Hey everyone- Got my Creator Pro and I'm obsessed. And confused. I am so
glad I found this forum. It has helped me so much all ready in working
thru some things. Overall I am so so impressed with the print quality on
this thing. It has literally blown my mind. Every time I successfully
print something I am filled with a God-like "I made this!" joy. But then
I tear my kapton tape, or burn my fingers, or get ABS stuck in my hair
and it brings me down to earth pretty quick.


I wanted to share a few pics hoping some of you may offer insight into
what I need to tweak to improve my results. First off- the LEVELING. The
struggle is so real. I have spent so much time on it that the platform
cooled off and I had to go thru the preheating and leveling process
again. Ugh. When I first got my printer I went thru my bed leveling
process and according to what I've read here I preheated the bed
beforehand. Used the paper technique and felt it worked great. The few
three or four prints I made were PERFECT. I was in awe of the exactness
of the printing. I had prepared myself for them to be bad, so I was
thrilled. Here's the first non-test print I made, an Olaf cookie cutter:

Photo Sep 24, 11 30 03 PM (1).jpg


Then several prints later I think I must have leveled incorrectly, (or
maybe forgot to preheat it?) because it was too close and I dragged the
extruder thru the ABS and tore the kapton tape. (Which also resulted in
getting a bit of tape jammed in the extruder and then a clicking sound, etc but
I fixed it using Geoff's instructions which worked perfectly thank you!)
I removed the tape and used the blue tape they sent. From that point on
it went downhill and I haven't gotten a great print since. The blue tape
was awful and nothing stuck to it. The abs just dragged around behind
the extruder. What a mess. Tried making acetone slurry, glue stick,
clear glue, and hairspray. Nothing really worked very well. Finally got
my order of kapton tape from amazon and applied that to the platform
hoping that everything would be fixed and I'd be back in business like
it was at first. While the sticking is better, it's still not good. It's
extruding thin and stringy and the first layer doesn't stick completely. I
tried doing a simple triangle print that worked great the first day so I
knew the STL file wasn't the issue. Here's what my base layer looks like
(it's on blue tape with glue base in this picture but it's doing the exact same
thing on the plain kapton:
Photo Sep 26, 9 31 17 AM.jpg



Throughout all this I've kept everything the same as the first day when
I printed successfully- same abs roll, same temps and using the same few
STL files so I would know the issue isn't with any of that. While
waiting for amazon to ship my kapton tape I got antsy so I tried a test
file that came on the SD card and it printed great which blew my mind!
then I saw it had rafts. The rafts had no trouble sticking and the abs
didn't lay down stringy on them. (I still dont understand why?) I then tried
printed a little owl figure, adding rafts to the print. It printed perfect-
it's like the rafts were able to stick so it could then print fine once it had a solid
base to work on. Here's the owl after rafts and supports were removed (sorry
not sure why it's sideways)

Photo Sep 26, 3 51 26 PM.jpg


At this point I wondered if the problem really is the stickiness of the
platform, or maybe it's a leveling issue since it worked great with
plain kapton at first. I tried leveling again (sore fingers!) and
tweaking temperatures, preheating the bed a little higher than my print
temp (112) and got same stringy, not really sticking, results. Then I
tried hairspray on the kapton which worked and made it stick for the
first print (yay!) and got a somewhat good print of that triangle piece
(Legend of Zelda sign in case you wondered) all though still not as good
as my earlier one.


With the kapton and hairspray I'm getting the first layer to stick
better but now it's curling. Here's a pic of the Batman Batarang I printed
and a close up of the curling on the ears:

Photo Sep 27, 8 33 23 PM.jpg

Photo Sep 27, 8 40 07 PM.jpg


So my (primary) questions are why the curling? Is it a platform stick
issue or a leveling issue or something else? Why can't I get a good
first print on plain kapton when I could at first? I need a long term
solution other than the hairspray because I can't be spraying it into my
machine. Either I need to find something else, or get the glass bed and
clips so I can spray it before I clip it on. And any other insight you
can can offer. If you have read this whole lengthy mess to this point
than I thank you now, because you are a better person than most.