Thought I’d make a troubleshooting thread for folks who have their own 3D printers. These are things I’ve tried and worked for me. YMMV. Please add to this thread if you can.
The XYZ stuff catches a lot of flak, but it just works when I print. It’s dumbed down pretty drastically though! There are no settings to change temps to try PLA so if you want to do that you’ll need to hack it.
Check your bed temps and for heated glass beds try some Uhu glue stick smeared on where you want to print. Works like magic.
This was a tough one on my PowerSpec Ultra with a kapton covered bed. Uhu glue helped, but didn’t fix it 100%. This printer defaults to not heat the bed. Set the temp to 60c and used the Uhu glue.
- Prints start out nice but then distort
For my XYZ, this happens on small prints. If I do 2 or more copies of it then they all turn out beautiful, so that’s a workaround. You can leave the door open and try a small fan to keep it a bit cooler inside.
For the PowerSpec, the PLA printing defaulted to 220c. I turned it down to 195c which helped tremendously.
- How do you know what temps to set the print bed and extruders to?
Google is your friend. This page was a HUGE help to me.
- My printer makes horrible sounds then goes out of sync with the print.
This one was tough. Turns out on my XYZ that I had a problem with the print assembly cable harness catching on a corner of the assembly itself. A quick zip tie took care of that.
- My printer has filament but isn’t printing!
Check to see if it’s binding. I had this on both printers. The XYZ just needed a good tug on the filament to pop it free while the PowerSpec’s filament spool was tangled and kinked. For that one I had to cut the filament, unload it from the feed assembly (while tugging VERY firmly to get it passed the stripped section where the gears slipped trying to pull it), then re-feed it.
Hope you find this helpful!
Again, please add to this if you can.
RJ
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- I have a dying fan, but can’t wait for one to be shipped to me!
Well, there’s always Tanner Electronics, but if your printer uses a 24v 40mm fan you might not find them in stock. Micro Center carries them in their Dallas store on Aisle 6 for (at the time of this post) $7.99 plus tax. You’ll either need to disassemble the cable harness to re-string the cable or use some heat shrink tubing and a bit of solder to patch the wires.
(Fan on the right is a new replacement from Micro Center)
- I ran out of filament and now I can’t get replacement filament to feed. Help!
This one is a pain. If you can’t push it through by feeding new filament in then you have to disassemble the feed assembly, pull out the old, and after you re-assemble it you’ll feed in the new just fine. Don’t run out. 
Or, if you’re low, watch it, pause it, unload what’s left, and load in new filament. That’s if you can pause your printer. Don’t rely on feed counters built into the printer. They are only estimates and I can tell you from having this happen to me on my DaVinci 1.0 that you can’t rely on the feed counters. 
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- How do I keep my XYZ from upgrading firmware and checking serial numbers of cartridges? I want to reset and refill the filament cartridges.
Open Windows Firewall and set an outbound rule to block XYZ Ware from going out to the internet. This will keep it from downloading and installing firmware updates and checking cartridge serial numbers.
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Thanks for the advice. All printers have their quirks like this.
For bed adhesion I’ve had a lot of luck with the PEI sheet surface and on a glass bed, using Airwolf Wolfbite for ABS and PLA. It’s a weird proprietary formula but it works very well. Thanks @Nick_McCarthy for that one
That’s one of the nice things about the Polyprinters I haven’t seen anywhere is a filament switch. I think for most people you just hope the filament is not tangled and you have enough on the spool. One trick I’ve seen is measure the distance needed for the print from the slicer and unspool that amount if there’s very little on the roll.
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Thanks for adding to the thread!
