I can happily print pretty much 24/7 (Creality Ender 3 S-1)an my prints come out fine, however whenever I try to print anything that virtually fills the print bed I end up with the following problem:
What I don’t understand is; how the bed can be out of level/tram at certain points at an edge but then somehow be back in level along the same edge? It’s like it starts out fine, gets to a seemingly random point where it develops an issue and then comes back into line. Is that indicative of a warped bed do you think? Or do I need to do some creative levelling (aluminium foil etc?)
It’s a stock creality ender 3 S-1 with heated bed and the steel plate.
Looking at your photographs, I don’t think you have a warped bed/leveling issue, I think you probably have an adhesion and/or cooling problem.
I would suggest that you do a leveling check print - the most common one to use is:
Once you do that, if it comes out okay then look at putting something like an adhesive on the bed (I use Elmer’s big Glue Stick at Dollarama which costs $2.50) to see if that keeps the first layer down and even.
Before you do the calibration test, clean the bed surface with either dish soap and water, or IPA. A perfectly trammed bed, with a perfectly flat surface will still give you problems if there is any oils from your fingers, or anything else that will stop the filament from sticking.
Start with a very clean bed, its free and quick, then do the calibration test. This will tell you where to go.
If clean, those black plastic (BuildTack) surfaces usually stick too well. Those are my go-to for tall difficult prints.
Just wanted to say thank you, both, for your suggestions.
In the end it was a combination of using the Calibration Test Object as linked by mykepredko and spending some real time dialing everything in, and then playing around with the print settings (It isn’t a particularly tall print but size-wise it was taking up pretty much the entire bed). Upping the bed temp to 70C and the print temp to 205 (I usually print at 60 and 200) worked and yesterday I was able to successfully print the desired file.
