A dirty print bed is the most common reason first layers fail, yet most people reach for isopropyl alcohol too often and scrub too hard. The counter-intuitive truth: aggressive solvent cleaning often makes adhesion worse over time by stripping the microscopic texture that filament actually grips. What you need is a surface-specific cleaning sequence that…
Most 3D printing adhesion problems come down to picking the wrong first-layer helper. For the majority of PLA and PETG prints on a modern heated bed, a skirt is all you need, and a brim is your go-to when parts start lifting at the corners. A raft is the nuclear option—effective but wasteful—and you should…
If your first layer won’t stick at all, curls up at the edges, or breaks loose halfway through a print, the bed temperature is often the first setting you’ll want to revisit—but only after you’ve ruled out Z-offset and cleanliness problems. The right bed temperature keeps the first layer bonded until the part cools, and…
When a 3D print lifts off the bed at the corners, you are dealing with warping—a specific adhesion failure where the edges of your part curl upward during printing. The plastic cools unevenly, contracts, and peels the first layer away from the build surface. The fix is rarely one thing; it is a sequence of…