Two Week Update
Sharing this for anyone who is considering a clock. THis is my first ever 3D print experience.
Still enjoying printing. So many lessons learned by trial and error. No manual, and no other person to coach me. I had all the typical problems. I didn't know what I didn't know. Adhesion, positioning, adhesion, positioning, Z Offset. And using the 64G microSD card on a borrowed Creality Ender 3 Neo
1. Tonight, I discovered how to slow down the print speed. So far, that is working with the face in Compact Clock 16. I chose half speed because I've wasted two days printing frame parts that failed after hours. And another six tries that did not adhere. I'm hoping this will solve first layer adhesion. Slow learner. 2. Fitting the larger back frame onto the bed has proven very challenging. Creality slicer would not work for me. The slicer sees a small tab on the right bottom that it thinks is hanging over. The Cura slicer did not see the tab and has allowed the slicing operation. 3. I reprinted all the gears after I learned how to print at 0.16 and I had acquired some adhesion skills. This is per the building instruction. steve is right: I paraphrase: If you want a cool clock, build it better.
Probably two more days to print the frame at slow speed. 4. Now that I have some rudimentary skills I am eager to finish the first clock. I hope to reprint Clock 16 with higher quality and print the face with two or three colors (like the photos from StevesClocks.).
5. I am pleasaed. Sure, it was much more difficult than i expected, but not becasue of the clock. My problems were related to not having any help.
Sorry for the late reply. I stopped getting emails for new entries.
3D printing certainly has a lot of interesting challenges. I am still amazed at how much is going on while printing. I still sometimes stare at the printer operating even after several years of print experience.
YouTube has lots of practical advice for getting prints to stick to the build plate. Here is my experience.
1) Start with a clean plate. Dawn dish soap is my favorite. Avoid soaps with hand softeners. And try to never touch the top surface of the plate with bare hands.
2) Use a brim for difficult prints.
3) Fine tune the first layer to have the perfect amount of squish onto the plate. If the first layer is too low, it will be smeared. If it is too high, it will not stick good enough. Each printer has different hardware with different ways of creating the perfect first layer.
4) Use a smooth PEI sheet if you have one. Many printers ship with textured print sheets that are really only needed to help prevent PETG and TPU from sticking too well to the bed. PLA has the opposite problem. It needs extra help to get things to stick. The smooth plate is best for PLA in my opinion.