How to Print Polycarbonate: PC Filament Settings That Actually Work

You bought a spool of polycarbonate because you wanted a part that shrugs off heat and impact. Then the first print warped off the plate mid-job. PC is one of the toughest filaments you can run, and almost every failure is a settings failure, not a material failure. Fix these four things and it behaves.

Dry PC Like It's Nylon, Because It Is

Polycarbonate is as hygroscopic as nylon. A spool that sat out for two days has already pulled in enough moisture to ruin layer adhesion. Wet PC prints with a constant popping sound, leaves steam puffs at the nozzle, and the part comes out hazy and weak instead of clear and tough.

Dry it at 80–100°C for 4–6 hours before printing and keep it in a dry box while it runs. If you're printing overnight, dry it again in the morning. Don't skip it — dry PC is a different material from wet PC.

Hotend, Bed, and the Adhesion That Holds It

PC needs 270–290°C at the nozzle, so a PTFE-lined hotend is out — you need all-metal. Start at 280°C and dial from there. Bed temperature matters just as much: 100–110°C, and let it soak for ten minutes after it reads the target so the whole plate is actually hot.

On the surface itself, bare PEI can release PC mid-print. We run Nano Polymer adhesive on a clean PEI or glass plate and it holds a full-plate PC part from first layer to last. It also cleans off without a fight, unlike glue sticks.

Heat Management: Warping, Drafts, and Part Cooling

PC has a glass transition around 147°C and shrinks hard as it cools, so any cold spot on the part starts lifting. A brim of 5–8 mm buys real insurance. Then the big one: run the job inside a heated chamber. A 60°C chamber kills most of the thermal gradient that causes edge lift, and a draft from an AC vent will crack a print that was doing fine.

Keep the part cooling fan at 0% for the first few layers and under 20% after that. PC needs heat in the part for layer adhesion — cool it like PLA and you'll get delamination that turns a tough material into a stack of wafers. When the job finishes, leave the part in the closed chamber to cool to near room temperature; pulling a hot plate out into the open is how parts pop off with an audible crack.

Where PC Earns Its Keep

Run PC when the part has to survive sustained heat and hard use: jigs near engine heat, brackets, housings that take abuse, anything ABS softens up for. It prints more demanding than PETG but less demanding than PEEK, and the result lands in a sweet spot most hobby materials can't touch.

What we use: on the bench, PC goes in a machine with real headroom. The QIDI Plus5’s 370°C hotend and 65°C chamber mean you’re nowhere near the ceiling — no pushing a stock hotend to its limit to hit 280°C. Pair that with the Nano Polymer adhesive above and PC stops being the spool you dread and becomes the one you reach for.

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