I've been trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong with printing using colorFabb wood PLA. I designed a square test object to print that's fairly simple, it has concentric squares with the height increasing for each square moving inward. I set up a print job using the Creality slicer (v4.8.2) to print three of these, side by side, at the back side of the print bed.
Here are the print settings I have tested with (some have been a range):
- Speed: 60 - 80 mm/s
- Nozzle temp: 200 °C - 210 °C
- Bed temp: 60 °C
- Layer height: 0.2 mm
- Nozzle: 0.6 mm, hardened steel
- Raft: no
- Brim: no
- Bed: course texture PEI
- Supports: none, not required for model
I have also replaced the Bowden tube because the original seemed to have deformed at the hot end and was causing a filament restriction. It may have deformed while I was printing a few things with ABS, based on what I recently learned about the PTFE used. I have also leveled the bed after every few prints just to be safe.
What seems to consistently happen when I print is that I see some issues with the first layer with the object printing near the home coordinates (almost looks like the nozzle is dragging through the layer, but typically only in the second quarter of the layer being printed), the middle object has a mostly decent first layer, and then with the third object, which is printing opposite the middle object along the X-axis, it never finishes the first layer. Sometimes it's able to finish the walls, but it always fails while filling in the first layer. When I try a single object near the center it seems to do OK, but there can be some issues with the first few layers.
I've been specifically printing in these spots because I had tried some larger objects that had weird issues when not printing near the center and I was trying to understand what may be behind the problems I was seeing.
The best I can figure is that maybe when printing closer to the edges of the print bed, the wood PLA is binding within the Bowden tube, even with a new one. The tension placed on everything to reach the ends of the print head range might be preventing the smooth flow of filament.
Supposing my thoughts on this are correct, what would be my best option(s) for being able to utilize the entire print bed with the wood PLA? The only things I can think of would be to either convert to direct-drive extrusion or to use a longer Bowden tube and not keep it secured to the wiring harness for the hot end (which I would think could allow the filament to move where it needs to in order to minimize stress). Would either of these help? Are there any settings I should change? If there are any other settings I can share that would be helpful, let me know.
