actual print on print bed

Hi,

I have my prusa all ready. All motors work and it extrudes. I loaded an existing sample stl file that should print a whistle. Everything works beautifully but PLA does not stick to the print bed. It extrudes, motors follow the contour of whistle but no layers are getting made. What I am getting is a mess of extruded thin pla. Any help on extruder rate, motor speed setting etc. or maybe something that I have overlooked would be aprreciated. I have a makergear extruder motor.

What type of bed are you using? PLA has strong adhesion to cool temperature blue painters tape.

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Charles S.
Software Engineer
Prusa Mendel I2, RAMPS 1.4, Marlin 1.0 R2, Pronterface, Slic3r

fold a piece of regular printers paper and jam it in between the extruder and the bed, ask the printer to home the axis and make sure the fit is tight enough to allow for moving the paper, but not so loose you can't feel the drag on the paper

as mentioned above, make sure you use the correct surface, blue painters tape is the bomb for pla (pretty sure it's the only thing that really works for pla) speaking from experience, kapton tape does NOT work

Kapton tape on heated glass (50 deg C) works fine for me, I had a LOT!!! of problems with sticking before this setup.

Have you calibrated your feed rate so that when you tell the machine to pull in 100mm of plastic it actually does pull in 100mm. I do this with the hot end removed and keep updating the firmware until it is correct, then I put the hotend back on and check it agian. This way your wasting large amounts of plastic during initial calibration

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Experimenting in 3D in New Zealand

Someone at this forum recommended to me to use PVA glue on my heated glass for PLA. It worked like a champ. I have very few lifting problems now. BTW - PVA glue is just diluted elmer's glue (white glue). - I dilute it 4 parts water to 1 part glue, and spread it on the bed with a paper towel. It dries in no time if the bed is heated. Also, it doesn't seem to come off with each print. I do refresh it before what I think is going to be a troublesome print, but I have been extremely happy with the results.

The elmers glue works beautifully. Easy to apply, didnot need to apply again for every print.
Thanks a lot. I have printed three objects - thrilled!!

Glad to have helped.

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