Hey all!
If you’ve tried to make a small tower with the snapmaker, you;ve probably noticed the walls look terrible and it isn’t setting properly.
Figure 1: It’s difficult to see, however, the print has unevent sides and caved in sections.
What causes this?
This is caused by the nozzle never having time to leave the small surface, meaning the extremely hot nozzle is constantly heating the plastic near the top, never allowing it to settle.
How do you fix this?
Simply make a tower of any type (could be a small 1mm x 4mm) that is as high as the thin surface. For me, I simply printed another dart a ways away from the initial dart.
What did this do?
This allowed the printed tower to cool before the next layer was placed on top of it!
Here is the result:
Figure 2: The print on the left is without the tower, the one on the right was done with.
Figure 3: Figure on left was printed with tower, figure on the right was printed without.
Figure 4: Figure on the left was printed with a tower and the figure on the right was printed without a tower.
This was printed with PETG at temps lower than PLA usually. I printed these at 190 C to reduce stringing. Different filaments may have different requirements!
Hope this helps!
Happy printing!
-Greg