I also have a Bambu P1S that I use Orca slicer with and with some minor tweaking I was able to get the seams to all but disappear. It’s amazing!
However, with the U1 I’ve tried a broad range with all the scarf settings, and I can’t get it to look good. The beginning of the seam always has a raised bump (with maybe a slight depression before that) and then in the section of the “scarf” there are frequently artifacts that don’t look great, especially if there is an overhang even if it’s nearly vertical (i.e. an inverted cone).
I’ve seen a couple other places where people mention something similar and just wondering if anyone has figured anything out to make it look better? It doesn’t really matter what material I’m printing or how slow I make it, it doesn’t look good and a regular seam frequently does better.
I saw someone mentioned that they used regular Orca and it produced much better results?! I will have to try that but will first have to figure out how to add the U1 in addition to the P1S. If I find the same thing I will report back and try to get some pics as well.
I might even open up a support ticket as well because it’s a pretty big deal having janky seams when they can be almost nonexistent…
That’s not a problem, the U1 is supported in the current mainstream Orca. I also prefer mainstream Orca.
Yeah it wasn’t a problem, but I hadn’t done it and wasn’t sure how hard it would be.
So far I’ve been trying to print a taller part that I’ve printed without issue using Snorca probably a dozen times. Using plain Orca it has failed 3 times so far by getting knocked loose from the bed. I’ll look into the settings and see if I can find a cause but it won’t be until later.
Edit: I looked at the part that did print and the seam is definitely better. The scarf area looks great though there is a bit of an initial seam but better than with Snorca and that’s with stock settings. So something is definitely different with the scarf seams in the Snorca fork of Orca slicer…
Since I’m not getting many replies does that mean the scarf seams work ok for most everyone else?
I’ll have to look around for more examples but this is the most recent thing I printed. It was printed on the top part so the tapered section was an overhang which makes the seam worse but easier to take a picture of. I’ll try to add some more pics later
IDK if you’re aware of this article (and for everyone else reading this): https://www.printables.com/model/783313-better-seams-an-orca-slicer-guide-to-using-scarf-s
…might be of help.
Extract:
- Use of a slower outer wall speed is particularly important to get good results without wall distortions. How important this is may vary by printer’s ability to precisely control extrusions at very low flow. Going too slow can be bad too, as it causes localized heating issues. Optimal speeds are generally in the range 50-100 mm/sec for the scarf speed. My suggested settings use 75 or 100 mm/sec.
- Use of a wider outer wall helps decrease extrusion rate error. For a 0.4 nozzle, I recommend 0.6 outer walls.
- Use of a higher layer height than 0.2 may be helpful, again, because it reduces extrusion rate error. In some cases, however, it can hurt. My settings are optimized on the common 0.2 mm height.
- Use of inner/outer/inner is the recommended wall order. Outer/inner appears to provide worse results, as does inner/outer. This means that overhang performance may suffer, but this is challenging in general with scarf seams (see considerations below).
- Use of extrusion rate smoothing can help edge out just a little more quality on my Bambu X1C printer. I set mine to 300mm^3/s^2 and this got me the best settings. Non X1/P1 printers may need other settings.. read the mouse-hover tooltip in OrcaSlicer for an idea of what to use for your printer.
- Toggling certain features make things ugly. Do not use the following:
- Using “Wipe on loops” or “Wipe on external loops” make things bad.
- Combination of (Retract on layer change off + Wipe while retracting off) also no good.
- Curved overhangs are particularly sensitive to both the number of inner walls, their width and their print order. It’s important to note that changing certain values like inner wall width can make a meaningful difference.
Worth reading the whole article, if you haven’t already.
I’ve read thru it a while ago.
I can print that above part on my P1S and it comes out great and it’s hard to see the seam and impossible to feel it.
Using the same settings in Snorca results in the above. And that’s after going thru a range of all the scarf settings and getting it as good as possible. That part was what I had on hand that I could take a picture of. If it hadn’t been an overhang it would have been better but still not good. I tried regular Orca and it was better but still noticeable. I’ve been printing for years and basically make my own designs to print and have gotten pretty good at tweaking settings to optimize the print. And for some reason I can only get the scarf seam to be as good as a regular seam or worse.
I was mainly trying to see how others do with scarf seams on the U1/Snorca and if they are almost undetectable or a noticeable seam and I’m still not sure. I found a couple other threads and a couple more posts of people saying they also have bad scarf seams and have yet to see anyone say they get great scarf seams?
I’ve had the flu and haven’t touched the printer and I guess it’s time to contact support and see if they have any suggestions.
