3D Printing: What’s Too Hot or Too Cold?

In today’s video, we take a brief look at temperature tuning for 3D printers. While this will change depending on each material you go with, it is important to familiarize yourself with a baseline understanding of how temperatures affect printing.

Let’s begin with the filament itself for a baseline. If you take a look at any spool of filament, you’ll notice a temperature range such as “190 C to 215 C”, for example. Well, that’s great to have a range, but where do you start?

Vision Miner recommends starting somewhere in the middle of the provided temperature range for each material. If you notice that your printer is not extruding enough material or is extruding blobs, then you need to crank up the heat until this stops. On the other hand, you may want to turn temperatures down if you notice that material is being melted too much, appears unclean, or looks uneven.

Manufacturers provide ranges as each printer will act differently. What works temperature-wise on one machine with a given heat block and thermocouple won’t necessarily be what works temperature-wise for another printer with a different combination of hardware.

The tuning process is so important because you have to calibrate based on what works for your specific combination of hardware.

If you’re interesting in learning more about tuning, check back on the blog for more updates and visit our YouTube channel for more videos!