Found a weird fix for my 3D printer stringing that actually worked

I was getting these awful spiderweb strings on every print for like 3 months. Tried drying filament, adjusting retraction speed, even bought a whole new hotend assembly for $40. Then I was messing with the print speed and accidentally dropped it to 45mm/s instead of 60. Has anyone else found a specific print speed that just kills stringing for them?

3 comments

3 Comments

jessica9217d ago

Saw a guy on YouTube talking about how he found his sweet spot at 50mm/s for PETG, said it completely changed his print quality. I've been messing with speed on my Ender 3 and noticed that 50-55mm/s seems to be the magic range for most of my filaments too. Anything faster and the strings come back like crazy, slower and the layer lines get ugly. Temperature plays a big part too, I had to drop my nozzle temp by 5 degrees along with the speed change to really lock it in.

davis.olivia7d ago

That thing you said about the speed and temp working together is exactly what I've noticed too. It's like finding the right pace for anything, not just printing. If you rush a conversation or a job, it gets sloppy, but too slow and it drags and looks half-baked. There's a sweet spot in a lot of stuff where everything just clicks, and it's usually a small window you have to dial in for yourself. Have you had to mess with retraction settings along with the speed to get rid of those last few strings?

hannah_west397d ago

Oh man, yes. Retraction is like the final boss of stringing. I spent like a whole weekend just dialing in retraction distance and speed after I got temp and speed where I wanted them. It's wild how a tiny change like .5mm in distance can go from a spiderweb to clean prints. Have you tried a retraction test tower with graduated settings yet?