Quote Originally Posted by curious aardvark View Post
right - absolutely NO brim on that octopus - It will weld all the links together.
And yes - rafts on a longish print will pretty much always weld themselves to the print.
Just plain avoid rafts.

and it is actually a bit of a sod to print.
The tiny little links between the sections are really narrow and lift fairly easily.

Like everything else, the sapphire laughed at such things and I knocked out a re-mix of it with the same legs but a spiders body :-)

Okay - so we need some print setings.

what is your extrusion ratio ?
speed of first layer
z axis offset
bed temp
print temp
print speed.
Retraction settings

And what is your objection to decent print glue ?
Great stuff.
Unless you have PEI or printbite (and often even then) a decent print glue that sticks when hot and releases when cold - is the answer to a lot of problems.
To be fair PEI also does that quite well.

Me I'd order a sheet of self adhesive PEI. It's about 0.2mm thick - get the cheap stuff, so has no effect on bedtemp and all calibrations can be dealt with simply by adding +0.2 to the z-axis offset.
It should be around $15 for your bed size.

The last sheet I bought was £7 and that was 250x250 and trimmed it to size.
So yours shouldn't be that much more

In the meantime try some PVA gluestick from a buckstore.
heat the bed to 60c.
And run the gluestick over it lightly - you don't need to press down.
do it a couple of times - leaving about 5 minutes between layers. It forms a thin plastic layer.
Pla love it.
I've never bothered trying to print on glass and none of my printers have use their original print surface.
'cos basically until manufacturers start using PEI - I'll keep sticking PEI on top of whatever crap the printer come with :-)
Thanks Aardvark,

For what it is worth, the Voxel would print for hours and the rafts came away easily every single time, even on large time consuming prints. I suspect the slicer did its' rafts quite differently.

I hope I can open my cura profile files when i get home from work and dump the contents here. I think given my schedule this weekend that might be the only way to be sure I am answering the questions correctly.

what is your extrusion ratio ? - no clue...probably never modified after downloading tenlog profile
speed of first layer - probably same as speed of the rest of the print. I remember finding an option to change the speed for the raft but not one to change the speed for particular layers of the print itself.
z axis offset - no clue...probably never modified after downloading tenlog profile
bed temp - I've been gradually increasing as build come loose and no build shows signs of warping or melting. I've been trying 68C lately. nothing higher yet.
print temp - 200C
print speed. - 100mm/s but I believe the raft was only 60mm/s - supposedly the printer can handle 150 mm/s
Retraction settings - until yesterday I had left it at 2mm retraction and 60 rate for everything but my prints were too stringy for my tastes. I printed 4 post retraction test prints and increased these until the strings no longer concerned me. finally setting was 5mm retraction at a rate of 65

I have nothing against gluestick but I got the impression here that if prints succeed due to use of a gluestick the operator is doing something wrong and the glue should not be necessary so I stopped using glue as I never needed it on the voxel and as I was worried it would mask deficiencies in my technique. my prints are failing even with the use of glue at this point however.

I would love to have a PEI sheet. I just wish I had bought one with the other new items. I'm sure my timing would be poor to add another $20 3d printer related purchase. too bad they don't appear to be sold at any brick and mortar.