Basic Canadian Made PLA+ 1.75mm on Prusa Mini - too hot?

Good day all,

I have a Prusa Mini, and it’s working great for the most part. Calibrations look good, prints look good. But one small thing annoys me. It appears/sounds like there is a gap in printing, I can hear snaps of air pockets when printing layers, and I can then see a small space where that gap was. For the most part, the next layer covers it, so it’s never been an issue.
Reading a bunch, one comment was about the filament being wet, but Ive had this now on multiple spools right out of the bag, so it didnt have time to change to the humidity in my house.
I am posting this since I am now thinking it maybe related to heat. I run the defaults of 215 at the nozzle, and first layer of 70 on bed, and 60 for the rest.
Site page shows 190-220, depending on the printer. Ill test some more but thought I would ask here to see what mileage any of you have received.

The snapping sound does lead to wet filament. Occasionally you will get a wet one right out of the bag. Dry it and see if there is an improvement.

Hi @JDL

Welcome to the forum, Glad you found us. Hope to see you here often, Post up any questions or comments you have.

I would agree with @Loosenut, It cannot hurt to try, Just remember to try one thing at a time, Don’t dry it and change temp. you will not know what solved it.

To dial in temp I will always do a temp tower and see where the sweet spot is. The temps are always based on a perfect 100K thermistor, 50-60 mm/sec print speed and in an ideal environment.

If I print our Standard line PLA on my high-speed printer at home, I have to push white PLA to 260 and Black to 270, I am using a volcano nozzle but at a .8 nozzle and it really needs that heat at the higher speeds (250 plus) in order to maintain flow. The block may be 260 however because of the rate of Filament moving through it I am sure it’s actually only hitting 210ish by the time it extrudes.

What made you think, or direct you in knowing you needed more or less temp for different colours? If I can ask.

ps. I ordered a dryer.

You almost never get a “perfect” thermistor which is one of the reasons that settings on one printer may not be the same as another. They are most likely different.

Hi JDL

I have spent a lot of time tuning and dialling filaments for my clients on my personal print farm. one of my customers made a specific colour request.

I clone my SD cards for each printer (as all of my products are high volume, low SKU number.) so I knew I was using the same STL file. I use I had a third of my farm running white, another third running red and finally the rest in Black. I was getting under extrusion on the black ones that I was not getting on the white or red ones. and universally across my whole print farm. I had to dig into that one a little more. Through the trials and tests, I found out that the Black PLA prints optimally 11 Degs hotter than the White and 5 Deg hotter than the red. Did a whole spreadsheet on it and the only thing I could figure out was it was the colourant used in the filament could affect optimal printing temp.

Other manufacturers showed some better and some worse temp divination. but “generally” I will always say to print darker filaments 5 deg hotter than whites and pastels.

Not 100% sure if this answers your question but if you need anything else let me know.