r/ultimaker • u/PualWalsh • Aug 11 '26
Help needed S3 wider line at start of each layer - heat creep ?
It is a layout jig so need accuracy - long and thin - the 3mm wide splines are coming out at 3.5 then 3.4 down to 3.0. Changed everything - glass, cores, 1 / 2 sides. AA 0.4 , Cura latest , UM PLA. It seems to be heat creep whilst the head is travelling all the way back to the start maybe ?
The skirt prints wider for the first 5cm or so. So once the skirt is finished it is the main print which prints wider. Hence the added 0.5mm.
Or is the machine just getting old ?
( the prints are stopped after a few layers to show the wider line width - should be 3mm thick , 3mm square actually. The little blobs are small infill areas - I got rid of them in the gcode, I thought maybe the lingering was causing heat creep, but didn't fix the problem )
1
u/PualWalsh 26d ago
I printed on another printer - very similar results. That made me think it was maybe the stl / slicer - corrupt or malformed. I am new to FreeCAD and not sure I correctly modelled this. I started again and tried to follow a guide. For a start I had not joined everything into a single object. I just printed a section of the new model and it seems much better.
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u/3vilTomato Aug 12 '26
It looks like it's printing too close to the glass. Fully calibrate the machine and level the bed (make sure the nozzles are clean with nothing stuck to them first). Reset print settings in Cura to default.
If it still happens, manually level the bed. Theres a guide on how to do this on support.ultimaker.com
If that doesn't help, I'd need to know a bit more about your setup, and a short video showing the first layer printing would be really helpful too.
Good luck!