I have a Ender 5 Plus and have been printing tons of stuff with great success for awhile now.  All my printing has been with PLA, PLA+, and PLA_tough.  Mostly Inland material from Microcenter.  I am working on a project using PETG and for the life of me cannot get it to print at all.

I have adjusted my Z, changed both head and bed temps, slowed the print speed down to a crawl....all I get it garbage.  I cannot get a god first layer to lay down at all.  I have a clean and level bed and have tried both the textured and smooths sides.  I have checked my bowden and switched to a new nozzle to make sure those werent the issue.


Something I have noticed is that if I manually feed material out the nozzle I see what looks like "bubbles" or inconsistencies in the material.  My feed looks good, so it is very confusing.

There is nothing that I can get a picture of that would show the bubbles.

Any thoughts would help?

What brand?

I typically use Prusa.

I just picked up some Overture in a pinch and it prints like garbage. Why people like this stuff is beyond me. I just needed it quick and Amazon had next day.

I've honestly never had issues. Do you have pics of what "garbage" looks like?

I'm not hip to Ender bed materials...but I'm told blue painters tape works well for PETG. Have you tried that?

"Inland" brand material.  Sold by microcenter and it generally known to be good quality material.

I have seen the tape recommendations.  It is one of the things I havent tried yet.

I see you are in Texas.

You need to dry out your filament. You have a humidity problem. Those bubbles are steam.

You might be thinking “I just opened the sealed filament package”. Doesn’t matter. They don’t come dry and soak up moisture fast.

Dry it out and your prints will be awesome.

@ag04blast

I use blue painters tape combined with Elmer's purple glue stick over glass.

In my slicer, I always set a brim for PETG and keep the fan speed at 30% normal, 0% for the first 4 layers. If you're cooling your PETG print with high fan speeds like with PLA, you're gonna have a bad time.

I also use Inland filament. No problems with the above setup, but I also have a filament drier.

Forgot to add: crank your bed temp way up, like 80-85. PETG doesn't stick for shit on PLA bed temps.

Yep.

I use 90C first several layers, then back it down to 80.  Nozzle temp is 250C.  I'm running Atomic PETG on a Prusa textured PEI plate.  Most jobs work great, as long as they aren't tiny or massive.  Tiny stuff never sticks, massive stuff tends to separate and curl up due to shrinkage.

Another quirk to a lot of PETG is not liking to be "squished" on the first layer.   If you are using Cura, look at the "build plate adhesion" tab in the print settings drop down on the right.  You should see a check box labeled "Z offset". (if you don't, look in marketplace to find the plugin)  This is for adjusting just the first layer.  A positive value raises the nozzle.   For me, when printing PETG, I use 25-50% of the layer height as an additional Z offset for the first layer.  It is much less likely to form a wad under the nozzle & go around pulling up material with the additional first layer offset.

@Fugger

I know lots of people use the oven, but what filament dryer are you using?

I used to print with eSun filament but lately it has turned to garbage. Now I’m either using COEX or Atomic. Both print very well and are made in America. I’ve never had an issue where I had to dry out filament. I usually print PETG on 3m blue masking tape.

@ag04blast

The generic Sunlu dryer from Amazon. I think it has a max temp of 55C, which has worked well for both PLA and PETG. Sometimes I'll leave the filament in there a couple hours before printing.

i have the ninja foodie XL with the idk maybe 12 functions or more.. the one with the dehydrator feature..  its temperature accurarcy is surprisingly good, and room enough in there for 2 spools at once if desired.

Level your bed using an index card to level it instead of a sheet of paper you need a slightly larger gap than a sheet of paper.
Spray your bed with Hairspray and than preheat it up to temp until it is no longer wet, before printing. Something like Aqua net works great and is a barrier between a glass bed and the PETG adhering itself to the bed.

I did the above first time also.  however I then found a plug in to cura called zoffset, which allows the machine to be calibrated one time and then the z be different for PETG profiles vs PLA or ABS etc.  much simpler.  

i had similar shit experiences with overture Petg.. but after sticking with it eventually figured it out.  i use glue stick, and then z align TIGHT as usual, then set zoffset to 0.02 works great.  first layer 10mm/s, nice and hot (245)

for use with glue stick dont be shy with that shit.. i dont clean the bed generally- just reapply on top of the bed after each print, so once I have a good build up then PETG sticks nicely.  with a clean bed it takes more work to get it down so you have to apply several layers of glue stick.  also, glue stick wants to be applied cold and then heated.  it cooks off when applied to a hot bed.

Atomic Filament is the best you can get in the United States.

atomicfilament.com

I dunno. Prusa makes really, really good stuff, and it's not too expensive to ship across the pond.