Tell me what I'm doing wrong, please.

[curious aardvark]

I've got a roll of pla that won't even extrude at 190. Needs 220 to print clean. But it's definitely the exception - only mentioned it because that's also white. Pretty much all the other colours I print at 195.
So for this white pla 230 might not be massively too hot. Maybe knock it down to 210 - 215 and try a cube or sphere. Or my favourite test shape a cube with sphere removed :-)

Printing too hot will give you runny pla, that just won't build up properly.

Printing too cool will give you sticky pla that makes a lot of spiderwebs and doesn't laminate properly.

Once you've found the happy medium - pla is brilliant stuff.

If you can afford ploymakr pla-max - it can also be tougher and more durable than abs.
Although that said, I've found the reprapper brand pla I'm using to be at least as durable as the abs and not at all brittle.

Test sphere cube thing attached. If you can print this cleanly - you should be able to print pretty much anything.
Also it only uses a couple grams at most :-)

It tests everything from precision to bridging to under hangs and over hangs in one very compact, quick to print and material light little shape :-)test-sphere-cube.stl

test-spherecube-thing.jpg

And if you want to make different sized ones it's this openscad file:

$fn=100; difference() {


cube (20,center=true);
sphere(d=26);
}

Just change the cube size (20) and the sphere size (26) to get different sizes and thickness of the supports. Numbers are in millimetres.

***

Just loaded my white pla and had to up the preheat temp to 230 before it would even load.
And yes I'm sure it's pla. It sticks to cold tape, smells like maple syrup and has a pla sticker on it.

Currently done a test print at 225 and it worked well. So now printing a larger part at same temp.