3D Printer Filament Recommendations

The only issue I had with hairspray is the over spray can get sticky on anything it lands on. Also the glue stick cleans up quickly with some isopropyl alcohol or a quick rinse of the glass plate in the sink. Everyone has their own way that works for them. You just have to try and see what works for you! :grinning:

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Ah, I always¹ sprayed the hairspray on the glass away from the printer. I found the hairspray cleaned off the glass just fine rinsing in water, much faster and easier than glue stick. I agree, getting overspray on the printer isn’t great. I used it for years on glass; @funinthefalls pointed out to me that there’s no reason to avoid it on PEI.

¹Except for the few times I tried hairspray on the terrible fixed “PEI” surface on my pandemic printer, before replacing it with magnetic spring steel bed. There, I made a shield out of a box to protect from overspray.


If you print on glass, be aware that glass isn’t a great thermal conductor, so it’s a good idea to let the bed come up to temperature and just sit for a while. With glass, I usually pre-heated the bed for 5-10 minutes or so before starting the print job; the thermistor reads the temperature on the bottom of the bed where the heater is, but the plastic only “cares” about the temperature on the surface, so you want the glass to hit equilibrium so it’s not changing temperature during the print process.

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I always manually turn on the head and bed when I turn on the printer. This allows the glass to come up to temp as @mcdanlj says and then allows me to “purge” the nozzle before printing to make sure all is working correctly.

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One of the frustrating things about 3D printing is that melted filament will ooze out of the heated nozzle. You can retract it manually a few mm to stop it from oozing and then clean off the outside of the nozzle. Then when it starts to print, there will be no plastic coming out at first. But just print a long enough skirt (you can set a minimum length as well as a minimum number of perimeters of skirt in most slicers) and it will advance to the point of spitting out plastic well before it gets to your actual part.

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One more point about brand of filament: A common difference between different brands is just how much water is in them when they arrive. It’s amazing how much difference it makes when you dry out poorly-performing filament and it starts to behave. Since you have a perfect dehydrator for drying filament, just using it on filament as soon as it arrives and keeping it dry, and drying it out again if/when it puts on unexpected weight will take care of that variation.

Another substantial difference is consistency of diameter. It’s not clear to me that the advertised tolerances consistently reflect reality; I think a lot of cheap filament is actually sourced from wherever and will vary from batch to batch. :slight_smile:

Consistency of color from one reel to the next matters if you want to use a runout sensor to switch in your next real of the same color while printing. I’ve never actually done that.

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