# 3D Printing > 3D Printer Parts, Filament & Materials >  Amazon Basicfil PET

## JasonF88

Hi

Fairly new to 3D printing and as a result ended up with a few spools of this PET filament from Amazon.
I'm really struggling to get any prints using it (done plenty of PLA prints)
Ive tried every combination of settings I can think to try, with various degrees of success but printing always fails or completes with gaps.

Issue seems to be glopping which stops filament extrusion when the nozzle goes back over the gob, sometimes the extruder will click a few times and recover and can do this a few times before I guess it gets too blocked

Does anyone have working setting for this filament I can use as a starting point to try get this dialled in?

Thanks in advance

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## curious aardvark

what printer do you have ? 

not sure about pet as it is different to pet-g. 

But sounds like you're printing too fast or too cool or both :-)
And probably need faster and longer retractions.

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## JasonF88

Printer is a Tronxy p802m. I've tried a slow as 30mm print speed and extruder from 220c up to 250c. Retraction length from 0.9 up to 6.5

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## curious aardvark

30mm isn't that slow for pet. 
It's weird, sticky stuff when melted. 

One reason we usually go for pet-g - and yes they are quite different. The 'g' stands for a glycol molecule that's tagged on to the polyethylene terepthalate.
Changes the material properties quite a bit.  

okay you've got a direct drive extruder - so keep your retractions down to under 2mm and run it slow - say 30mm/s.
Also cut your fan speed right down. 
See what happens if we treat it like flexible filament. 
Which If I remember the roll I accidentally bought - it's pretty bendy stuff. 

Is it sticking to the bed okay ?

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## airscapes

PETG 230C Nozzle and Bed 70-80C, retraction I use from .8 -1.1 mm 30mms for retraction speed, print speed depends on part size and shape but 30mms is a good start.  Z offset needs to be correct for your layer height.  Use highest layer you can for your nozzle size. Extrusion Multiplier  must be correct and   PETG must be dry for good results.  As I said in my first response, if you are under extruding  and you have used PLA first and did not clean the nozzle with cleaning filament or other more difficult mechanical means, you are probably restricted.

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## JasonF88

Thanks will try what you have suggested and give it a try.

One thing it is doing well is sticking to the bed :-)

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## JasonF88

Early days but looks like print speed may have been my biggest problem, down to 20mm/sec and looking much better

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## curious aardvark

yeah, while it's not tpu, because of how viscous it is wen it melts, it behaves very similiarly to a tpu in the extruder. 

Glad we're heading in the right direction :-)

Never any fun having a bunch of filament you can't use (he says looking at 2 shelves of abs).

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## airscapes

> Never any fun having a bunch of filament you can't use (he says looking at 2 shelves of abs).


Yes you can, I know you can! just find a big card board box to put over the printer while it is printing!  Fire up the bed to 110C  30 minutes in advance to heat the air in the box and you are good to go!

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## JasonF88

Massive improvement using 20mm/s and 1mm retraction managed a decent Benchy, struggled on the cab columns with mini jams so have some gaps, but I have a print ????

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## curious aardvark

no you have a benchy - throw it away, never ever ever print another and we'll say no more about it ;-)

For test prints always make something useful you actually want - I tend towards trolley release keys. small, use very little plastic and you can see what's happening with ANY print really. 

As far as the abs goes - Nah, the shrinkage, smell and having to heat the print bed to 85 (not 110) is a pain. 
I could easily enclose my knp - it's a replicator pro without the door and lid after all. 

But at the end of the day, abs is just too slow, too smelly, too shrinky and not as good as pla for 99.9999% of the things I make or am ever likely to make. 
If I need something different to pla, then there's always pet-g and nylon 645.

At the moment I'm making miniature solitaire sets using steel bbs instead of marbles. 
As these are way too small for fingers too move I'm currently (as I type) making a 'stick with teeny tiny 2mm diameter magnet for actually picking up and moving the balls. Adjusting it so that you can easily both pick up and drop the ball bearings is apaintstaking process. 
Makes one - manage to wrestle a 2mm magnet into the slot. test, adjust magnet chamber up or down by 0.1mm and try again :-)

I mean they have less than a gram of pla in them and take about 5 minutes to print. 
But that's simply stuff you can't do with abs - or would want to.
Of course it would be easier If I'd actually measured and realised that these are 2mm x 1mm and NOT 2mmx2mm. 
Back to openscad,  I need a much smaller slot :-)
These are the magnets in question - fiddly isn't in it !
teenttinymagnets_640x418.jpg

The abs is basically free to a good home. But in the last 5 years I have singularly failed to even give it away.

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## curious aardvark

that's it I give up for tonight !

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## airscapes

not wroth the shipping across the pond or I would take it :-)

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## curious aardvark

lol oh hell no. 
A 6oz plastic mould just cost me £7 to ship to the states. 
8 or 9 kg of abs doesn't bear thinking about !

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## johnwilly123

Thank you. Because I'm a beginner and I have exactly the same problem. At first, I was sure I assembled it wrong, but then I found the instructions on YouTube. Then I thought maybe it was the printer itself. Because I ordered it from China. I had a lot of trouble getting it, so I didn't follow the delivery method. Then the seller did not send it for a long time and the package was missing for a month, but I was lucky the printer arrived. When ordering plastic I decided not to make the same mistake and used china post. Thank you for your advice, it was a great help.

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