original post:
I am trying to 3D print a Hollow Knight channeled nail, but when the handle was nearly done printing, the whole thing fell over and I had to cancel the print. There are these burn marks and such on the print, what does that mean?

Do I need to make the model smaller, or is there something wrong with the print settings?
https://www.printables.com/model/19648-channelled-nail-from-hollow-knight (model I am trying to print)
edit: I am now trying to print a different, smaller model to test. I have cleaned my nozzle with some steel wool I had, and I also scrubbed my build plate, and now my printer is running into a different issue. The filament is stringy and doesn’t stick well for some reason. This only occurs with white filament, the orange printed fine for a small print. Is my white filament too wet?

I tried it a second time, same result (ended the print earlier):

It seems like the first player does not stick to the build plate…
edit 2: nope, printing the same model using orange PLA instead of white nets the same thing.

What am I doing wrong???
edit 3: Wait a minute, I just realised that OrcaSlicer was set to Smooth High Temp Plate instead of Textured PEI Plate. Whoops! I will change that now and see if that fixes anything. That is probably why filament is not adhering to the plate, but it does not explain the weird burn mark of my initial failed print.
edit 4: Nope, that still doesn’t fix the issue where the filament doesn’t want to behave. :(
Could the filament be too wet? Or is there something else wrong, could the printer settings be configured incorrectly?
Insanity is when you try doing the same thing twice and expecting a different result.
edit 5: My printer is able to print a standard Benchy with no problems, so there could be something wrong with the models I want to print and/or I have the print settings for my models done incorrectly? Very strange. Or maybe it’s just an issue for relatively large models, IDK. I will look at my print settings to check what could be going wrong…


In addition to what others have said, this is definitely a failure of temperature control. Only some filaments will do more than turn liquid at temperatures that your print head should be seeing. (eg: PLA with hours of heat exposure)
If you never clean your print head (I always wire brush a nozzle before each print), it could just be buildup. Otherwise, I would take some time to check on what your printer thinks of a given temperature.
I’ve had to replace thermistors twice in the last 12+ years on my oldest printer (TAZ 6). Usually, it fails by being too cold and clogging. Though it has several times gotten too hot and produced similar results when it was going out or otherwise not thermally coupled well enough to the heating block. Rarely, it can be a connection issue between the controller and the thermistor.
Don’t be shocked if you have a few things to check and lock down before you solve the problem.
I don’t often clean my nozzle, and I can see brown stuff on it. Is this normal wear and tear, or do I need to clean it?
Yes.
yes to clean it or yes it is normal?
Yes to both.
OK I have tried cleaning the nozzle with some steel wool I had, and that helped to remove a bit of it, but not all of it.
Both.