Getting the height of the first layer of your 3D print perfect plays a huge part in whether
or not the print will actually come out successful.
So today, you’ll learn what a good first layer looks like and how to achieve it.
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Essentially, what you are trying to accomplish with a properly set nozzle height is good
adhesion of your printed part to the printbed.
There are a few other important bits to that, which we’ll look at later, but let’s first
start out with the nozzle height, or, more accurately, setting the correct zero position
for the Z-axis.
3D printers don’t have a way of sensing when the nozzle touches your build surface,
but rely on an endstop or a separate sensor to probe the bed.
For both cases, you usually need to manually set the zero position.
The exact procedure differs from printer to printer, but the general idea is usually the
same: Use a thin piece of paper for stiffer beds and a thicker piece, like a business
card, for springy beds and adjust the endstop or sensor offset until you can feel a slight
resistance from sliding the card around when the printer moves to the zero position for
the Z axis.
Make sure the nozzle is clean and, ideally, heated up so that any boogers will get wiped
away by the paper.
Start in the center of the bed for a first rough adjustment, and if your printer does
not have a sensor-based autotramming or autoleveling feature, make your way around the bed and
repeat for each adjustment point.
Move the printhead as close as possible to the adjusters and tweak them until you get
an even resistance at each of them.
The fine tuning to get the height will need to happen with a few test prints.
Of course, for this way of adjusting the nozzle height, you should be sure that your 3D printer
is neither over-extruding nor under-extruding, as that will throw off the look of the layers.
So start a simple print, and watch the first layer being laid down.
If there are visible gaps between the individual lines, you need to set the nozzle closer to
the bed, if you can see the nozzle digging through previous lines and can’t see each
line clearly when you look at the bottom of the printed part, try setting the distance
a bit higher.
To check how well the entirety of your print bed is aligned, check out the sample files
linked in the video description.
Some people recommend going for a bit of an oversquashed look, but i generally prefer
the height set perfectly and then working with the following tricks to increase adhesion
if necessary.
First off, make sure the bed surface is in good working order.
If you’re printing onto bare glass or a specialised print surface like PEI, Buildtak
or even unheated bluetape, give it a quick wipedown with some alcohol to remove any greasy
spots.
If you’re using gluestick, Printafix or another wipe-on or spray-on adhesive, you
can usually freshen that up with a damp towel or by simply applying a fresh layer altogether.
Also, use your slicer’s settings to increase the extrusion width and height for the first
layer only - this will have the extruder pumping out proportionally more material, which not
only really smooshes the plastic against the bed more, but also makes the first layer more
resistant to little adjustment errors - so with that, there’s really no need to get
the bed perfectly flat and bump-free down to the last 10µm.
Typically, you can go as far as two times the nozzle size for width and a full nozzle
size for layer height, but this is pretty extreme and will likely overstress your extruder.
To counteract, try going slower for the first layer only.
This is also a good idea in general if you’re struggling to get the first layer sticking
well.
Printing at a slower speed will give the filament more time to heat up and also warm up the
bed surface a bit with the radiated heat from the heater block, making it easier for the
first layer to stick.
To get a similar effect, try raising the temperature of the heated bed and the nozzle by 5 to 10°C
just for the first layer - many material and bed surface combinations will stick much better
just with that bit of extra temperature.
Keep in mind that many cheap heated beds will bow up or down as they heat and cool, so when
using this tip, keep an eye out for the second layer as well and use a constant temperature
for the heated bed if you see the second layer getting overstuffed or separating from the
first one.
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And that’s it for today, thanks for watching, and I’ll see you in the next one.