this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2025
22 points (95.8% liked)

3DPrinting

17472 readers
277 users here now

3DPrinting is a place where makers of all skill levels and walks of life can learn about and discuss 3D printing and development of 3D printed parts and devices.

The r/functionalprint community is now located at: or !functionalprint@fedia.io

There are CAD communities available at: !cad@lemmy.world or !freecad@lemmy.ml

Rules

If you need an easy way to host pictures, https://catbox.moe/ may be an option. Be ethical about what you post and donate if you are able or use this a lot. It is just an individual hosting content, not a company. The image embedding syntax for Lemmy is ![](URL)

Moderation policy: Light, mostly invisible

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
j4k3@lemmy.world
andypiper@lemmy.world
henry_rowengartner@lemmy.world
GrayBackgroundMusic@lemm.ee
22
Prusa Mk4 or Mk4s first layer issues (lemmy.sdf.org)
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by snrkl to c/3dprinting@lemmy.world
29 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Is anyone else having HORRIBLE problems with their Prusa Mk4 or Mk4S first layer quality...

My mk4s developed a problem that Prusa spent 3 months troubleshooting with me where the first layer is being laid down too close, and so filament blobs, then prints fail.

Eventually, they advance replaced my whole printer, and the new one had the exact same problem out of the box..

I managed to find a bug that was raised on github for this exact issue, with 22 other people registering "mee too" for the issue..

I'm just looking for some feedback from the wider community to see if any others have hit this problem?

top 29 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] MrStump@lemmy.world 11 points 2 months ago

I had a problem where my Prusa had first layer problems exactly like this but only in a specific area. Two things fixed it. First, increasing the mesh leveling to use the maximum amount of points instead of just 9 or whatever the default is.

The second was discovering the tiny piece of filament that had fallen onto the magnetic heatbet, below the sheet. It dripped from the extruder at some point, and it was black so it was basically invisible. I only found it when I thought to check if anything was making the bed uneven. I didn't even have to relevel the bed.

[–] roofuskit@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

Preheat the bed for 5 minutes before running leveling.

[–] einkorn@feddit.org 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

On mine, I simply increased Z-Offset in the slicer by a fraction of a millimetre.

[–] snrkl 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Can I assume from your response that you have a mk4 or mk4s with this issue then?

[–] einkorn@feddit.org 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yes

[–] snrkl 2 points 2 months ago

🙏🏻

[–] snrkl 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I can get adequate results with Zoffset or LiveZ +0.04 with smooth sheet and PLA.

PETG is still variable results for same settings, z+0.01 is ok some of the time, others it is still terrible, and still sees filament build up, so if printing real things, it eventually blobs, and has a (bedArea - printArea) chance of then causing a collision.

+0.02 means no bed adhesion, and I can't actually get a finished first layer.

[–] einkorn@feddit.org 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I've never printed with PETG, so I can't help you there, but I heard it's a pretty difficult material to get right.

[–] snrkl 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Nah.. It's easy.. My previous mk3s+ had hundreds of awwsome PETG hours.

[–] thijs@ieji.de 1 points 2 months ago

@snrkl @einkorn I only print PETG and when dialed in it works great. But corner to corner like the photo never works out on my mk3s, the bed is warped and warps even more when heated

[–] TDCN@feddit.dk 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I've only ever had the opposite issue with the nozzle being too far away from the bed due to the bed leveling using a dirty nozzle because the nozzle "cleaning" rutine uses a way too cold nozzle temperature so the plastic is not soft enough to be pushed away and the filament is not retracted so it also oozes because it has been heated for too long. Imo the printer should purge, then retract then clean and then bed level.

[–] ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Can't you just change this? Or are Prusa so locked down that they don't allow control of the printer?

[–] mholiv@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Interesting that people might think this. Prusa was/is THE open source printer company.

[–] ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Isn't their entire FW closed and using proprietary boards? AFAIK replacement parts are also only available as STLs? That's somewhat halfhearted open source IMO.

[–] spitfire@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I believe you've confused them with Bambu

[–] ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

No, I believe you hold Prusa to a higher standard than they actually deliver. It's true their roots are in open source, but these days they are only partially open source and their control board is not open source at all.

[–] IceFoxX@lemm.ee 1 points 2 months ago

Reason is as example bambu. Prusa and the other open source player's doing the development and off has the development cost. So now there the closed source manufacturer which picking their printer from the open source work. Has no development cost.. its not sharing anything for the open source community and ofc can sell their printers for so much lower. This destroys the open source community

[–] mholiv@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

It’s true it could be better. They used to be more open source. Like they used to just publish their firmware source as they released it. Now days they hold back the current generation till the next gen is out. They mentioned this was so they could be more competitive with companies that do less R&D and more cloning.

Like even their slicer was just reskinned etc. it’s in peoples rights to reskin an open source slicer but I see why they did it.

Maybe “was” is the better word. Still better than things like Bamboo though.

https://github.com/prusa3d

[–] snrkl 1 points 2 months ago

If you wanted to customise the starting gcode, I'm sure you could.

[–] aurelian@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Are you printing PETG?

[–] snrkl 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yes, but it occurs with both PLA and PETG.

[–] aurelian@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 month ago

Can you check the humidity levels in the room you have the printer?

I struggled finding reliable calibrations for my printer and materials until I realised a couple of things.

[–] riodoro1@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago (3 children)

this exact issue

Yours looks nothing like the ones on github. Did you try looking at the printer while it’s failing, can you tell if the filament is not extruding or not sticking?

[–] snrkl 1 points 2 months ago

A typical output with PLA.with Zoffset = 0

[–] snrkl 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Thanks..It's a good point. I've updated the post photo, and I'll add the worse failure mode elsewhere.

[–] riodoro1@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

On the new photo it’s obviously too close to the bed but consistently so. Looks like the defaults picked by prusa might not be the best. Try what they posted on github, manually change the Z offset in start g-code. Looks like (hopefully temporarily) you’re back to manually tweaking your Z height like a plebeian.

[–] snrkl 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

This is one of the worse failure modes I have experienced for this issue. In this instance, the extreme amount of "squish" leads to extreme filament buildup on the nozzle, eventually causing colisions and removing chunks of the FL test.

[–] random@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 months ago

at what speed are you printing the first layer and do you use glue?

[–] spitfire@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I had a similar problem (with Creality K1), fixed it by lowering extrusion rate for first layer (in Orca slicer, but there may be such option in the one you're using too). Changing z-offset would've probably helped too.