The Bartlesville Holiday Market introduced us to another 3D printer that made us question our quality.  Their prints had glass smooth bottoms and had extremely clean prints.  After talking with them about temperature control and printing settings, we decided to make a change to our printing setup to upgrade the quality of our prints.

We decided to focus our efforts on printing straight to the print bed without the use of adhesion (glue sticks) and remove rafts from our prints. 

1. Make bed tuning a priority. We did our maintenance on both of our printers’ belts, fans, beds and general clean up to our printing space.  Then, bed leveling has been placed as a higher priority on our printing que, since this is needed for printing straight to the bed.  We use a BL Touch on both of our printers, making sure to do a bed mesh at least daily on our print beds.
2. Increase bed temperature when printing.  We increased our bed temperatures from 50/60 to at least 65, to make sure adherence was made on the first layer.  We keep the bed temperature the same throughout the print time.
3. Increase initial print temperature for hot end.  The initial layer is now printed at 5-10 degrees hotter than the rest of the print to make sure the first layer adheres to the bed.
4. Let the prints cool on the bed before removal.  This is more so you don’t have unneeded trauma to the bed while removing prints with excess force.  In turn it will make it, so you don’t have an unlevel bed for your next print.  When printing straight to the bed, after the bed cools the print should easily come off the bed with little to no pressure.

With these simple steps we have changed from printing with rafts and glue sticks, and now have cleaner prints. 

I hope this helps you with your prints and curiosity.  Best luck to all!