I own a Snapmaker Artisan with the dual-extrusion module, and I’m having a hard time getting 3D print quality to even an “okay-ish” level.
To be fair, I also own a Bambu Lab X1C, so my standards for print quality might be pretty high—but I’m not even getting close to that level, even with 5× the print time.
For filament, I’m currently using BASF Ultrafuse PLA, which is permanently stored in a drying/heating unit to ensure perfect conditions throughout every print.
I spent several weeks calibrating and tinkering with Luban, but I still run into random layer separation and sudden extrusion stops. Hoping for better results, I switched to Orca with the Snapmaker plugin, but the issues persist.
I’ve attached two pictures of my most recent prints. Each was printed one at a time, yet both show signs of layer separation. My printing temperature is set to 220°C, so that shouldn’t be the issue, and I’m using a standard layer height of 0.12–0.2 mm.
Has anyone else experienced similar problems? Any suggestions on what might be causing this?
Can you show the first layer?
Is there any resistance when unrolling the filament? Spool badly wound, no PTFE tube or similar? Do you have the same problems with another filament?
My prints are pretty good and of course this should not be the normal quality
I’ll attach a picture of the first layer for both prints. In my opinion, they don’t look too bad. For the larger object, the issues seem to start when it begins printing the overhanging bridge—right at the start of the bridge, the separation begins. However, I was able to print this same file on my Bambu without any problems.
Regarding spool resistance, it should be fine. I had issues with that before, but Snapmaker always alerted me if it couldn’t unwind the filament. I also have PTFE tubes running from the spool to the extruder, so that shouldn’t be the cause.
I’ll test with different filaments soon, but I don’t have any available at the moment.
You should check the counterforce of the spool. The extruder should pull as less as possible. Maybe try another filament spool position or a alternative mechanism, maybe temporarily for testing.
Even if the Artisan warns you, there could be a minimum of movement before triggering the “pulled up extruder” message.
Yeah the force of the Spool came to my mind to, therefore i improved them by putting a creality space flament dryer on top of the enclosure. This is not the final position as I thought about moving them inside of the enclosure but still cant decide where and how. In genereal this should have decreased the force needed by the extruder but I didnt see any difference. I’ll attatch a photo of my current setup. I will try some different positions for the dryer the next days.
For the temperature, I am aware that the temperature might appear a little high, but BASF uses some kind of special PLA which also doesnt react with acetone for example. I printed temperature towers just before this post. The print always failed at around 200°C and the result looked the least horrible at 215/220 °C.
If you look at the spools from the right hand side the spool is spinning clockwise while the filament unwinds at the bottom and then feeds into the PTFE tube. You seem to consider this the wrong way round if I understand you correctly, could you please eleborate on that?
It felt like unwinding filament in this direction needs less force and threfore should be easier to handle for the extruder.
I tried putting the spools on the desk next to the snapmaker this lead to layer shifting on the right hand side and a further decrease of quality. Additionally it failed again to extrude in the end at exactly the same layer height as before
Do yourself a favor and try the beta of Snapmaker Orca. I had been printing using Simplify3D and though I was getting good results, but Snapmaker Orca blows it away.
I switched to Orca as you suggested and after doing the calibration I have decent results now. However I cannot see my second extruder in there although i set up my profile with 2 extruders. Is there a fix to that? The issue seems to be known for a while
Try uninstalling it and reinstalling it. I had a similar issue when I opened a file saved in another variant of Orca and it messed up the printer profile. Reinstalling fixed it. Make sure you delete the user files created when you ran Snapmaker Orca the first time. On the Mac, they’re stored in ‘~/Library/Application Support/Snapmaker_Orca’.
