Hi! Looking for some advice here from friendly local experts.
I've printed this with Elegoo Neptune 3 Pro, 0.4 nozzle, Elegoo PETG filament, no enclosure. Using PrusaSlicer.
This print is basically all walls - the hex grid is thin. It's 2mm thick and each segment is 1.5mm wide. I set 3 layers for walls in slicer. It was printed vertically, just as seen on picture.
The solid part of the print (back wall) came out just fine, but the hex grid part came... dirty. On the picture, there are a few hex segments that just broke off during the print at the base of vertical segments. And the rest of them have small loops of filament that stick outside of the intended surface, to the sides.
My suspicion is the print temperature is too low. I'm printing at 230, which is the low end of 230-260 range of the filament. But in my previous tests I noticed stringing that starts around 240, so I did a few other prints that were just fine at 230, and I made it my default temp for this spool.
Or is it just too fine detail for my printer with PETG? Or something else that I am missing?
Microwave will not work. Unless you’re incredibly careful/lucky, you’ll ruin your filament. You can use your printer’s heated bed to dry it. Look up how to do it online, but basically you lay it on the bed, put a box over it to enclose it, turn the bed to 55°, and let it dry like that for 10 hours. That’s for PLA though, so you may have to go hotter for PETG.
Silica gel works to keep it from getting wet, but it won’t work to dry it, since the filament wants to hold on to that water. The only way to get the water out is to use heat. (Or maybe a vacuum chamber, but heat is a lot easier.)