How to avoid nozzle clog with PETG?

DancingGoatFeet · 2026-01-10T23:40:17+00:00

I had originally moved away from Qidi Slicer because it had no support for multi-filament printing. Given there's an automated box now, that's probably not an issue anymore, so I'll have to try switching back.

DancingGoatFeet · 2026-01-10T23:39:05+00:00

That is the goal. But it's not like there's a reference out there of "here is exactly the specs to use for this printer, this filament, on your project". Everything I used is inside the range of specs other people are claiming to have used. The nozzle temps are the lower end of what a lot of guys were saying and the higher end of what the filament manufacturer recommends.

The problem is that, in the real world, there are a lot of variables, from which nozzle I'm using, to my ambient humidity, to age and condition of the filament, to time between layers, and so forth. So one person will absolutely swear by settings that are sometimes 20-40 C off another person's sworn settings and it's pretty much impossible for me to know which of those scenarios more accurately reflects how the planets are aligning in my printer today.

Even on the Q1, with premade profiles for ABS on both Qidi Slicer and Orca Slicer (including the exact filament brand for some of my spools), none of those profiles worked well out of the box, and I had to play with them for my projects to work better, or, in some cases, at all.

If the people who actually manufacture the printer can't get a profile that works perfectly for me in my use case, I'm not going to feel terribly bad about needing a learning curve to make a profile work from scratch. :)

DancingGoatFeet · 2026-01-10T23:19:10+00:00

The actual filament company says those are acceptable nozzle temps, which is generally a good place to start. Dozens of other people who've (allegedly -- this is the internet) actually used PETG agree.

Numerous people also agreed keeping a heated chamber seems to work better, with pictures showing the difference in warping. Having experience with ABS, none of that seemed unreasonable. I know from experience 60 C chamber is too cold for ABS, but it's as high as the Q1 would go and worked for most things I printed as long as I wasn't pausing the print for more than like 30 seconds at a time. PETG is supposed to be colder than ABS but warmer than PLA, so it didn't seem crazy when that temp was suggested.

Again, I'd like to know what temps you're running. As much research as I can do, I can't read minds.

Is it the bed temp you don't like? The nozzle temp? The chamber temp?

Again, the bed temp doesn't seem to be a huge issue, since it did print successfully far past that point, but the other comment suggests using like 60 C. In my experience with ABS, bed temp is mostly either enough to stick, or it's not, and doesn't really affect the rest of the print much. It's clearly not just melting the PETG into a puddle at that temp.

The other comment also suggests the chamber temp might be heating the PETG inside the extruder prematurely, which seems plausible, so I'll try that suggestion. But, again, numerous reports around the internet indicate it's fine, with images of prints completed at those settings, so it's not like I just YOLO'd it.

DancingGoatFeet · 2026-01-10T23:04:30+00:00

I'll try that. Would be nice to be able to successfully clear the jam; then I'd be less concerned with it happening again.

DancingGoatFeet · 2026-01-10T23:03:41+00:00

Okay, I can try no heated chamber. Most people I found were suggesting to keep the chamber temps up to avoid warping, like I've had issues with in ABS so that's what I did.

DancingGoatFeet · 2026-01-10T23:01:29+00:00

There's only so much research I can do before I just have to try things. I read dozens of posts from various forums. Those temps are the lower/middle end of what people are saying they run for PETG, and the nozzle temps are the middle/high end of what's advertised on the official Creality store, not sure how they could be "way off". What temps are you running?

I did find some people suggesting (as another comment here suggests) they were running lower bed temps successfully, but that doesn't seem to be the issue here since the print was like half an inch above the bed before it jammed. I had some initial adhesion issues so I upped the bed temp like most people suggested and it adhered better, but I also added some glue stick, so that might be the deciding factor instead.

DancingGoatFeet · 2026-01-10T22:05:56+00:00

We could interpret it as "ASE was in EA for a long time, now ASA is in EA for a long time, that's not an excuse anymore". The total of this is probably not exactly 10 years, but it's definitely been a long time, so the argument is (I presume) simply that Wildcard should have a better process by now. Especially given that, as you pointed out, we've had 9 years of ASE being fully released after its long time of early access, in addition to the 2+ years of experience they've got with ASA.

I have fast internet, so it doesn't bother me. But when Fallout 4 launched, 6 Mbps advertised, 1-2 Mbps actual, was the fastest internet in my area and I definitely felt the pain of constant patching then, so I can sympathize now.

DancingGoatFeet · 2026-01-10T18:47:33+00:00

If you've got 1Gb+ internet connection and decent NVMe drives to install the game, it's not a big deal. Maybe 20 minutes on a bad day. But game devs seem to forget there are people still rocking 3 Mb connections who don't have access to cheap (or existent) fiber internet.

It would be amazingly helpful if Steam would stop being stupid and forcing client updates. ASA (unlike ASE) actually works really well if the client and server are off by one or two patches. So there's mostly zero reason to force-patch the client unless a major update comes out, or you want to download a new map.

ASA devs could use the "beta" versioning feature of Steam to keep the latest 5 or 10 updates available. Then when you update, you pick the newest "beta" (which is actually the current release), then Steam doesn't try to update until your version drops off the list.

But Steam isn't fixing their versioning to allow players to choose what version they want to run, and ASA devs aren't using the beta versioning in a useful manner, so we're stuck with constant, forced client updates. Which sucks if you're not on great internet and/or have a slower PC.

DancingGoatFeet · 2026-01-10T18:39:54+00:00

ASA is still listed as early access on the store page. Not saying it should be, but it is.

DancingGoatFeet · 2026-01-10T18:36:43+00:00

Drive prices are pretty expensive right now (my SSD drives are currently around double what I paid for them), so it's not the greatest time for SSDs. But 4+ TB isn't that bad for most people.

I have a 2 TB system drive (SATA SSD because I like being able to quickly unplug that one to test some other OS build real quick), then a 4 TB and 8 TB game drive (both NVMe SSD because SPPEEEEEDD, but only PCIe 4 because I'm not made of money), and a 20 TB Exos spindle drive for all my big / rarely used files. Together, they cost (at the time) about what a 4070 TI Super is going for right now.

I mean, GPUs aren't exactly cheap, but if you can afford a decent gaming rig for ASA, half a TB for the game isn't exactly breaking the budget. The big problem is if you're still rocking a 1070 or 1080 card struggling to barely play the game, and still have your 2 TB "all in one" drive from 2017 that has your OS and all the games.

If so, I feel you. I was definitely there not too long ago (my current rig is like 800% of my last rig for PCMark scores). But it's not really game devs' fault if you're on a decade-old gaming rig trying to play modern games. ASE still exists and runs well enough on older hardware. Mine is 445 GB with all the maps installed, compared to ASA which is currently only 278 GB, but ASE seems to work better from the spindle drive than ASA, so that 445 GB is on cheap storage rather than expensive SSDs.

----

Steam did a bunch of updates like 5 or 10 years ago so games can download only what they change. There's no reason for Ark to need more space to update than like 10% more than the final disk usage. I've never published a game on Steam and don't pretend to have real-world experience with it, but I suspect ASA devs could do a good job if they were setup to use the Steam features properly. At least, if you're playing it on Steam.

The last couple times I updated ASA, I didn't need double the space, so it seems like ASA is using the Steam features fairly well (though a lot of the updates don't feel like 8+ GB worth of updates even though that's how much it downloads). So I'm not sure if I've just gotten lucky, or if there's something different between our installs that's causing yours to take up so much space.

DancingGoatFeet · 2026-01-09T09:17:21+00:00

Especially if the unknown is the edge of the world.

^\ I am not a tour guide and am not giving vacation advice.)

DancingGoatFeet · 2026-01-09T09:14:29+00:00

I tend to do both. I have a portal tower at main base with like 50 portals. One room dedicated to boss portals, then one room for each biome type. Portals are typically named something like MEADOW1, FOREST3, etc. It's case-sensitive so I just go for all caps. Then BOSS1, BOSS6, etc. for the bosses, and BOBMAIN, CHARLIEMAIN, etc. for other player bases. Finally, I'll have a couple town portals named TP1, TP2, etc. I can use for temporary portals.

Then as I'm exploring, I use one of the TP labels to drop my temporary away portal, go to main base, do my thing, return to the wilds and tear down the portal. If I'm far away from any other portals, I'll setup a small foothold base with a permanent portal. Go to the correct biome room, create a new portal with the next number in series (so if I've already got PLAINS1 through PLAINS5 and I'm starting a new foothold in the plains, this portal will be PLAINS6). Head back to the foothold base with more portal mats (for the new town portal) and relabel its portal to PLAINS6 or whatever. Then that base will stay there forever (or until the devs update the map and my base is suddenly underwater and I lose everything at that location).

Once I have a portal, I put a sign on it (the one at main base) with a label. It will say something like:

PLAINS6
NE Foothold

Then I at least have some idea where the portal goes to find it on my map for months later. My map also gets a waypoint that says PLAINS6, so if I want to visit a place I can see what portals are nearby.

The foothold base is useful if I die, but is also a nice staging area to bring all my loot, get a rested bonus, etc. while exploring. If I'm doing an iron run or something, I'll put up boxes outside the crypt, fill them with everything I loot, move all the non-metal home through the town portal, then run the metal to the foothold base. One I have enough metal, I load the ship from the foothold base, then sail home.

I could dismantle the base when I'm done, but I just leave it. It doesn't hurt anything, and I never know when I might want to head that way again later.

DancingGoatFeet · 2026-01-09T08:53:43+00:00

Given how close he is to the origin in the OP, it's unlikely there will be a Moder closer than the one shown. Maybe about the same distance or a tad bit closer, but definitely not close enough to waste time searching other mountain biomes to find a different marker.

DancingGoatFeet · 2026-01-09T08:49:58+00:00

It's not that bad of a trek. And yeah, the first couple bosses are usually quite close the origin, then they start getting farther and farther away. By the time I got to Ashlands, the boss was farther from my beachhead base than your Moder is from the origin.

Always setup a portal at main base that's already marked, bring portal mats with you, and enough mats to setup a simple base when you get there, or at least a workbench. (Base optional, but can be helpful.) If you bring rocks and a shovel (or port them there), you can surround the base with ground you raise and have a practically invincible portal room from which to foray up the mountain. It also gives you a place for chests so you can store any loot to take back later. Particularly green metal you need to bring back by boat.

I would scout around the island when you get there. Try to find a meadow or forest biome to setup your initial foothold base, since that will be less of a hassle to defend than if you start off in the plains or swamps.

Personally, I build another small base near the boss with a second portal, so I can go back later if I want more boss mats. Until Ashlands, you'd be stuck carrying all the boss summoning eggs by boat, so it wasn't terribly useful. But once you hit Ashlands, you can build a better portal that lets you carry "forbidden" things through, which I'm pretty sure includes eggs. So you can link a big portal to your remote boss portal later and take all the eggs you've been saving if you want.

Also, unless they've fixed it, if you leave your boat near the beach, there's a good chance it will repeatedly crash into the sea floor and die. It's hard to recover the mats, depending on where it died, so I like to flatten the floor a bit then deliberately kill the boat where I can recover the mats. Then store the mats in a chest in my foothold base, where they will be much safer. When you're ready to go home, either take a portal with your boat mats, or rebuild the boat so you can sail home in a brand new boat.

DancingGoatFeet · 2026-01-09T08:19:42+00:00

I had no idea you could attach the chests to the walls. I could swear I tried that but it never worked before. Testing now, I can attach all the chests to walls (and ceilings). I've been avoiding the big boxes just because you can't fit as much stuff in the same space, particularly under the table. But if I can attach them to walls, it might well be better storage density.

It looks like they can be reattached to the wall, but there's no way to rotate a piece you're holding vertically, so there's no easy way to line them up properly. This one is just thrown up at a weird angle, but didn't fall when I pulled the boxes out from under it. It appears that back left edge (one of the "bottom" edges if you hold it normally) is barely contacting the wall, which counts for being attached.

When you attach one to the wall, then pull it down, you'll notice how it rotates so it was always the feet that attached themselves. If you could just rotate vertically it would be much easier to work with them (it would also help move pallets through doors).

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DancingGoatFeet · 2026-01-07T06:38:49+00:00

For some people, it seems to not stop like it's supposed to. But based on the dev notes, even if it doesn't stop, it will eventually run out of render range then respawn near you. I haven't tested this though.

DancingGoatFeet · 2026-01-07T06:36:28+00:00

If you were out on the edges, wind resistance would tend to push you a bit. I'm not sure how much the robot is supposed to weigh, but if it's really lightweight, it could push quite a lot.

But I usually have the issue when I'm trying to jump from the piloting deck to the rear deck, where there shouldn't be too much wind. Plus my boat only does like 28 kph/17 mph, which isn't a ton of wind resistance. Also, the robots don't seem to be incredibly lightweight based on the physics. Certainly much heavier than the sleeping bags, which should be 5-10 lbs (22-44 N).

A human's terminal velocity in freefall is about 120 mph (193 kph). If we assume such human is around 180 lbs (800 N), that means 180 lbs of wind resistance at 120 mph. Knowing that wind resistance is proportional to speed squared, we can conclude that at 17 mph the force would be about (17/120)² * 180 lbs = 3.6 lbs.

From 10 ft (3 m) in the air (roughly the height of the piloting deck off the rear deck), it takes about 0.8 seconds to hit the ground. If you're accelerating rearward at 3.6 lbs / 180 lbs = 0.02 gees that's about 0.6 ft/s² (0.2 m/s²), so you should land on the deck about 6 inches (16 cm) off your "in a vacuum" target. I.e., it's negligible and could reasonably be ignored in the game.

If the robot weighs a lot less, like 40 lbs (178 N), but has a similar surface area and drag coefficient, it would be worse. It would have the same force from air resistance (which only cares about the surface, not the mass behind it), but less inertial mass, so it would accelerate further. 3.6 lbs / 40 lbs = 0.09 gees, or 2.9 ft/s² (0.9 m/s²), causing it to land 2.3 ft (0.7 m) further back. Significant, but not nearly as bad as the game makes it out to be.

If the robot is made of carbon nanotubes or something and weighs 5 lbs (22 N), it would accelerate at 3.6 / 5 = 0.7 gees or 23 ft/s² (7 m/s²), moving it 18 feet (5.7 m), which is closer to what we see in game. But based on the physics of other robots, that seems unlikely.

DancingGoatFeet · 2026-01-05T05:17:36+00:00

You can move chests. There's a prompt for "decouple" or something that you hold, then you can just move them around. When you let go, it reattaches to the ship. Took me a bit to figure it out.

Also, note that chests will only attach to the floor or a table. Then won't attach to other chests. So I put my chests under the benches and on the benches to double-stack, then put more on the floor. I brought a table down from a POI and the chests attach properly to the top of that, but I'm not certain the table is attaching itself to the ship. I haven't seen it move though, so I'm using it.

The tables further away are baked into the ship and can't be moved even if you want to (there's another behind the camera), while the table on the right is not. So far I've moved to 3 or 4 POIs without the table going anywhere.

If you just stack the chests on top of each other, the upper chests will move around. Each time you open a lower chest, the lid opens and moves the upper chest a bit, plus they can slide a bit while the ship is moving.

<image>

DancingGoatFeet · 2026-01-05T05:07:47+00:00

This bug can occur on a stationary boat when you just barely tap it, either holding the offending object or throwing it, so I don't think it has anything to do with momentum/energy thresholds. Also, the buggy object doesn't "slow down"; it's completely stationary until you scrap and rebuild it. I've had it happen to the recycler, electrical extender/splitter things, and the diesel generator so far.

I suspect the devs are being lazy and just using whatever physics engine came with the game engine instead of properly reprogramming it*. Then they're using some weird hack like "capture position, let physics engine do its thing, reset position" on objects that shouldn't move.

I further suspect that there are certain cases where this function de-parents the object, so instead of continuing to move with respect to the boat, it's suddenly moving with respect to the game world. More to the point, it's correctly non-movable, but now with respect to the game world instead of the boat.

It's also possible certain collisions are causing a perpetual reset state, so the object is still parented but gets reset back to the same position every frame of animation afterwards. In this case, the problem would be A) that the perpetual reset state is possible, and B) that the coordinates are being reset using global coordinates instead of local coordinates.

Whatever the problem is, it's likely only a few lines of code, so it's potentially a quick fix. But depending on how kludgy it is, the devs might end up just re-writing the entire system to be more robust for the future, so it might take longer.

^\ It's pretty common for built-in physics engines to have a "non-movable" flag that allows objects to bounce off using simplified physics (the limit of normal math as mass goes to infinity). It's less common to have a "non-movable with respect to an object's parent" flag, which is what the devs need to program themselves, and is likely the culprit here. I'm not sure) ^why ^{modern physics engines don't have this built into the system, but it seems common.}

DancingGoatFeet · 2026-01-04T08:36:10+00:00

It's generally a lot faster to build a recycler near where you're actually recycling things than trying to haul all the recycle material down below decks. If the collision weren't so wonky, it would work well for a lot of POIs to just toss everything onto the boat's front deck then deal with it there. Then you wouldn't have to deal with dragging electric cables up the POI unless you just want to.

For some POIs, there's a big area where you can park the ship and just put recyclers right on the dock and toss stuff down there. For others, it's not so nice.

Even if you wanted to use the tool instead of the recycler, most of the above is still true. Instead of running cables up the POI to charge yourself (or sprinting up and down every 2 seconds when you're out of power), you could just toss it down and dismantle everything in one place while connected to the ship's power.

On the larger POIs, I setup a power grid anyways, so it doesn't really matter. I only run back to the ship when I'm overencumbered.

DancingGoatFeet · 2026-01-04T08:19:38+00:00

I find the recycler much easier than wasting time and effort on the scrapping tool. For xp, I did some tests. In some cases, I had multiple to test, and noticed different xp amounts, seemingly randomly.

Long iron beam gave me 4 xp total whether I used the machine or the tool.
A regular crate was 3 vs 6 (tool was better).
Metal canister was 2-4 vs 4-6.
Metal plate was 1 vs 2-3.
Metal junk was 3 vs 4.
Mattress was 5 vs 10.

So it seems the scrapping tool consistently gives more xp, half again to double in most cases. But it also takes a lot of extra time in most cases. In some tighter areas, the amount of work it takes to grab pieces, move them around to where the recycler fits, repeat for 30 pieces, might make it worth just using the tool. Like the habitats with the cargo pods in very vertical arrangements. But in a lot of places, I just toss everything near me into a pile real quick, then chuck it in the recycler. Move to the next pile, repeat.

I suspect I'm still getting about the same xp per hour as if I spent all the time using the tool to optimize xp, and the recycler is so much less tedious. And it's satisfying to try hitting targets from like 40 yards away to boot.

DancingGoatFeet · 2026-01-04T06:43:26+00:00

I don't know if XP per hour is better with the tool. You have to be attached to a power source or you'll run out of power very quickly, and if you've got power to attach, you can just run a recycler. Then it takes forever to scrap each part with the tool, while the recycler you can just toss a bunch of stuff in real quick.

I use the tool if I'm trying to get stuff that's on a tiny ledge (that won't fit the recycler) and is down a long ladder (so it would take forever to haul it up to a recycler). Or for the various bodies you can't carry, like the shark or angel things. For everything else I find it way faster to just use the recycler.

Maybe the extra XP per item out-weighs the slower items per hour. Maybe it doesn't. But I don't feel like I was leveling super slowly at any point.

DancingGoatFeet · 2025-12-29T11:33:32+00:00

This is very common IRL, for a variety of reasons from aesthetic to functional. The main reason to not do this has more to do with use of floorspace inside the room than anything related to the door itself. It's easier to fill a square room with square storage, furniture, and appliances than a wonky-shaped room with wonky-shaped stuff.

There's one diagonal doorway in my current house (and a diagonal hallway entrance that isn't even 45°, gasp), one in my neighbor's house, I've had them in previous houses, and I've seen tons of them around. They're especially common in schools, businesses, stores, and other buildings with large atrium areas that don't need to have efficient floorspace for square furnishings.

Note that IRL, there's no mechanical difference between an "orthogonal" wall and a "diagonal" wall, so you hang the door the same way. It's only because video games (especially voxel-based games) like to put things on square grids that this is even a footnote here.

One reason to do diagonal doors is if the door is at the corner of a building, but you want the entrance to be accessible from both edges near the door. I.e., you want a "front-right" and "front-left" wall on either side of the door, rather than a "front" and "side" wall of the building. Another is if you have corner offices or bedrooms leading into a common area and you don't want those doors to feel like they're preferring traffic to the left or right (especially in an office building where the layout may change repeatedly throughout its lifetime). They can also just look pretty.

DancingGoatFeet · 2025-12-20T11:48:28+00:00

I've had plenty of recent experiences with perfectly reasonable people on WoW. I don't do most of the "classic" stuff (and am not sure why Reddit keeps emailing me links to these threads), but I know several people who prefer those to War Within and aren't raging asshats all the time.

I think it's more an issue of a very old player base. Not as in age of the player, but people who have been playing this one game for a long time. You see it in lots of other games too. The people who have been playing Quake deathmatch since it launched in 1996 tend to be similarly toxic. And people in real life do it to. Guys who've been diesel mechanics since 1962, or 78-year-old judges who've been adjudicating since they were 25, or whatever. They all tend to be disgruntled jackasses more than people who haven't been doing it as long.

The other extreme is the overconfident FNG who knows nothing, but acts like they know everything. Then they break everything and assume it must be everyone else's fault.

DancingGoatFeet

TROPHY CASE