this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2025
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(Troubleshooting) Does anyone have an elegoo giga? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 3 days ago by Rutty@sh.itjust.works to c/3dprinting@lemmy.world
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I have an giga and it’s a bit finicky, I am hoping to troubleshoot. A Bambu it is not. I am a bit disappointed, because for bigger prints the printer is much less reliable so far than hoped. I had desired to be doing much more furniture design prototyping and projects than troubleshooting.

My primary issues are bed adhesion (even after good bed leveling), and layer adhesion. The first, leads to a quick failed print and sometimes a more catastrophic clog of the nozzle. The second, yields a bad quality print that has warping.

Right now I can sort of print PLA with a lot of brims (no brims, no joy) but my desired state is to print PETG, but the issues are proving too severe to get any success there.

I’ve done temperature towers, and am running hotter with a 0.6mm nozzle. I have textured pei print beds.

Anyone have any suggestions?

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[–] Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I don't own one of these but I took a look at the specks and I'm pretty confident I can give you some pointers.

First and foremost, you need an enclosure petg is going to cool way too fast if they thing is open air. My best advice would be to shove it in a closet or build a cabinet around it if you're so inclined. The mega printer I'm working on is going in a converted curio hutch.

Second, there's never enough adhesion. If you're running pla, put a good layer of pva glue down on your bed before a print. Between that, texture and brim you should get a hold. If you're not worried about playing fast and loose, you can print your first layer tight to the table for just a smidge more grab.

Lastly, I think the other poster is right about speed, taller parts get shakey. The housing will help with this by preventing ambient drafts, and you can use to to prevent frame shake if it's sturdy enough, but going slow is always a good idea.

[–] ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Second, there's never enough adhesion.

False...I have a buildtak plate that I stopped using, it will literally stick so well that the layeror two stays on the plate when you try to remove a print.

[–] Rutty@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago

I might have to try some of this buildtak.

[–] WarlockoftheWoods@lemy.lol 4 points 3 days ago

Put it in the freezer or outside if it's cold out. Will pop off on its own a lot of the time.

[–] Rutty@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I think you might have nailed it on advice. Based on what you and others are saying it sounds like an enclosure is in order.

I was wondering about glue? I’ve been using it on the build plate on the giga. To be honest though, I don’t even bother gluing pla or PETG prints on my smaller printers that have textured PEI build plates.
Understandably though, it makes sense the larger build area and lack of enclosure would make adhesion more difficult.

I noticed a bit of wobble when it was printing the arches at higher heights. I think you are again right in that speed needs to be reduced.

[–] Wade@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

If you don't want to use glue, I've found that a quick wipe with IPA will remove surface oils and help prints stick to the build plate

[–] Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

I was thinking about it after posting and if you're not hurting for plastic you could reduce some of the wobble by adding temporary support to the model. Cura used to have a plugin called baobab that would auto generate fat tree support all the way around a model, something like that to add extra footprint to taller models would do wonders.

[–] IMALlama@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

My daily printer is a 350 mm^3 Voron 2.4. I print larger prints most of the time, if you dig through my post history you'll find some examples.

Your issue isn't bed adhesion, it's warping. I've had large prints coil to the point of pulling my spring steel bed off the magnet pretty significantly. You can continue to try to fight this (clamp the bed down), but ultimately you're unlikely to succeed until you get warping under control.

Big prints can be very warp prone. In terms of ease/low warpage, I would say TPU > PLA > PETG > ASA/ABS.

Out of the box, Vorons are enclosed. I leave the sides on, close the door, and pop/rotate the top panel 45° for airflow when I'm printing both PLA and PETG. This has resulted in warp free prints for both materials.

For ASA/ABS, I was not able to achieve warp free prints until I was able to hit chamber temps of 55-60 °C thanks to swapping ACM panels and adding some radiant insulation. I also have 4x bedfans to help heat my chamber. Two are normal bedfans and two are part of an under bed carbon filter.

So questions:

  1. Are you running an enclosure?
  2. Do you know what chamber temps you're able to achieve?
[–] Rutty@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

There’s no enclosure currently. It sounds like this is likely the culprit. It’s currently in a garage that isn’t very temperature controlled atm.

I don’t know about enclosure temps, but it will bet from around 55-72 F depending on time on day right now.

[–] IMALlama@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago

With no enclosure I would be pretty confident warping due to low ambient temp is what's causing your print failures. With the top popped my chamber is around 40 °C / 104 °F and I haven't experienced any PETG warping. My printer lives in my basement, which occupies a similar temperature range as your garage. On my old unenclosed i3 clone I would run into warping on bigger PETG prints.

If you're feeling ambitious you could try throwing a (big) cardboard box over the whole thing and see if that helps. A few bed fans for good measure could be enough. I wouldn't treat this as a permanent solution, but it could help you troubleshoot.

[–] Longpork3@lemmy.nz 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

At the risk of sounding like stack overflow, do you need to print such large parts? As a general rule I try to make multiple small parts that are then attached together rather than going for single parts that are very big or complex.

If you mess up a couple of placements or tolerances, or your print fails, it's much quicker to reprint just that portion.

[–] Rutty@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago

If I said I want to 3D my posterior and have a custom fitting chair would you believe me? For some things I think a bigger printer makes sense.

Also that, and it can mount 4 heads to print on a m^2 build area. There a couple of different reasons I’d like the giga to be in a solid state. Least of all the ability to crank out a lot of smaller parts on repeat is strategically important to me.

That’s not to say your argument doesn’t have merit. I’ve been finding that a lot of time can be saved splitting the parts and printing on smaller printers. The giga is a nice to have but not needed per se.

[–] paf@jlai.lu 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I don't have this printer and those issues can come from different problems so hard to tell like this.

Warping may cause layer issues as seen on pictures, stabilising bed temperature could help using an enclosure or maybe by putting your printer elsewhere, especially if it's close to a colder spot in your house. If the layer issues we see on that picture still there when there is no warping, then reduce speed as it goes up. Tall print will tend to wobble more, which can make nozzle hit print, also nozzle path will not be as accurate after some traveling which can end up with similar layer issues.

About your clogging issue, what temp (bed and nozzle) do you use for pla?

You also have a ringing issue

[–] Rutty@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

I think you’re right on the suggestion. It’s not enclosed and in a garage. That seems a good place to start.

Thank you.

I think I am running pla at 215 or 220. The clogging is coming from filament extrusion build up after the print fails to get adhesion. There’s no sensors to detect failed prints, like on a Bambu.

Also what’s ringing?

[–] bluewing@lemm.ee 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

If you look at the wavy lines around the inlay, that's ringing. It has to do with resonances in the printer itself. The latest hotness to get some control of this type of artifact is called input shaping. On newer printers, like the Bambu, they have an accerometer built into the printer. (And my Bambu mini will do that resonance test EVERY new print-- until I commented it out. It's not needed that often).

Since you are running klipper, you can do input shaping adjustments quite easily. Do NOT GUESS at values. You can damage your printer that way. The documentation is very good to try and help with making improvements. You may also want to re-adjust your Acceleration after you do the resonance testing. In fact I highly recommend you run all these tests after you build an enclosure for your printer. For your extra large prints, cooling and layer time can become quite important also to prevent warping.

[–] Rutty@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago

Thank you

[–] paf@jlai.lu 3 points 3 days ago

Garage ain't good for printer, cold and humidity don't mix well with 3d printing, your clogging could also come from the warp issue as print goes up, nozzle dive into printing area, it's not able to extrude properly so melting plastic goes up and you get a clog.

Ringing is an artifact, which can be cause by speed, belt not tightened correctly, frame assembly. If everything seems to be correct, then you might look to see if your printer supports other firmware (some of them can help to reduce/eliminate it) https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0245/5519/2380/files/3d-print-ghosting.png?v=1681176108

See how the X seems to echo on the print