A good first layer comes down to four numbers: 0.2 mm height, 15–25 mm/s speed, a nozzle 5–10 °C hotter than the rest of the print, and the fan switched off (0%). Get these four settings right and most of the problems people blame for years on "bad filament" or "a cheap printer" simply disappear. What's left usually comes down to Z-offset and a clean bed — and that's a fifteen-minute fix too. If your print won't stick to the bed at all, start with the list of nine causes of poor adhesion, then come back here for the exact values.
Below you'll find ready-to-use starting settings, two configuration tables, and a list of mistakes almost everyone makes — including ones that look like "fixes" but actually make things worse. All values are given for a 0.4 mm nozzle, since it's still the standard.
First Layer Starting Settings — Table
| Parameter | Value | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| First layer height | 0.2–0.3 mm | For a 0.4 mm nozzle. Never more than 75% of the nozzle diameter. |
| First layer line width | 0.42–0.50 mm | 105–125% of the nozzle diameter. A wider line means more contact area. |
| First layer speed | 15–25 mm/s | Slower means more time to adhere. Above 30 mm/s the risk of lifting increases. |
| First layer flow | 100–110% | Only increase it if you see gaps between lines. |
| Nozzle temperature | +5–10 °C above the rest of the print | Hotter material spreads better across the bed surface. |
| Bed temperature — PLA | 55–60 °C | Above 65 °C the risk of elephant foot increases. |
| Bed temperature — PETG | 70–80 °C | Go lower with PEI — PETG can bond too aggressively. |
| Bed temperature — ABS/ASA | 95–110 °C | Needs a stable ambient temperature, ideally an enclosure. |
| Cooling on the first layer | 0% | No exceptions — even for PLA. |
| Z-offset | 0.01–0.02 mm steps | Dialed in individually for each nozzle-and-bed combination. |
| Skirt / brim | skirt: 2 lines / brim: 5–8 mm | Skirt for a preview, brim for small contact areas. |
| Number of layers with starting settings | 1 (max 2) | A second starting layer only makes sense for ABS and ASA. |
We've gathered the full set of temperatures for every material — nozzle, bed and chamber — in one place: the print temperature table. Treat the values in the table above as a starting point, not dogma; every printer has its own character, and differences between print surfaces are often bigger than differences between filament brands.
Why the First Layer Decides the Whole Print
The first layer is the only one that touches something other than plastic. Every layer after it sits on a surface with the same temperature, the same roughness and the same elasticity. The first one lands on metal, glass or PEI — a material with a completely different coefficient of thermal expansion. That's exactly why it decides whether a print stays on the bed for six hours or peels off after forty minutes.
The second reason is geometric. If the first layer is 0.05 mm too low, every layer after it starts with an error — the slicer doesn't know this and keeps calculating heights from a nominal zero. The result is spread-out edges and unpredictable hole dimensions near the bottom of the model. For functional parts, that's the difference between a press fit and a loose one.
The third reason is purely mechanical: stress. Material shrinks as it cools and pulls the corners of the print upward. If the starting layer is thin and poorly adhered, that force wins — and you get warping, i.e. lifted corners. A thick, well-pressed first layer simply has more material to resist the shrinkage.
First Layer Height — Why 0.2 mm Isn't Always the Right Choice
The default 0.2 mm works well on a flat bed. The problem is that a perfectly flat bed practically doesn't exist: spring steel sheets ripple, glass can bulge slightly in the middle, aluminum warps as it heats up. A taller first layer gives you a margin for these irregularities — the nozzle won't scrape a high spot or leave material hanging over a low one.
When to Raise It to 0.28–0.3 mm
Raise the height if your bed has visible deviations, if you're printing on textured PEI (the texture itself "eats up" some of the height), or if the model has a large base and you want to minimize the risk of lifting as much as possible. A taller starting layer means more material per unit of length, which means stronger adhesion. The upper limit is 75% of the nozzle diameter — for 0.4 mm that's 0.3 mm. Above that value, the material is no longer pressed against the bed but laid loosely beside it, and adhesion drops instead of improving.
When to Drop to 0.15 mm
A lower first layer only makes sense for very precise, small models where you care about an accurate base, and on a perfectly flat, freshly calibrated surface. The price you pay is sensitivity to error: at 0.15 mm, a 0.05 mm deviation is a third of the entire layer height. At 0.3 mm, the same deviation is only a sixth — and you simply won't notice it.
Z-offset — The One Setting That Makes the Biggest Difference
Z-offset is the distance between the nozzle and the bed at the start of the print. If you could only fix one thing on your printer, fix this. Layer height, speed and temperature all have a wide tolerance range; Z-offset doesn't — a difference of 0.05 mm turns a perfect first layer into a useless one, in either direction.
Signs of a Z-offset That's Too High
The lines are round in cross-section and don't bond to each other — you can clearly see gaps between them with the bed showing through. The layer looks like noodles laid side by side rather than a solid surface. You can lift the print off with your finger while it's still printing, which is bad news. This is often accompanied by a telltale sound: the filament "lays down" instead of being extruded properly.
Signs of a Z-offset That's Too Low
The layer is translucent, matte and very thin, with ridges of squeezed-out material building up at the edges. The nozzle leaves visible scratches in the PEI. In extreme cases the extruder clicks because the material has nowhere to go. Another symptom is elephant foot — a spread-out base wider than the rest of the model that you then have to sand down.
How to Set Z-offset in Practice
The paper method (a sheet of 80 g/m² paper is about 0.1 mm thick) gives you an approximation worth starting from, but don't stop there. The real dial-in happens hot, while printing: run a first-layer test — a 100 × 100 mm square, one layer tall — and adjust Z-offset live, in 0.01–0.02 mm steps. You're aiming for the moment the lines have just merged into a single solid surface, but the surface still has a slight sheen and no squeezed-out edges. Note the value down for that specific nozzle-and-surface combination — you'll need to recalibrate every time you change the nozzle or the plate.
First Layer Speed — Why 20 mm/s Beats 50 mm/s
A slow first layer gives the material time to do two things at once: spread into the micro-pores of the surface and exchange heat with the bed. At 50 mm/s, the material cools before it can fill in the irregularities — and it takes only a small amount of stress to break adhesion.
The second argument is mundane: at low speed, printer vibrations are negligible, so the starting line stays even even on cheap hardware. High-speed printers can handle 40–50 mm/s, but they have stronger bed heaters and better-tuned acceleration profiles. If you're not sure, 20 mm/s costs you two minutes and saves you hours.
Nozzle and Bed Temperature on the First Layer
Nozzle — Raise It by 5–10 °C
Hotter material is thinner, so it fills the micro-structure of the print surface better. It's the simplest way to improve adhesion that you have available. Don't overdo it: above +15 °C over the working temperature, PLA starts to spread out, and PETG can bond to PEI so aggressively that removing the print tears off a piece of the surface.
Bed — The Right Temperature, Not the Maximum
A very common mistake is cranking up the bed temperature "just in case." For PLA, above 65 °C the bottom layers stay soft for too long and spread sideways under the model's weight. For PETG it's the opposite — at too high a temperature with smooth PEI, adhesion can be so strong that it damages the bed surface. Stick to the ranges in the table and adjust in 5 °C steps, watching the result each time.
Flow and Extrusion Width on the First Layer
Set the first layer line width to 105–125% of the nozzle diameter. For a 0.4 mm nozzle, that's 0.42–0.50 mm. A wider line has more contact area with the bed and also better masks small surface irregularities. This setting works independently of Z-offset and often solves a problem that lowering the nozzle alone can't fix.
Raise the first layer flow carefully. 100% should be enough with a properly calibrated extruder; 105–110% makes sense on textured surfaces, where some material "disappears" into the texture's recesses. Above 110%, instead of better adhesion you get excess material that the nozzle drags around on every pass — a quick route to a dirty nozzle and a torn-up layer.
Cooling — Fan Off, No Exceptions
Set the fan to 0% on the first layer, even for PLA. Airflow removes heat exactly where it's needed for adhesion, and it introduces a temperature gradient between the center and the corners of the print — creating stress before the print has even had a chance to take shape. Turn cooling on from the second or third layer, ramping it up smoothly to the target value for that material.
The exception is very small models with a base under roughly two square centimeters, where no cooling at all distorts the detail. Even then, don't exceed 30%, and only from the second layer onward.
Bed Leveling and Automatic Compensation
ABL Doesn't Replace Leveling
Automatic bed leveling measures the bed's shape and corrects the Z-axis movement during printing. It doesn't flatten the plate, though, and it won't fix a bed that's tilted by a millimeter — compensation of that magnitude means the printer is constantly moving the Z axis, which shows up on the walls afterward. Level the bed mechanically as well as you can, and only then let ABL handle the rest.
Mesh Grid and Temperature
Always run the mesh probe on a heated bed, at the temperature you'll actually be printing at. Aluminum has a different shape at 60 °C than when cold, and at 100 °C the difference is already significant. A 5 × 5 point grid is enough for a 220 × 220 mm bed; for larger build volumes, move up to 7 × 7 or 9 × 9.
Surface Prep — The Most Underrated Step
Grease from your fingers is the most common and most overlooked cause of first-layer problems. One touch in the middle of the plate is enough for the print to not stick there — and it looks exactly like a settings error. Clean PEI with warm water and dish soap and dry it thoroughly; isopropyl alcohol removes fresh grease, but with regular use it leaves a residue.
A glass surface needs an extra intermediate layer: glue stick or hairspray, applied thin and even. On clean PEI, glue is unnecessary — there it's used more as a release layer for PETG, to avoid damaging the surface.
Settings for Popular Configurations
| Configuration | Height / Speed | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Bowden + glass bed | 0.25 mm / 18 mm/s | Glue or hairspray mandatory. Nozzle +10 °C. |
| Direct drive + smooth PEI | 0.2 mm / 20 mm/s | No glue. PETG only through a release layer. |
| Direct drive + textured PEI | 0.28 mm / 20 mm/s | Flow 105%, since the texture absorbs some material. |
| CoreXY with enclosure (ABS/ASA) | 0.25 mm / 15 mm/s | Two starting layers, chamber preheated before starting. |
| High-speed printer with ABL | 0.2 mm / 40–50 mm/s | Only with a calibrated mesh and a stable bed. |
| TPU on direct drive | 0.25 mm / 12–15 mm/s | Slower than everything else. Flow 100%, no brim. |
If you're still choosing a material for this kind of calibration, the easiest place to start is PLA — it forgives the most first-layer mistakes and lets you focus on the hardware rather than the chemistry. In our range you'll find Porima PLA in a 1 kg spool with a stable diameter, which matters for first-layer calibration: filament diameter variation shows up there faster than anywhere else.
Most Common Mistakes
Adjusting Z-offset instead of cleaning the bed. Before you touch any settings, clean the surface — in half of all cases, the problem disappears.
Raising bed temperature "just in case." Too hot a bed with PLA gives you elephant foot and a spread-out base, not better adhesion.
Too thick a first layer with a 0.4 mm nozzle. Above 0.3 mm the material isn't pressed against the bed and adhesion drops, even though intuition says otherwise.
Fan running from the first layer. This happens in profiles copied from the internet and can undo every other setting you got right.
Calibrating on a cold bed. An ABL mesh done cold is useless when printing at 60 °C and above.
Brim as a cure-all. Brim rescues models with a small contact area, but it doesn't fix a wrong Z-offset — it only masks it around the perimeter.
Treating calibration as a one-time job. After changing the nozzle, the plate, or the filament type, you need to recheck the values; it's five minutes, not an hour.
Frequently Asked Questions
What's the best first layer height for a 0.4 mm nozzle?
The 0.2–0.3 mm range. A value of 0.2 mm works on a flat, well-leveled bed, while 0.28–0.3 mm suits textured surfaces and bigger irregularities. Don't exceed 75% of the nozzle diameter, which is 0.3 mm.
How fast should you print the first layer?
15–25 mm/s is a safe range for most printers. Slower movement gives the material time to spread across the surface and exchange heat with the bed. High-speed printers with a well-calibrated mesh can handle 40–50 mm/s.
Should the fan run on the first layer?
No. Set cooling to 0% on the first layer, even for PLA. Airflow removes the heat needed for adhesion and introduces stress. Only turn the fan on from the second or third layer.
Why is the first layer translucent, with the bed visible through it?
That's a sign of a Z-offset that's too low — the nozzle is too close to the bed and squashes the material into a thin film. Raise the Z-offset by 0.02 mm and repeat the test. If instead you see gaps between round lines, the Z-offset is too high.
If you have automatic bed leveling, do you still need to level the bed manually?
Yes. ABL compensates for irregularities, but it doesn't flatten the plate or fix a bed tilted by a millimeter. The smaller the compensation range, the more smoothly the Z axis moves, and the more even the print walls are.
Summary
The first layer is the one stage of printing where five minutes of calibration pays off on every print that follows. Set the height to 0.2–0.3 mm, the speed to 15–25 mm/s, the nozzle 5–10 °C hotter, the fan to 0%, and dial in the Z-offset in 0.01–0.02 mm steps on a hot bed. Then clean the surface and save the profile — only then are you actually printing, instead of guessing.
The rest follows naturally: a good material with a stable diameter means a profile you set once keeps working across spool after spool. Check out PLA filaments if you're still calibrating your hardware — it's the most predictable reference point to come back to when diagnosing problems.