It has been a while since I did any 3D printing. I would say, probably a year? Since my last posts about printing something were back in May 2020.
I wanted to print something for my scooter (a key tag) and so I started up the Ender-3. It has been more than a year, and the printer has been moved to another location, so I was concerned about the bed leveling. So I ran a simple first layer test. Which came out like this.
Okay, acceptable given that it has been more than a year. Yes, the bed needs to be leveled for better quality, but as it is now, it can still print something. So I printed the key tag.
As you can see, the skirt had gaps, which again, could be a signed that the bed leveling is slightly off. The top layer also had some gaps, which I think it due to moisture in the PLA+ filament. I will reprint the key tag at some point after leveling the bed and drying the filament, but this will do for now.
By the way, an easy way to get some squish is to use the Z offset. For example, in my case (manual mesh bed leveling), I can use
G29 S4 Z-0.04
to bring the nozzle 0.04mm closer to the bed for the first layer.
Update July 26, 2021: I found out over the weekend about my underextrusion issues. I am using a Titan Aero direct extruder, and it seems the extruder gears and motor got a bit clogged by dust and such. This resulted in random stops in extrusion, and as dust built up, totally no extrusion at all. I used a small dust blower to blow away the dust and oiled the gears/motor with a bit (too much) of machine oil. Took me quite a while to remove the excess oil subsequently before I could get a print to stick on the bed... 😅
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