I’ve started 3d printing again after a while. It’s hard…
I’ve been doing all kinds of calibration of the machine, drying fillement, optimization in g-code, using other slicers than Luban and so on.
And it has worked a little. However I still belive that the print quality is below what should be expected.
Now a thing I simply do not understand is this.
In my latest print I tried printing a piece a little different than what I had done earlier, to try to make it look better (printing it more upright rather than laying flat).
When it was done I noticed that the support surface is quite nice compared to the surface of the print itself .
Do anyone have an idea how I can optimize the prints so it have the same overall quality as the supports.
(also if you have some nice tips on how to make supports easy to remove that would be great too)
Whats your slicer (I guess Cura)?
Whats your printed material (Pla)?
May you show us a bad printed model?
From what I can see, I think your tree support prints slower than the model itself, here we come to the main question - > What are your print settings?
Did you ever had a look while printing, what’s the visible difference for you (speed)?
I do understand it’s hard to say anything from what I provided. There is a lot that can cause unsatisfied prints.
To answer your questions:
I use Cura
The print I do now is PLA (as it should be the easiest to print with)
I’m not sure what you by showing a bad printed model, but I’ve attached some pictures of the same piece as in the first post but where it was printed flat on the bed. The supports in this product was impossible to remove.
I’ve attached a photo of the speed settings. As I see the support speed is the same or higher than the other speed settings?
The visible difference do look a lot like the settings. I believe the supports is printed faster than some of the other parts with exeption of the infill.
I can tell from these two photos that your bed mesh leveling is not correct. Unfortunately you will need to fix that before anything else, as it can cause “cascading” defects through the entire print.
Okay that’s what you mean. I’ve auto leveled the printer a thousands times. But I’ll give it a go with manual leveling as well. See if it makes a difference.
@xchrisd I tried print a Bency. The slicer used is Cura with the normal settings (almost). The fillament is PLA MAX 3DE. I’ve attached pics of the results and the settings.
I’m printing at 215 degrees as a result from calibrating the E-steps. I could not make it print 100mm no mater how many calibrations I did. I even changed the nozzle (and hotted). I then realized that maybe the problem was, that the fillement wasn’t liquid enough to get pushed out of the nozzle. I turned the temperatur up and I was able to print 100mm in the calibration test.
@JPressN That looks terrible. My guesses would be:
Temp is to high/fan is too low
Esteps/flow is too high
Retraction settings are bad. I notice z-hop is off too but some people like it that way (I don’t).
Did you change a bunch of settings or what?
What type of results are you getting from Snapmakers default values?
Hi Rwide
Thanks for the inputs.
Regarding the temp. settings my e-step gets way off if I lower it much more. When I calibrated the e-steps I wasn’t able to do so with temperature around 205. First at 215 the material got through the nozzle and the e-steps ere accurate.
Fan speed is at 100 and so is flow.
Retraction settings and z hops may be a factor. Do you have any suggestions as to what those should be?
My results gets better with the settings I’ve uploaded a pic off. If I try the standard settings in Cura the print is really bad and in Luban it is unprintable.
Does anybody have some sliced test files for pla max that just works
It is so frustrating getting shitty prints.
@Mxbrnr I have now mannualy leveled the bed but to no avail. I still get blops and lines on the print. There are strings every time it travels. My support is impossible to remove. And I even had filament stuck to the plate so bad that it was impossible to remove without damaging the bed.
And the most frustrating thing is that this piece of **** did work once with the press of a button.
Try drying the filament and see if the surface gets better.
215°C seem too high for me, do you see blobs if you extrude in the air?
If it sticks too well you probably have to raise your live z offset on the touchscreen while printing (from the touchscreen).
I would not suggest to go too high, especially for huge prints better adhesion counts more than elefant foot.
E-steps is ideally done with the hotend or nozzle removed so that this does not affect it, since it is supposed to be a mathematical constant and not subject to influence from things like temp and flow (both of which will change depending on the filament, but e-steps will not). I would strongly suggest re-calibrating e-steps in this way.
You said you are using Cura; make sure the “Combing mode” setting is set to “All.”
So I tried to go back to the basis.
I recalibrated the e steps without the nozzle as @Mxbrnr suggested. That was a good call I think. My e step is now at 224.52. (it was over 250 before).
I changed my nozzle to a steel one. (should not affect anything when printing pla)
I dried some filament from Snapmaker so I could use the stuff that Snapmaker themselves suggest using.
I used Lubans default ‘normal’ settings to slice the model.
I leveled the bed as described by Snapmaker.
The result is terrible. Sooo is Bambu lab the way to go now or what are the best printers nowadays?
You must get an understanding of how a good first layer looks like and learn how to achieve it by adjusting z-offset as well as keeping the buildplate clean. There is no point in adjusting any settings before that.
