troubleshooting guide to all common 3D printing problems and their solutions. Includes both FDM and SLA. - Common Problems / r/nOfAileDPriNtS

• Ultimaker
• Simplify3D
• RepRap printDoctor

First layer

**Lines are overly visible or spaced apart on the first layer **

If the bottom layer of your print is showing very obvious print lines it’s likely that your bed is simply levelled a little bit too far away from the nozzle.

Warping

• have a clean surface
• why does this keep happening? - Bed is too cool or ambient temp is too cool, basically the filament is cool too rapidly.

It’s a combination of two things.

a) The exposed side of the extruded material is cooling too quickly compared to the underside, causing it to contract and curl up on itself. This means that the ambient temperature in your build volume is too cold. A common cause is airflow. I’d check to make sure there’s not an A/C or an unwanted draft around your printer.

b) Your bed temperature is too high. This is keeping the freshly deposited material above its glass transition temperature (simply put, the temperature at which thermoplastics soften), causing it to be soft and malleable. Not only does this create an uneven temperature gradient between your bed and the top of your print, it’s easier to pull up the material that’s already laid down because the bed is keeping it too soft.

Infill

Infill is Visible from the Outside

The final print looks fine but an outline of the internal support structure can be seen through the walls of the print.

• Make sure that the value you have selected for the shell thickness is a multiple of the nozzle size.
• In Cura open up the ‘Expert Settings’ and under the Infill section tick the box next to ‘Infill prints after perimeters’, in latest version it’s ‘Infill before Walls’ and it is not selected.

Underextrusion pattern on flat surface

• wobbly gear on extruder - put a mark on extruder gear and see if movement is regular

Partially touching

This is very likely caused by the short belts not being tight enough.

Seams position

• How to Control Seams In Cura Slicer Settings

Non consistent layer thread

• Z binding - loosing Z screw / grease

Layer shift

• the movement of axis is hindered (cable stuck / obstacle)
• belt tension / slipping pulley
• or stepper loosing step
  • in which case in could happens on specific geoemtry and be very reproducible.
    • because generated acceleration too high on given axis
    • because current too low (for given acceleration), which can happens in case of misconfiguration