Tried my hand at printing some medium resolution figurines, but getting some pretty unusable results. Some parts fail form and are just tangled messes which fall or break off immediately. I’ve upped the print settings to High Quality and experimented with a heat tower (which looked ok). Any ideas why I’m getting all failures or recommendation?
Figurines can be tough on this type of printer, especially this particular brand…,
but there is a lot to be done in terms of fine tuning the machine and learning to use it.
There are many threads about extursion calibration and so forth to review. maybe start on this general recommendation for successful prints thread to see what it all has to say and go from there.
Recommendations For Successful Prints - Getting Started - Snapmaker: where creation happens
it takes time to learn this stuff.
The figures arms look like you’re printing without supports. That will lead to a bunch of spaghetti filament that fall/pulls off easily. If you can link or post the models, I can give better advice. But without links, it looks like those are going to need supports everywhere, which would leave some scarring on the models that I don’t see.
But that doesn’t explain everything. The tip of the boots on the first model should look a lot better than they do. There’s enough material there that a temperature tower shouldn’t be needed. They don’t appear to be a large overhang that would need support. Are you printing with an enclosure? If not, what is room temperature and is it drafty near the printer? I had some issues with printing that cleared up when I closed the window and turned off my fan (I don’t have an enclosure) due to excessive cooling.
Is that Snapmaker Black PLA? If so, that’s likely the cause of the weirdness on the boots. Many people have posted poor print quality because of it.
The 2nd figure looks pretty good, excepting the parts that are missing. I think supports will fix that one just fine.
When I print a fig, I like to first print a 25% scale one, just to get a feel for how it’s going to go. It prints much faster, so I’m not as disappointed with the first print doesn’t go well. Even before I actually print it, I’ll usually examine the module layer by layer with the layer slider to see if there’s anything that’s going to cause problem. Tall spindly models, or things that start printing in mid-air are all going to cause issues.
Once I’m happy with the layer view and the 25% scale model, then will I attempt a 100% scale on High Quality. If it’s really intricate, I might even to a 50% scale model before going to 100%. Some fine details disappear when the model is scaled down (the printer won’t print anything that’s not at least 0.4mm wide [the width of the nozzle]).
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Thanks, @clewis.
- No supports in this model/file
- Printing in an inclusion, room temperature is ~74F, no draft and fan off
- I am using Snapmaker Black PLA
I’m currently printing a simpler model for comparison (a vase), so hope to have some more information and comparison soon.
Files attached.
figurines.zip (2.9 MB)
Loading those up, and I can already see both of those are going to need supports. Both of them have hands that start in midair. Those are never going to print without them. My guess is that you only got the arm nubs that you did because enough filament spaghettied to turn into a support.
Take Rakshasa.stl, and slice in Luban on High Quality. Layer 182 starts printing in midair. Even with Supports Touching Buildplate, layer 182 and 189 are still going to start printing midair. When I turn on Supports Everywhere w/ a 60º overhang (I can reliably do that in High Quality mode), I still get a lot of areas that need support:
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Thanks again, @clewis . I sliced a supported version in Cura and will give that a shot. Maybe scale back my expectations a bit too. 
If you’re using Cura, I really like the tree supports. They can support everything without needing to build on top of the model, they’re a lot easier to remove, and there’s much less surface scarring. It’s pretty rare that I print with any other type of support now.
They do need a skirt or raft though. They’re very easy to knock over, even with Z hopping.
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