Worked for first 18 hours, then died

Go through the Z axis adjustments. I use a piece of laser printer paper rather than a business card as my business cards are too thick. You want the hotend to be JUST above the print surface once everything is up to temp. I adjust my Z axis / level the bed, then bring everything up to temperature, and level/adjust again. I check both sides twice to make sure one adjustment didn't impact the other, and make sure to hold the opposite rod as the act of turning one stepper motor generates power which will turn the other if you don't prevent it from moving. If it's perfectly level, and you are still getting issues, then you can try the adjustment of the height adjustment screw to trigger the Z axis endstop a LITTLE bit sooner (on the down motion) as it comes down from 5mm back down to the print surface.

Tesseract has a number of replies to folks about adhesion and such where he shows a photo of his first layer and how that looks...

That said, I don't get my first layer perfect every time either. I'm not getting the head dragging through such that it's pulling up the first layer tho. If I get that, I kill the job, readjust everything, and start again... so I don't have to worry about adhesion and loosing the print half way through when it breaks loose from the glass! BTDT too!

 

Here, look at this thread... it's got the photo / description I'm talking about. I dunno how many times I've seen him post that photo tho... it's a lot! LOL

http://forums.robo3dprinter.com/ind...upply-and-z-axis-issues.1131/page-3#post-7319

 

I've seen that post and picture before and done many of those same things many times before and still got the same results. I was mainly wondering if there was another method I was not familiar with to adjust this problem.
Thank you very much for the input though.

 

None that I'm aware of. I think a lot of it is just screwing around with your settings until you find what works for you and your printer. Everybody's printer is gonna be a little different, and even if we took the exact same setup and procedure from one printer to another right next to it, you may end up with slightly different results.

 

Just teasing ya' man... It's a good shot and explanation for folks... hell, it should be a pinned item for troubleshooting for "Here's what your fist layer should look like!" along side the "Start with PLA!!!"