A spool of PETG that used to print cleanly has started stringing more. It has been sitting on the printer for a while and I can hear the occasional tiny pop during extrusion.
My first instinct is to dry the spool before touching retraction, temperature or travel settings. Otherwise I could spend an hour tuning around wet filament and then have to undo it.
Is that a reasonable troubleshooting order, or are the popping sounds not as diagnostic as I think?
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The popping is more diagnostic than people sometimes think, though it’s not the only cause of stringing. For PETG especially, moisture can s...
The popping is more diagnostic than people sometimes think, though it’s not the only cause of stringing. For PETG especially, moisture can show up as tiny pops, more ooze, and fuzzy surfaces.
Drying first saves you from tuning around a bad spool.
I’d still sanity-check temperature after that, but only after drying. Too hot plus wet filament can look like a retraction problem when it’s really both.
The order matters because one fix can hide the other.
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Drying first sounds right to me. I’ve had PETG that looked awful until the moisture was gone, then the old retraction settings were suddenly...
Drying first sounds right to me. I’ve had PETG that looked awful until the moisture was gone, then the old retraction settings were suddenly fine again.
If the sound is new, I’d trust that before making a bunch of slicer changes.
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Yes, dry it first. The popping is a pretty good hint that moisture is in play, and wet filament will make stringing look worse than it reall...
Yes, dry it first. The popping is a pretty good hint that moisture is in play, and wet filament will make stringing look worse than it really is.
I’ve chased settings before only to fix the spool and have the print improve immediately.
I’d start there too. If the filament is steaming a little in the nozzle, every other tweak gets muddy.
Then you can tune retraction with a clean baseline instead of guessing at wet plastic.