Effects of Hot & Sultry Weather on Enders PLA Efforts

3D Printing
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Hello Forum. I bought an Enders V3 SE just over a year ago and started using it about a month ago after getting the required workbench and electrics organised, amongst other projects. Naturally, the first thing I planned to do was to print myself a chess set, since I bought a kilo each of the black & white PLA to go with it. Quite reasonably obvious, isn’t it? What else is there to do with it? :wink:

Well, things started out well, and I had high expectations, always having presumed that 3D printing would be infallible in the twenty-first century, until the first part of the puzzle began skating around the print bed. I’ve managed to finally get thirty four *(34) pieces completed in the first couple of weeks, with eight(8) white and twelve(12) black failures, most likely because I printed the white pieces first using the slightly more bleached sample filament that came with the unit for the first dozen pieces … and the weather keeps getting hotter.

  • two queens.

Then I had the bright idea to print a chess board, out of 40x40x8mm blocks, with interlocking tongue & groove … and the weather keeps getting hotter.

The board is comprised of equal parts b&w: 2 x corners, 12 x sides, and 18 x middle squares. Again, I chose to print the thirty two (32) white squares first. There were ten (10) failures of which I have kept the 40x40 parts as souvenirs. A number of other failures occurred where there was just curly swarf stuck to the nozzle, and those got chucked, so the success:failure ratio was about 4:3 roughy … and the weather keeps getting hotter.

As for the thirty two (32) black squares, both corners, the dozen sides and only eight (8) of the middle squares have been completed. One yesterday morning on the second attempt of four. Zero today having given up after two failed attempts. It’s 47*C in the trailer/workshop right now, and the printer refuses to participate. Thirty (30) failed 40x40mm squares and probably half as many again curly swarf skaters which went in the bin. The success:failure ratio now for the black squares is about 1:2, with about forty five (45) fails and twenty two (22) successes … and the weather keeps getting hotter.

Last month when just beginning to print the pawns and rooks, I learned how to adjust the printer settings;

  1. print speed from 100% down to 60% and sometimes up to 88% without failure on cool days.

2. Nozzle temperature from 200**C up to 225**C.

3. Bed temperature from 50C up to 60C and maybe 65*C.

  1. Fan speed up to 50, 70, 80 …
  2. An offset of -1.78 seems to be about right. Twice I’ve dug grooves in the bed but they have miraculously healed quite nicely.

However the weather keeps getting hotter, and I suspect that the 40*C+ heat might be having some effect on the print jobs with the black PLA and printer settings as listed above. I suspect because there have been no changes made since printing the white squares with a higher success rate, and even now, the best chance of a successful job is early morning or early evening. (Overnight is impossible because the batteries can’t print and power the fridge at the same tme without solar power, and I have frozen food in the fridge to eat next week.)

Has anyone else ever tried using a 3D filament printer in the rather hot conditions of a non-air conditioned caravan/trailer parked out in the sun for the solar panels in the 47*C summertime in the desert at 29* latitude south?

If so, what possible printer settings can you recommend to improve the chance of success? Turning up the bed heat above 60**C seems to warp the corners of the squares. Turning up the nozzle heart above 225**C seems to increase the chances of curly swarf skating around on the nozzle and not adhering ot the bed.

I’m halfway down through the kilo of black PLA filament, which means I’ve used a lot more than half the kilo, and so trial and error is becoming more and more untenable with each new days’ failures. So I thought it might be wise at this point to ask for some expert advice.

Thank you for reading.

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I wouldn’t have gone hotter with settings but instead gone colder because what’s happening is that it’s so hot an ambient temp the plastic isn’t giving off it’s heat enough and staying too soft.
I would try 40C for the heat bed and 200C or even 190C for the hotend. You might have to keep an eye on speed and after the first layer you’ll want to turn the part cooling fan on 100%.

And then there’s ABS which likes it hot so might work better in the high ambient temps of summer in a trailer.

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Many thanks Dougl. Exactly the opposite of what i’ve been attempting to do to overcome the heat. and now I think of it, your solution makes good sense. I shall give it a try with a cooler heat bed and cooler nozzle in the morning when the weather is cooler.

I also appreciate your advice regarding turning the fan up after the first layer. I reckon I’ve been on the right track for a learning curve, but some good expert advice might save me a few grams of PLA when I’m starting to run low on it.

Oh, and ABS is on the shopping list for January but I wasn’t thinking of it for chess because I didn’t think they needed to be overly strong. If it continues to fail, I can always put it on hold until next year and try it with ABS when I’ve been into town to buy a kilo. Thanks again. I am really glad to have thought to ask someone for some advice.

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Normally I tell everyone that you really need a heated chamber to print ABS, but… I run 50°C in my heated chamber, and it sounds like your caravan practically is a heated chamber, so you might be a special case.

Once I started printing with ABS, I so rarely print with anything else.

However, it does smell. Like melted styrofoam, because that’s basically what it is. :smiley:

If that bothers you, you might consider a low-odor ABS or ASA, and you might consider a recirculating activated carbon filter (using steam-washed carbon; acid-washed carbon will corrode everything.)

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Thank you for your advice, Mr Johnson. My primary concern was that this plastic construction business may have been exclusively the domain of luxuriated gamer boys in air-conded mansions, and that it wouldn’t work for us common people in the summertime, but if you use a heated chamber for ABS then that hypothesis has no further business in my imagination anymore.

Mr Dougl inspired me to go back and try, try again this morning, particularly because his mention of turning the fan up after the first layer finally knocked the idea into my cranium that this kind of thing is more of an art than a science, and the operator is allowed to tweak the settings during the manufacturing process. That’s what I did and eventually, on the seventh try, it worked.

chess_project_02_251212E
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This has been the second successful build all week, out of about two dozen attempts. According with Mr Dougl’s inclinations, (but after failure with turning the heat down,), I set the variables on the Ender as in:

1, Print speed 60%.

  1. Nozzle temperature 235*C.

    1. Bed temperature 65^*C, 62^C, 59^C, 56^C, 53^*C for successive layers.
    1. Fan speed began at 20 and automatically shot up to 255 (100%) without my asking.

(I have decided to use the ‘^’ symbol to denote degrees because some genius who mucks around with websites when his mum and dad aren’t home doesn’t know what the asterisk is meant for.:wink:

The higher 65^C setting for the bed at the start is to try and get the build to initially adhere to the bed, so that the 235^C PLA can have something to stick to. The temp has been reduced by 3^C for each layer, (2 laps around the 40x40 perimeter and then a diagonal pass from the machine’s left to right), to try to reduce the warping. I presume warping happens because the heat is too much, a bit like a potato chip bag in the oven. It crinkles up into a smelly ball.

chess_project_01_251211D
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Here are all the failures I’ve had since the start of the chess set project which were substantial enough to resist chucking in the bin in frustration. There were half as many which were just curly blobs that got binned..

chess_project_03_251212E
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This is what I still have to do to finish the board, apart from tediously filing down all the five hundreed and twelve (512) tongues one by one so that the board squares can connect together and sit flat on the table.

Thanks again for assuring me that hot weather can be managed, and that the heat was not the problem, but the operator.

Lastly, regarding the smell of ABS, I hope that having the machine on the workbench right by the side door of the trailer, I’ll be able to stand upwind or manage somehow, but I’ll find out in 2026.

Happy New Year!

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I’m not so sure changing the bed temperature is a good thing because you are dynamically changing the size of the bed from under a part which has already formed and is shrinking itself.
I would find the right temp for the bed and keep it there and for the added adhesion in the first layer, have that temp 5-10C higher than the rest of the print.

curling at the corners happens because the plastic model shrinks as it cools from the nozzle temp to the bed and chamber temp. Speed can be a factor because at faster speed the nozzle is stretching the plastic some so it forms a tightness inside the plastic which pulls together as it cools and will cause higher shrinkage than the normal ~7% for PLA. For corners which are really tough to keep down, there are Mouse Ear options in OrcaSlicer which allows you to add extra 'feet" / “pads” around the corners so there’s more surface area sticking to the bed.

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Thanks again for your good informative and practical advice, Mr Dougl. Sorry I was too disappointed to persevere with such a useless waste of filament since last week’s dismal achievements. Today is a long awaited cool change, under 40^C for the first time this month. It’s only 37^C in thr trailer at quarter past eleven as the third attempt for the day is trying for the second successful result.

(I hope you don’t mind how slow I’m writing this reply because I have to keep going out to the trailer to see how the job is progressing - BRB :wink:

I posted the same thread at the 3D Printing Space forum last week, but haven’t engaged there as we and Mr Johnson have here. Over the weekend there have been several interesting replies there, mostly supporting what you are and have been telling me.

Settings can be changed after The First Layer, but ought to be left from that point on. I am glad to have learned from the hard-earned experience of others.

What you mention about print speed and stretching, and warping .. I’m now at 55% print speed and crossing fingers. BRB. (37%)

Nozzle temp seems good for PLA at 230^C from start to stop. Bed temp is currently working at 60^C all the time, but I will take your advice on Friday, (when the weather heats up to 40^C again if I haven’t finished the black squares by then), and run The First Layer at bed temp 65^C and then drop back to 56^C when *The Second Layer begins.

Fan speed nice and slow at The First Layer, and then it seems to run itself up to 255 (100%) which is nice, but I’d do it myself if it ever forgets. (Possibly some thermal switch? BRB :wink: Two out of three ain’t bad. Seven to go …)

Yes, I’ve learned quite a bit about how temperturamental the technology is, and what little can be done to compensate. The most reliable solution seems to be to Wait Until The Weather Cools Down.

Thank you for the OrcaSlicer recommendation. I’ve had a look at a few of the websites, mainly because I’d rather find a Debian Linux .DEB format installation file to not tarnish the QUBES-OS which is the only computer I currently have running until next year. I did try a ‘flatpak’ against my better judgment and don’t know where the installation went except somewhere on the scarce remaining HDD space. Next year I plan to set up another computer in the trailer, offline, with plain old Debian, so it will be much safer to muck around with this ‘flatpak’ business.

Here’s to 2026! Hooray!

  • a machine with an .MP3 player and speakers to play Beethoven’s 9th Symphony might be nice.
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I may well be wrong but I think your problem is more likely that the filament is absorbing moisture. The bed temp and nozzle temp for PLA are both way higher than your ambient temp so, hot as it is in your trailer, that is still way, way lower than the kind of temp needed to make the plastic go soft. However, my experience of very hot places is that this is often accompanied by high humidity.

Your description reminded me a lot of my own first forays, many years ago, which funnily enough also featured a chess set. (I bet there’s a lot of unfinished chess sets out there!). I’d get great results with a new roll of filament but within a day or two, the problems would begin. Poor bed adhesion, fails, poor layer adhesion, stringing, zits, curling, blah blah blah. I eventually learned that the problem was mostly moisture in the filament and I was probably making things worse by changing every variable in Cura, based on sketchy advice on the web.

Many filaments absorb moisture very quickly and in my case an open reel would be compromised within a day. After a week it would be virtually unusable. It didn’t feel moist, didn’t look moist, so I only really learned that it was a moisture thing when I eventually bought a dryer. This was a game changer. Once I started using these, every day was like having a fresh roll of filament.

Nowadays, I put new rolls of filament directly into the dryer once I open them and keep it heating to about 55 degrees for PLA all the time the print is running. This, incidentally, is why I think your ambient temp may not be the issue, because my effective ambient temp for my filament is 55 degrees. If I haven’t printed for a day or two, I’ll heat the filament for an hour or two ahead of printing. Provided my calibration is good, I hardly ever have failed prints. I now use the Creality Pi dryers as I like how they give a readout of the moisture level.

Incidentally, since using dryers I hardly ever make any changes to the stock profiles in Cura or Orca. I do temperature towers if I buy a new brand and maybe tweak the temps accordingly, but everything else, I just go with the flow. It’s changed my experience from one of endless stress and frustration to a go-to solution for tools, jigs and prototypes. I much prefer using my FDM machines now, over my resin printers whereas for a long time I’d more or less given up on FDM.

HTH, Kevin

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I don’t think that’s true. The Tg for PLA is low, far lower than the nozzle temperature used to print it, and exactly how low does depend substantially on the master batch (additives to the pure PLA base). It’s normal for PLA left in a hot car to deform.

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I suppose I should have checked before hitting send! You’re largely right Michael, as in (according to google) “Standard PLA starts to deform and soften around 50-65°C (122-149°F)….” so the OP is certainly in or around that zone. But I would stand by what I’ve said about dryers. I feel there is a mountain of well-intentioned advice out there, to try changing this, that or another slicer setting which can have you chasing your tail, when all that’s need is dry filament. A simple test is to compare printing with a brand new reel vs one that is a few days old. If the results are measurably different, get a dryer!

Don’t get me wrong, a dryer isn’t a panacea for all FDM ills and there are several other things worth doing to the ender 3 in particular that can make printing more pleasure than pain. On the older machines, replacing the springs, adding a BL Touch, a glass bed, all of these help too.

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If you search this site you’ll find a lot about dryers too. Relevant both to PLA and PETG, both of which suffer from excessive moisture. (One more point in favor of ABS mentioned above; it is not hygroscopic; it doesn’t adsorb water from the environment.)

I’ve pulled 6 or 8 ml of water out of a freshly-opened kg reel of PETG filament, so you can’t even trust that fresh filament is dry.

But 47°C measured somewhere in the caravan is close to Tg, and keep in mind that the bed heater is raising ambient. Additionally, a 3d printer depends on the plastic cooling below Tg pretty rapidly after depositing it, and cooling rate is a function of difference between the environment and the item cooling. It won’t cool below Tg very quickly if the ambient temperature is near Tg, even if the ambient temperature is still below the Tg for that particular filament.

This is why manufacturers of enclosed printers either tell you to keep the enclosure open (most manufacturers) or have active enclosure ventilation engaged (Prusa) when printing PLA.