Failed 3D Prints, and How to Fix Them

3D printers are seriously cool, but as of right now, they are new technology and pretty unreliable. I have a year of 3D printing experience, and I have tried and failed again and again trying to print various models on my printer. However, after failing that many times I have learn a thing or two about settings and tricks to get 3D prints right the first time. If you have any questions, ask away in the comments, and please vote for me if this is helpful!

Step 1: Bed Adhesion

This is probably one of the most common ways any 3D print can fail. 3D printers work by building up objects layer by layer, and if the layers come off of the bed, you usually end up with plastic spaghetti instead of a clean printed part.

Three things contribute to bed adhesion:

• The bed surface (PET tape, glass, or other types)
• The material you are printing in (PLA, ABS, Nylon)
• And the heat of the bed (usually between 60 degrees and 90 degrees Celsius)

The best adhesion I've found for ABS consists of a 80-90° bed, PET tape, with a thin film of Elmer's Glue stick on top.

The best adhesion I've found for PLA is a 0-50° bed, PET tape or uncovered glass, and Elmer's Glue.

Suggestions and methods from comments include:

• Member gravityisweak suggested his method:

Use hair gel from the dollar store on hot glass for rock hard adherence with PLA.

• Member MikeTheSpike says:

I print ABS at 220 degrees Celsius on a 110 degree bed.

Step 2: Over Extrusion

Another common fail is over extrusion. Over extrusion happens when your 3D printer pushes out too much plastic too fast, causing a jam in the end of the nozzle. This jam builds up more and more until the hotend stops extruding altogether, leaving your print unfinished.

The best ways to prevent over extrusion are:

• Make sure you layer height is less than your nozzle diameter
• Increase your cooling fan's power (this will cool the plastic and cause it to slow down)

Step 3: Under Extrusion

On the flip side of over extrusion, under extrusion happens when the plastic coming out of the hotend is too cool. The layers are not hot enough too bond, and the print falls apart easily.

The best way to stop under extrusion is checking you nozzle for clogs, and increasing the hot end temperature. I suggest increasing it in five degree increments until you get a part that has good strength and good nozzle flow.

Step 4: Filament Gets Knotted

One of the most frustrating fails is when your filament is looped under itself and tightens until it is not extruding at all. The only way to fix this is:

When you change filaments, always make sure to hold the loose end firmly and put the spool back in the box, so that the end cannot slip under itself.

Step 5: Incorrectly Leveled Bed

On any 3D print, the bed must be perfectly level, or various problems will happen during the print, such as:

• Your part will not adhere to the build plate
• You part may warp
• The print can have blobs on the z layers
• The print will fall apart easily

Leveling your build plate is relatively simple.

Watch this great video on how to do it, or use my guide below.

Note:This video is not mine and I take no credit for it.

My Method

To level a 3D Printer's build plate (AKA print bed) you will need:

• A 3D Printer
• An Allen Key
• A Piece of Paper

STEP 1

Take a piece of letter paper, normal weight, and fold it in half. Place it under your 3D printers' nozzle and home the hotend onto the paper. The paper should be sandwiched between the bed and nozzle. Now, try to slide it out from under the nozzle. If the paper moves freely, the nozzle is too high above the print bed. If there is too much resistance (you have to pull firmly on the paper to free it), the nozzle is too close to the print bed.

STEP 2

Using your findings from step 1, take an Allen Key that fits your printers' bed clip, either:

• Loosen the Allen screw to raise the bed (Do this if the paper moved freely)
• Or tighten the Allen screw to lower the bed (Do this if the paper was to tight)

STEP 3

Repeat steps 1 and 2 for all four corners of the build plate.

Step 6: Print Print Print!

Have a good time 3D printing. It can get frustrating sometimes, but every time you fail, figure out what happened, and prevent that from ever happening again!

Comments

[ethomas2]

My builds keel going out of alignment please help this is my first printer I have a ender 5 s1

[absissmelly]

Its probably that your x axis belt (extruder belt) is not tight enough.

[bwebster93]

My print started fine, and around the middle of the print, it started to spaghetti but then continued the print in the MIDDLE of the bottom of the print. It was completely off center. The print was stuck to the bed, it was actually hard to get off. I am going to level it again and check, but we have had issues with it being VERY stringy also. Any ideas???? (It won't let me upload pictures)

[alaur74]

Help! I was running a print (flower pot) all night and I got up to check on it and found that the fist few inches printed fine, but then there was a tangled mess of loose filament on top of the existing print, and the nozzle had some old filament hanging out but no longer actually coming out, and it was about 2 inches above the print just moving around still acting like it was printing. Does this sound like under-extrusion?

[jake20000919]

Yes, that is under extrusion. One of the best ways to clean your nozzle is to put the heat up all the way and watch the ABS or PLA get unstuck. I recommend getting rubber cleaning gloves to help with it. I had that issue happen to me before, so it's all good!

[mr124122]

I am user Enders. Very first print, the dig, went very good. Tried printing dog again, print went wrong around 30%. Tip lifted (Z) about 2 inches from dog print in progress, no filterment was being fed out of nozzle. Machine kept moving like it was printing but was 2 inches above project and no filterment being fed. Spool free no tangles... Help please

[alaur74]

Did you ever figure out why this happened? Because the same thing happened to me tonight and I'm curious!

[joelhuebner]

I'm having a problem with bed adhesion. I have it happening back & forth between 2 "dialed" in printers. I have an older E3.v2 with the CRTouch and Filiment Sensor. Correct firmware. It prints great. It has the Creality Glass bed and prints wonderfully most of the time. I still have adhesion problems. I added "rafting" which slows down prints soooo much! Near the end of a print, the raft begins to curl. POP it's loose. I run the recommended label temps for the filament PLA Silk, 225/60. I've taken it up/down 5 degrees, no change. I use Elmer's Glue stick on my bed. I may try Aqua Net (it is so messy) I'm having the same "possessed" results on my E3.v2NEO same filament, different prints. I'm glad they're printing. I did ZERO them, and manually level them. I set the Z offset to -20 to -30 which helps. This bed adhesion is perplexing! Any suggestions welcome.

[NE]

I had a similar problem, my bed was just losing it's adhesion and no amount of cleaning or leveling or bed temp could keep corners from lifting amd detachment. What worked perfectly for me was to get some of those glue-sticks advertised for 3d print beds and just give it a good coating once-over. Should last you a few weeks to a couple months of use, and a single stick will last a long time.

[lorraine03]

I have a ender5 3d printer it printed 100% till a few days ago my fillament does not want to stick to the bed my bed is level right distance from bed I used hairspray on my magnet and I have put on 3d printer masking tape now still does not stick fillament make a blop under nozzle can you help please

[robjguay]

I have to use Isopropyl alcohol every 2-3 prints to clean residue off the bed first. also releveling the bed fixes 90% of adhesion problems. the blop is almost always the nozzle to high. set the nozzle to the zero position and turn out the lights. put a flashlight behind it and see how much light is under the tip of the nozzle.

[AZFred]

Hello all! I just bought a Anycubic Vyper and have been trying to print test cubes. I'm getting the demsions pretty close ( X-20.09, Y-19.85, Z-19.99) but the issue I am having is the lettering is not "recessed" (I would add pictures but you can't really see anything) . For example, the bottom line of the Y is filled in, the top and bottm lines of the Z are filled in, and the X is totally filled in. I am pulling what little hair I have left out of my head. Any thoughts on what I am missing? Thanks in advance!

[Drachels2413]

Could someone explain what happened to my project?

[Sajjad_A]

BradB5 (or anyone else who knows how to solve this problem),

I print stuff on my school's 3 3d printers. The only problem is that 2 of them stop printing after about 5-10 minutes of printing, sometimes longer. They're Makerbots (below picture is the model I think). It says "Extruder Error" when it stops, but I'm not sure if it is Over Extrusion because there is not silky strands coming from different parts of the print and we don't have to clean out the extruder. We just push the knob twice and it heats up (to 215 C) and starts printing again until it stops again.

HELP!!! My dad won't let me and my brother get our own 3D printer because he says we can just use the ones at our school, but we can only use 1. Does anyone know what is happening???

Thanks!

[JamesC4]

Sounds like a printer head jam issue to me. clean the nozzel out and make sure your nozzle temps are good.

[JamesC4]

Sounds like a printer head jam issue to me. clean the nozzel out and make sure your nozzle temps are good.

[Dlbray]

That model of Makerbot is notoriously bad. It looks like the newest generation that has a "smart" extruder head. One thing that helped ours was turning off "Jam Detection." Another was having the filament go straight up and down into the head without running through any tubing.

[Sajjad_A]

Is Jam detection under settings?

Also, would we need an external spool holder to make the filament go straight up and down? There is a shelf above the printers.

[BradBuilds]

Hi J SquaredA, I personally don't use a makerbot, but with any Cartesian robot (normal 3D printers with an extruder), can have some of the following problems that can cause prints to stop suddenly:

*I would guess that your printer's extruer motor driver (A small board in the electronics box on your printer) is overheating, and needs to cool down. When it does cool, all you have to do is heat it back up and resume printing.

To fix this, I would make sure that the printer is in a well ventilated area, and no sandwiched between anything (desks, wall, bookcases, etc.)

Good luck!

[mpshea1]

Good afternoon, I wanted to see if you are still in the business of offering advise.... as I have a roll of PLA that I am starting to think is a bad roll, I have tried to print on both a xinkebot and a QIDI and on both machines it doesnt seem to want to harden and is printing like Rubber...... so it keeps flexing and just making a horrible print.... general PLA setting. Nozzle 200C Bed 65c. Printing at speed of 55. I have tried lowing the temp but then it doesnt seem to adhere to the bed it's not really making any popping noise so I dont think it's got to much moisture. Any way any help would be much appreciated.

Micheal