I see a lot of people claim they tune/calibrate their printer any time they use a new spool of filament. But does anyone actually do this? It feels like a waste of time when filament is so consistent, even between brands. I can understand doing it for specialty rolls, but for basic pla? Seems unnecessary
Oh, you poor thing. I made the same mistake. I know, I know, PETG logically makes the most sense - no fumes, higher temp tolerance, cheap - but save yourself weeks of misery and stick with PLA or PLA Plus/Pro/+ for a few months. PETG is a special beast. For all the shit PLA gets, it’s not that bad and MUCH easier to learn printing with.
PETG is more viscous and sticky, and generally requires its own z-offset tuning and retraction tweaks. On top of that, it needs juuuuust enough heat to melt the Bowden tube, which happens to make it really tempting to pop a few prints. I’m pretty sure I invented new curse words while trying to clean out that mess.
PETG was the second filament I tried. The first was Silk PLA. It’s PLA, but shiny, no biggie, right? Don’t learn on Silk PLA either. Completely different set of problems. Silk PLA to PLA is like Frosted Fakes to cake frosting.
Just my $0.02. I know I was all excited to print mods for the printer right away, but I’ve ended up replacing all those mods with MUCH better ones 6 months later. Good luck!
Edit: Forgot to mention, make sure you use glue stick or hairspray on the bed. PETG will bond strong enough to take some of the bed surface with it!
So I’ve essentially started printing on a higher difficulty? Guess I’ll switch to PLA when the PETG runs out and change profiles in the slicer to PLA
Yes, you’re printing on Hard Mode. PETG is weird at first, but easy-ish later on. Some veterans tend to treat it like no big deal, but it can be a real stumbling block for some. I know it took me a while.