I bought some new filament colours a couple of weeks ago, which were an immediate hit with the kids. Since then, I’ve been printing out a few toys for them and their friends, mostly dragons and octopi.

I’ve had to tweak my slicer settings a bit to get the octopus to print correctly, since it has some very-small surface area features that had trouble sticking to the bed. Changes:

• Bed temperature 71 degrees.
• First layer temperature 205 degrees, remainder 195 degrees.
• First layer speed 8mm / second (very slow!) – remainder is 30mm / sec.
• No layer cooling until 1mm in height reached.
• Using 0.05mm feeler gauge on the hot end and bed (when cold) to set nozzle height.

With these changes, the prints are coming out well, sticking to the bed, and looking absolutely fantastic. This level of detail would have been nearly unheard-of with the old Reprap machines back in 2012.