Quoted from Rdoyle1978:Mainly bed adhesion and underextrusion. I pretty well got the adhesion under control for a while by constantly printing rafts on everything, but then I’d have underextrusion or the nozzle would knock the print off the build plate.
I switched to PETG recently and had pretty good luck there with blue tape, but on longer prints the tape lifts off the build plate (with heat and without heat) and everything is always warped, if it finishes at all.
I started thinking “maybe I need an enclosure...” but later concluded that maybe a printer upgrade is in order. I’ve easily spent $300 all in on this thing and it still is problematic.
Okay, here are some of my experiences...and maybe some of them may be able to help you out. My apologies if you already know about these things!
Bed adhesion- get rid of the glass bed if you are using one. The stock magnetic bed seems to work really well for me with PLA. My glass bed was nothing but problems. I run PLA 200-210C at the nozzle, and 60-65C on the bed.
To level the bed, I use a post-it note and just get it so the paper fits and drags a bit when I pull it out. Do this with the bed and nozzle hot. Once you are level, you will need to micro adjust the z axis once the print starts. It took me a while to realize this was most of my problem. Once the printer is heated and the bed starts to move, double click the control handwheel to get into the Z fine adjustment menu. On my machine, I usually go down to about -.250mm. This gives me the proper squish...yours may need more or less. Once I figured that out, things have been 100% better
As for the underextrusion, I am assuming you have done the e-step calibration on the extruder already. Once that is dialed in, if you appear to be underextruding after a short time, you are probably clogging up. One common source of clogging on the ender is the connection between the bowden tube and the nozzle if you are running the stock hot end. Replace the stock PTFE tube with capricorn if you have not already. "Luke's hot end fix" part on thingiverse is a tool for cutting that tube off nice and square. This is super important to help the seal between the bowden tube and the nozzle. If there is any gap there, material will get stuck in the crack and burn, creating clogs. When you change the nozzle, screw the nozzle in all the way, then back it out a turn or two. Push that bowden tube down all the way against the nozzle, then re-tighten the nozzle.
As for Cura, unless you have huge overhangs, check the box to turn the part cooling fan off. This causes tons of warping. I only use rafts when the footprint of the part is too small, because the rafts tend to screw up the finish on the bottom layer.
I think those are most of the key points in getting my Ender to run well. I actually went to a SKR 1.3 with Marlin 2.0 early on because I kept getting bad factory boards from Creality. If the factory board was good, I would have kept it stock. I see a lot of people in the Creality Facebook group fall down the rabbit hole of doing all kinds of mods before they ever get the printer running well. I think in this case, less is more. Get it running well before you mess with it.
EDIT: make sure your spring for the extruder is providing good tension, and get the all metal one if you still have the plastic one. Usually, clicking is related to a clog...but a bunch of people report spring tension problems as well.