We’ve had our A350 for about 1.5 years and we’ve never had this particular issue until this past week. For whatever reason, the printer has decided to lose its mind where the model touches supports. Almost everything else looks fine/normal for the settings we use but the print quality goes into a tail spin when supports are nearby.
I got tired of trying 6+ hour prints only to have them turn out the same way so I used Fusion to create an STL file of just one corner of the top which would require supports. Here’s a closeup of what happened. I have more pics but I’m not allowed to post more than one picture at a time.
See how the foot (not touching any supports) printed without issue while the entire rest of the model looks like a 3 yr old with a 3D print pen did the work? Or how the filament goes from globby thick to wispy thin? Also note how the lines warble on the Z axis and are just generally all over the place.
Again, super rough/choppy where the support material came in contact with the model and fine on the foot part that didn’t touch any support material.
We’ve releveled the bed and tried using our breakaway support filament. Nozzle is set to 200C and bed to 60C, same as we’ve been doing since we got the machine. Nozzle can’t be clogged because the print quality is fine wherever supports aren’t involved.
Need more info.
When was the last time your firmware was updated?
What slicer are you using and what version of it?
Filament type?
Support settings?
What calibrations have you completed on your machine?
What tunings have you completed for this specific filament?
We try to keep the printer firmware updated when we see one available but I’m not sure when it was last updated. I’m checking with a colleague now but may need to check it personally later today.
We’re using Luban v4.9.1. We’re delaying an update to Luban because every time we update we loose our settings which ticks us off.
I’ll send a second reply with the other support setting screenshot. Forum rules about one pic for new users and all…
The only calibration we did was the Z axis calibration and we used the calibration card that comes with the A350. The rough print quality was the same before and after the calibration.
We’ve done no specific tunings for this particular filament. We used to run Sunlu PLA (black only) but since we have a couple of X1E printers on the way I decided to move to Overture.
Looks like bad filament, too hot, or your z offset is too high. I’m assuming this the dual extruder? I use the default zero gap with my breakaway pla (overture). Your layers on the picture looks terrible… how do your first layers look? How is your filament routed to the printer? I had a lot of bad outcomes until I mounted it exactly how snappy directions told me to. Any drag messes this thing up
Thanks for the suggestions, but how do they square with the fact that only the parts of the print that come in contact with or are within a few layers of the supports are messing up? The rest of the print is fine.
There is some additional drag on the filament that hasn’t been around recently but it’s just from it rotating on the metal rod that comes with the snapmaker. When we printed with the Sunlu PLA we had a ball bearings in cones to support the roll on that rod. I’ll try out some Sunlu and see what happens.
I changed my support z distance from .48 to .16 by just clicking the “refresh” icon next to the field and it still did the same thing. Here’s a pic of the stringy breakaway support material if it helps.
Adhesion to the bed is still good but the curvature of the edges of the part is off… meaning it’s curving up to make the edges look like they’re peeling upwards. That issue though is secondary to the poor print quality.
Maybe a wall thickness issue or something related to walls being printed before/after infill?
I would reset all the support settings if I were you. Then set support interface density of whatever it is called these days… to 100% and the support z-distance to 0 or 1xlayer height. 0 would be best as long as the supports dont stick to much to the part…
In regards to edges peeling upwards. That usually means that the material (PLA, tight?) is not cooling quickly enough. You could reduce the printing speed, recuce the nozzle temp or increase fan to mitigate this. If the part is small, you might also want to try increasing the minimum layer time…
Something is wrong in how you’re calibrating it. Those layers look… wrong. If those are the areas that are touching the supports… and you’re using the DX with breakaway PLA… you do not want to use the ‘break away’ setting for supports. That is designed for same plastics. Switch it to 0-gap or reliable. I’ve been doing reliable lately and the finish on the bottom is sufficient. 0-gap would be ‘best’. Don’t use ‘zig zag’. Change it to cube or triangle. Because breakaway PLA is designed to be brittle, you don’t have to use flex to break it. And you end up with a better support.
Can you show us what it’s supposed to be so we can see what the goal is?
When you do your z-offset calibration… you’re using auto or manual calibration?
Here’s an example of a print I was just doing… my layers do not look like yours. I’m primarily default settings… I have my breakaway filament set to ‘reliable’. I use triangle instead of zig zag. Layer height on that project is .24mm. It’s printing at 60mm/s. Infil is about 15%. Nozzle is the brass .4 nozzle.
@Rwide - I reset everything like you suggested and also set the support z distance to 0 from .16. This helped a little bit, especially around the edges, but I still don’t have the nice clean surface that I should have. I know that where supports touch a model I can’t expect things to look perfect but things should obviously look better than the pics I’ve shared.
With regard to the edges peeling, that’s probably happening because the PLA is cooling TOO quickly.
The improved print quality could also have happened due to the small increase in enclosure temp after printing several times this morning. Here’s after my third attempt at making one settings change at a time today:
The white filament is the leftover breakaway PLA and the chunk out of the corner is where I hit it with a bandsaw to see the inside quality. It’s about the same - nice on the bottom, less nice on the layer that touches the infill.
As I watched this print out, the layer that touched the support material seemed to be really fine for some reason. And when I look at the blobs of PLA joined by a fine line of PLA in this picture it makes me think the nozzle heat is melting the finer previous layer to where it’s shrinking back on itself into a blob and leaving a string behind. Who knows.
@Mads0100 - I changed my Support Preference to Reliable and Z distance to zero as suggested but still ended up with the above picture. My Support Pattern options don’t include “cube” but I did have “triangles” so I used that.
Here’s what I’m attempting to print and have successfully printed several times in the recent past:
The red outlined corner is the small chunk I’ve separated from the main model to find out why the prints are failing.
I’m manually calibrating the z-offset using the little plastic card that came with the printer. As you can see from the pics, the little foot there is contacting the bed and looks great except for a very slight elephants foot.
Did you try both setting the support interface density to 100% and setting the support z distance to 0 or did you only try 0 support z distance?
Not sure what you mean with “edges peeling”. If you are referring to edges on top side of the printed part and you are using PLA, then it is surely because the material is cooling to slow… If you you are experiencing a warped underside then sure, the opposite i most likely true.
Can you post the file? I’ll run it tonight when I get home. I’ll mail it to you if it works out
I recently did a ‘raft’ style break away pla like you are having to do for this project. My finish was much better… I just don’t have a picture to show you.
Oh hey, just thought of this one. Do you have support floor and ceilings on? You want that for these big objects.
I didn’t set the support interface density to 100% because, as I understand the description of that setting, it only moves the supports closer together and that didn’t seem to fit the problem I’m having. That said and unbeknownst to me until just now, when I turned on the slider for “Enabled Support Interface” Luban automatically set the Support Interface Density to 70%.
With Enabled Support Interface turned on, the main print nozzle Support Reference to Reliable, and the support nozzle Support Pattern set to Grid I managed to print this:
It’s still a little grainy but I’m going to turn off “Enabled Support Interface” so that I can set interface density to 100% and see what happens. The good news is that the edges here printed perfectly so that’s back to where I was a week ago before all this started.
The STL of the little piece I’m trying to fix is posted below.
I’ll try raft when I’m back in the office next week. All this time off at the end of the year is killing me.
I didn’t have them on for the few successful prints I did so I wasted a lot of breakaway material but the next time I print the full sized model I’m going to have support floors/ceilings on. I believe that’s the “Enabled Support Interface” option but correct me if I’m wrong there.
… sorry, should’ve mentioned that earlier. It basically eliminates the bridging by creating a skin on top of the supports for the real print to sit on like a brim.
Breakaway supports are a huge mind shift… you want a much sturdier support because they’re brittle. You might try 0-gap and the support interface. I think that’s my current settings.
It’s looking a lot better!
Edit: here’s a zero gap support I did. Quality may be a tad better than you got.
Perhaps you have backlash problems. You can test by gently forcing the bed back and forth in the X & Y direction and the extruder model in the Z direction. When the printered is powered on and not moving these should not move. If there are movements, adjustments inside the linear models may be needed.
Sorry about the delayed response to this thread. Christmas, catching up from Christmas, other work things, yada yada…
I did a small bracket print this morning and these pictures show what’s still happening. The footprint of you’re seeing here is 7x10mm. The white material is Snapmaker breakaway filament and it breaks away really well. Just separating the model from the bed caused the supports to fall away. So that part is great.
What’s NOT great is that this print still gets unhinged when printing on top of a support. Look at those layer lines - it’s like freakin spaghetti in there. I guess I have the same question as I originally had and it’s “what in the world causes this??”.
I’ve not yet checked for backlash as suggested but I will today. I’ve tried every suggestion made so far (and greatly appreciate those that helped me out there) but I’m still getting the gremlins. Maybe I just need to slow down the print altogether? Maybe there’s a way to slow down on just the part where the model touches the supports? Is there too little of the white breakaway material for the model layers to get printed on? The gap between the white lines is 1mm as shown.
Anyone have any new year thoughts on this crazy town printer?
