Melty on the left / Gappy on the right - no goldilocks to be found

Difficult to say with no pictures. Probably bed levelling is still an issue. What machine calibrations have you done?

Are we talking single / double digits of hours? That’s normal. If you’re in the hundreds of hours that might be a problem. I spent roughly 160 hours tweaking a different machine. Resorted to randomized sampling and optimization of 60 some odd variables. Hundreds and hundreds of test prints.

Anyways, my point is when things go well they go great. When things go bad it can be difficult to get back on track - there’s a lot of places to look for improvement. That being said, there are some obvious places to start if I can see some pictures.

Also, watch your prints while they print. It’s really illuminating and you can see right where things go off the rails. Looking at a completed print and trying to understand everything that caused it is more difficult.

For example, when the first layer printed, what caused the melty/gappy thing?

The image is as best as I can get. I don’t really have a setup or lighting that photographs these kinds of things well. These were done in different slicers with their own “normal” quality settings. Meaning this isn’t scientific by any stretch of the imagination. I was creating g-code that I could review while inspecting my prints to better understand what they were doing in each case.

I do understand that some level of tweaking and troubleshooting is expected with such things which is why I have been doing my own investigating for hours, well into the double digits, before coming to the forums asking for help.

I have been watching prints. I have been studying them to the best of my abilities given that I do not yet have a trained eye for this.

I don’t know what caused the melty/gappy thing. It was present in my first prints (which I threw away before realizing I might need to share them in a forum like here).

Another test I did was place the same object in 5 different places so that I could see if this was a leveling issue. The result was that each object, no matter their placement on the bed, had the melty left/gappy right thing.

Is your X very out of tram? Did you push the X axis all the way to the top of both Z modules? Is everything assembled correctly? Again, what calibration prints have you done? Have you calibrated e-steps and flow? Brittle is indicative that you have not calibrated e-steps

I haven’t been able to do anything other than the auto bed leveling and the z-offset tuning with the calibration paper. However, this isn’t because of lack of attempting to do more calibrations.

I tried to follow this: https://teachingtechyt.github.io/calibration.html#intro But after getting an error and looking it up here, I discovered that I can’t use the M303 to do the PID tuning. I did not understand the M301 method enough to feel confident to try. I was lost during the next part discussing Extruder esteps and because of what I encountered with PID tuning, I didn’t feel confident enough to attempt it.

Is there a calibration guide like the site above for Snapmaker models that covers the things you are mentioning? Please keep in mind that I am a beginner attempting to learn.

Thank you for adding the link to another comment but I don’t understand that discussion at all.

That link got a little unwieldy and off the rails at points.
Here is a simpler summary of what calibrating extrusion or e-steps is and how to do it:

-S

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Thank you so much. I’ll get right to it!

A couple other things
Are you doing a 5 x 5 bed leveling? (default is 3x3)

Are you using SM filament? The SM has been all over the place in quality. Especially with the black PLA, when people try out other filament their problems go away.

You might also want to share pictures of your machine and it’s assembly (from a variety of angles and heights) so we can make sure nothing obvious there.
-S

Did snapmaker fixed the thermal paste on the hotend temperature sensor? I remember a lot of people complaining about something similar in the early days of the v2. A little thermal paste made their lives a lot better.

I have a test print finishing so I made a video while that was going: PXL_20211130_225752727.mp4 - Google Drive

This is using the brand new Hatchbox filament that I just opened today and the first full print of Benchy using it. The previous white filament was from Snapmaker. I can already see huge improvements in this print compared to previous ones. I’ll post a picture of this print and the bottom once it is done.

If there are specific parts I should send photos of, let me know.

I don’t know which grid(?) the auto bed leveling is using but I will show you the control panel once this print is complete. Maybe that tells you which I am using because I honestly didn’t know there were two options in the calibration app.

Kinda hard to see the quality of the print in that, maybe youtube hasn’t finished rendering yet.
image

How did it turn out? Better, you say, and you switched from the included filament to hatchbox for this one? Is the first layer issue any different?

Also, be mindful of the filament wrapping around the tower, pulling excessively on the edge of the enclosure, or the filament spool wrapping over itself and binding, all of those can cause issues with consistent extrusion.

I recall several people have relocated the filament spool inside the enclosure, there’s enough room. There’s also guides that can be printed.

It’s still printing so I will add photos once it is complete. Again, lighting is terrible in the workshop for any kind of video or photography. I’m doing the best I can with what I’ve got to work with.

This printer belongs to my partner and he told me that the filament should be on the right side of the tower instead of the left where it will tug quite a bit (what he read somewhere). So at the start of every print, I make sure to position the filament to the right side (inside). I already have a fix saved for printing that will keep the filament to the inside (Snapmaker 2.0 A350 Enclosure Filament Guide by dstarke - Thingiverse) but have been working on one problem at a time. :sweat_smile:

So continues the tradition of using a 3d printer to print parts to make said printer work a little better :joy:

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Black Benchy is the new Hatchbox filament.
White is from SM.

There are flaws, and there is still the melty/gappy bottom, but it is much much better than before.

This is a picture of the auto leveling calibration tool. No idea if it is 5x5 or 3x3. I don’t see other options. Just this screen.

Thank you all for your help.

That looks pretty good. I’d say your first layer isn’t optimal, but it’s acceptable. Check you’re on the latest firmware, there was a relatively recent change that fixed some issues with how it measures the bed. Maybe that would make it better.

The artifacts on the front of the bow and on the sides could be temperature related, you could print a temperature tower (like from the site you linked earlier) to determine the best temp for this filament. Or just drop the temp 5C and see if it makes a difference.

Overall not bad.

When did you receive this? Recently? Haven’t heard updates in awhile but it would be interesting to know if Snapmaker is still sending out garbage filament. They definitely were about a year ago.

I’ll check out the temperature tower. Should I still do the extruder calibration test mentioned earlier or the tower first?

The firmware is Snapmaker 2_V1.13.2_20210913.

Do these 4 in this order:

Linear advance is a good one, but kind of optional. You could also just set it to 0.07 which is what most people have found works the best.

There are a few others in there you can do if you want, like acceleration, but most people find the defaults are good.

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I have only done the Extruder E-step Calibration so far and accidently printed this 4-sided cube for the Slicer Flow Calibration, but just look at it! All sides look like this! It’s glorious!

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If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. You can absolutely tweak until it breaks. You can do a temp tower, but it might not go so well (maybe it will, who knows). The bridging is problematic. But I’d be hesitant to make big changes.

You see a problem with the bridging in this print? Can you tell me where so I know how to identify it?