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Having printed exclusively in PLA for the past year, I'm now looking at trying out PETG in order to print a set of spare parts for my new Prusa i3 mk3.

I have bought a roll of PETG from Rigid.ink and their recommendation is to leave an extra 0.2mm gap between the nozzle and bed.

Can I achieve this extra Z offset in gcode using Slic3r PE, or would I need to do it using Live Z Adjust on the printer? How would I go about doing this if so?

Or is there some other way of doing it, so whenever I select my PETG filament profile in Slic3r, the extra Z-offset gets added?

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An extra gap of 0.2 mm on top of your existing gap seems rather illogical as the filament is not squished at the build plate anymore. Furthermore 0.2 mm plus something you already have will soon result in a gap over 75% of your nozzle diameter (including your first layer; note that 75% is considered to be the max for good adhesion). The filament will then drop down to the plate... Possible effects/results can be seen in this recent question.

Having printed about 8 kg's of PETG, I have never had to add an additional gap. I have printed on various machines; Prusa clone, Ultimaker 3E and self build CoreXY. I use a 0.2 to 0.25 mm first layer thickness (for a 0.4 mm nozzle) while printing on glass or directly onto the aluminium bed using a PVA based spray glue (3DLAC). Beds are always leveled with the nozzle to bed distance of a sheet A4 printing paper. I have zero adhesion problems.

I would recommend you to try print as you would normally do and, when that does not work, increase the first layer in your slicer slightly. Printing temperature/speed towers is also recommended to find the best settings for your brand of PETG.

Now to address your specific question how to change the offset in your slicer; an additional offset can be added into your start code script by adding a move to a certain height and redefining the zero Z level. This should be typically done after auto leveling of the bed (if used). So before the first layer is being printed you could add:

; start code contains homing, pre-heating, auto-leveling, nozzle priming, etc.
G1 Z0.2 F500 ; Go to the level of 0.2 mm + your paper thickness
G92 Z0       ; This redefines the zero Z level

You can create custom startcode profiles in Slic3r (requires setting the Printer Settings) and store them with a specific name so you can have different printer profiles.

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  • $\begingroup$ I came here to solve an issue during an MMU2S tool change from PLA to TPU where TPU like some other flex materials needs a slightly higher Z offset. Due to TPU's higher elasticity, with a typical (PLA) Z offset TPU can compress at the nozzle when first loading and seal the nozzle creating enough pressure to render the extruder ineffective leading typically to an extruder jam - not fun with flex materials. In any case, a small Z offset change significantly reduces the chance of this and Slicer at the time of writing this doesn't seem to support Custom g code per filament specifically. Thanks! $\endgroup$
    – Luke Mcneice
    Sep 20, 2020 at 12:59

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