Complete newbie needs some help.

[GDubyah]

Hi I'm new to the forum and new to 3D Printing.

I recently bought a Wanhao i3 Duplicator, and like many I am experiencing a few problems when printing, or should I say trying to print, it rarely finishes a print, the problems I'm encountering are;

Warping ( partly solved, but still being experienced on the odd print)

Print not parting from the raft at all

Print failing when printing fine detail, ( no filament being extruded) this to my inexperienced eye seems to be a filament feed problem, when I try to manually feed the filament it wont go through the extruder. On freeing it from the extruder it's bent ( this may be caused by trying to manually feed it), but once I have trimmed off the bent bit, and re-feed it, the filament extrudes without a problem.

Raft not sticking to the plate, I've tried the blue tape and hairspray ( reference numerous You Tube video's) but it still fails to stick.

I'm hoping you guys have some solutions

I'm using PLA filament and .4mm nozzle on the extruder

[techinout]

is yours a heated bed if not try a hair dryer to warm the build plate if you are having trouble with two color printing you can check out my video on youtube showing some tricks for 3d printing including designing your own models in SketchUp I am just getting started on youtube so if you can subscribe to my channel that would be awesome I will be uploading more videos almost daily thanks in advance

https://youtu.be/TXpJW1RhCA4

[curious aardvark]

yes the duplicator i3 has a heated bed.
Not sure how good your youtube channel will be if you don't even know that :-)

For pla I found pva gluesticks to be the best of the 2nd rate alternatives (best is printbite). read through this: http://3dprintboard.com/showthread.p...ntbite-surface

Glue sticks are dirt cheap - I get 5 sticks from the pound shop for a whole pound.
With pla, you don't need raft.
Sounds like your calibration is off as well.

And yes getting prints off the plate if you're not using printbite, can be the real problem.
With the pva, I let it finish and cool then reheat the build plate to 60c and wiggle a scraper under a corner. With printbite I either give it a sharp tap with ahammer a couple minutes after orint finishes, of just wait till the build plate is cool and the print is not stuck any more.

what slicer are you using ?