Help me dial this PETG in...

[WobblyHand]

eSun and some others sell vacuum bags with ports along with a little hand pump. That's what I use. You can find them on Amazon.
It sounds like you have bad filament. I have one particular spool of Prusament that just won't print well and seems to always clog the hot end. Can you try a different spool of PETG?

I have a roll of black Prusament PETG that I have not opened. I can try that.

 

[MikeWi]

I toned this way down to see what it will do for you. It's a 20mm test cube. like you did, just rename to .gcode
I don't know why you all that special Z related code in your file?

 

[Ken226]

I have a roll of black Prusament PETG that I have not opened. I can try that.

This may not help much, but just in case. My Flashforge Creator Pro does pretty well with PETG, though I mostly use it for ABS.

Here are some screenshots of Flashprint's settings for PETG.

I've printed PETG with nozzle temps as low as 220 with good results, but get pillowing pretty bad If I go above 50mm/s on the top layers. Generally on the top layers, i get best results with Exterior, top and bottom layers running at half base speed. So about 25mm/s.

But, take all that with a grain of salt since my printer is a different brand/type.

 

[great white]

The filament was packed in a moisture proof bag and had desiccant, but still seems like there was moisture.

Where do you get bags with vacuum ports? I have a little vacuum pump for car A/C evacuation.

I use a foodsaver machine and their bags. Suck it down, heat sealed and done. I buy the bags on a roll and cut them long so I can reuse them several times.

 

[WobblyHand]

Using the heater bed to dry the filament didn't quite work. The safety timer shut it off sometime in the night

 

[WobblyHand]

For anyone still following this tale of PETG tribulation:

For a day, I need to use PLA. I have removed the PETG from the extruder. Is there something I need to do special to put in PLA? Like to remove whatever bits of PETG are still in the extruder? Should I tell the filament loader to still use PETG? So it melts the PETG remnants?

I found some silica gel with colorant. It was not full blue, so I baked it at 275 for 15 minutes and the color was restored to full blue. I put about 4 oz of it into a small cloth bag. I put this bag in the filament bag, along with the red PETG. At least the PETG filament will be passively drying some while I am using the PLA. I have another 4-5 oz of silica gel in a glass jar, but I can't get the lid off! Need to go find a pipe wrench to gently start it turning. The rubber gripper didn't help.

Once I get a couple of PLA prints done, then I can get back to figuring out this PETG critter. The minimum temp on our gas oven is 150F. That is 65.5C. Is that ok to dry this PETG? Or is it too hot?

 

[MikeWi]

You've motivated me to get the printer put back together. I'm going to try your file and see what it does.
for the drying: https://all3dp.com/2/how-to-dry-filament-pla-abs-and-nylon/
as far as the filament change goes, you can do a pull. This is where you heat up the hot hotend and as it nears it's minimum temp, you pull the filament out. This will remove a plug that conforms to the inside of the nozzle when you get it right. Or you can run the hotend at the petg temp and extrude the PLA thru it, for a short time, but don't let it sit still, or you'll burn it.

 

[John281]

I noticed that the purge strip on your part was very short. My printer does a full purge from left to right and then back again at the front of the heat bed. That should be enough to get any PETG out. I'm not sure where the setting for that is located, though.

 

[WobblyHand]

Since I pulled the PETG already and stuck it in a bag, a cold pull is out. I put at least 1/2 lb of indicating silica gel in the bag with the PETG. I also put in a little temperature humidity gauge in the bag. At start, the humidity read 25%. An hour later the humidity was at 16%. This little sensor also has a 24 hr min max hold on temperature and humidity. The sensors cost about $10 years ago, and still are $10 as of this morning.

I will have to come up with a better way to dry the filament later. I'm thinking a dehydrator might be good.

Guess I will load the PLA at PETG temperatures... Once the filament is fed, and extruded a bit, I will turn down the temperature. Hope to print out this silly enclosure box that I have been fooling around with for a week.

@John281 I don't know if the PLA settings are different from the PETG, so can't comment on the purge area length.

 

[MikeWi]

Cura does two long lines by default, but you don't have to do that. I extrude a small blob and then draw a line from there across the front. You're just purging air and proving the extrusion is ok. If I've changed filaments, I've already manually purged the old material out before starting the print.