a certain distance away from the object and is preset in the slicer settings (adjustable).
A brim is several loops around the object and attached to the outer perimeter of the object (normally used to increase bed adhesion of the object).