Reading a Failed Print: The Fault Names Itself If You Look

NOTHING STUCK: nozzle too high, plate dirty, or plate cold. Check the first-layer rung's three tests in that order. CORNERS LIFTED, rest fine: warping. Material, enclosure, draughts and corner radius — the warping rung. PART CAME OFF PARTWAY UP: adhesion was marginal from the start and the growing part's shrinkage finally won. That is a warping failure presenting late, not an adhesion failure, and more glue will not fix it.

STRINGS between parts: the nozzle is oozing while travelling. Too hot, or too little retraction, or wet filament — and wet filament is the one people check last and should check first if the filament has been open a while. GAPS BETWEEN LINES and a weak, translucent part: under-extrusion. A partial blockage, a worn or slipping extruder gear, or the flow rate set too low. BLOBS AND RIDGES, dimensions too large: over-extrusion. Flow too high, or the filament diameter in the slicer not matching what is actually loaded — a 1.75 mm setting on 1.70 mm filament is a few percent of error that shows on every wall.

SAGGING UNDERSIDES: an overhang past what the machine can do. The overhang rung's table says whether it was ever going to work at that layer height. A LAYER SHIFT — everything above a certain height offset sideways — is mechanical, not a slicing problem. The nozzle hit something, a belt slipped, or a motor lost steps because it was moving too fast. SPLITTING ALONG A LAYER after the print is finished: layer adhesion. Print hotter, slow down, reduce the fan, or re-orient — and if the part is loaded across its layers, re-orienting is the answer the other three are compensating for.

Photograph the failure before throwing it away, and write down what the settings were. A drawer of labelled failures is a diagnostic reference that gets better every time something goes wrong. Log every print that mattered: filament, temperature, speed, layer height, what came out. Filament varies between spools of the same brand, and a note saying "this spool needs 5 degrees hotter" saves the next three prints. That is the notebook rung again, and it is the habit that separates a printer that works reliably from one that is a lottery. The settings that work for your machine are discoverable, and they are only discoverable by writing them down.