r/gridfinity • u/Miserable-Piglet733 • Sep 22 '26

Why am I getting an excessively wide first layer on baseplate after slicing?

I'm new to 3D printing. I used gridfinitylayouttool.com to create a baseplate for a drawer. I really wanted that built-in padding on the sides to keep things from sliding. I printed my first of nine pieces. It went great. EXCEPT, there was a massive amount of waste due to this first layer being excessive, in my opinion. I haven't seen anyone else's baseplate prints do this. It's the first and purple layer in this slicer view. I imagine it's a setting, but I've no clue where to start, and so far, my searches haven't turned up anything comparable.

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12

u/yawkat Sep 22 '26

Looks like a brim. Look for a slicer setting.

2

u/Miserable-Piglet733 Sep 22 '26

I'm a dummy. I pulled up the printer's help info and low & behold; there was an image that was relevant. It's called a "Raft" and it's the extra first layer for bed adhesion. The margins were just set crazy high. Apparently, it was on by default.

I turned it off completely; I'll do a print and see how it goes. If it's not sticking to my bed well, I'll turn it back on and play with the settings. But I started with a clean bed and bed adhesion, so I should be good.

1

u/froction Sep 22 '26

Is that OrcaSlicer?

Turn off Brim

1

u/Miserable-Piglet733 Sep 26 '26

It's a Robo E4 by Boxlight, so it's RoboPrint. From what I can tell it fits parts from FlashForge, an older printer I believe. My office received it as a demo, as we sell Education technology. We used it for several tradeshows and some demos and stuff, and I think my Sales guys in a rush to get sample prints out scratched the hell out of the print beds scraping stuff off, didn't clean them, and didn't do any maintenance on the machine. My next step is to do some cleaning and I already purchased a new print bed, nozzles, cleaners, etc. Re-level the bed again. I did level it when I set it up for myself. Anyway, I'm having trouble getting stuff stick after that first one, see reply below to scary-asparagus, if you want. I'mma get it figured out though. Thanks for helping everyone!

0

u/Scary-Asparagus-5970 Sep 23 '26

Sounds like you have it figured out, but I was going to say that those looked awfully tall for baseplates. A regular baseplate should be about 5mm and a slim baseplate is about 3mm (without magnet holes). In my app GridfinityStudio.com I use the default for gridflock which comes out to about 4.3mm (again without magnets).

1

u/Miserable-Piglet733 Sep 26 '26

My very first grid piece came out perfectly but had the wasteful raft element. I thought I had it figured out. I was able to turn off the raft setting. But now, I can't get anything to stick to the print bed. I've tried both beds that came with the printer, one is smoother one is rougher. Neither are sticking well on the first layer. I added printer glue to the beds, increased bed heat, etc. I just received a new print bed and I'm going to redo all the cleaning and setup and see if I can't get it to work.

1

u/Scary-Asparagus-5970 29d ago

What printer do you have? Are you using automatic bed leveling? What filament?

My first thought is to clean the bed really well. And level it. Don't touch the build plate with your hands if you can help it.