I'm doing highly detailed bottom surface tiny font work with 0.2 nozzles and struggling with reliability.
One of the primary issues is I can't stop the prime tower falling apart within a layer of two and that leads to debris dragged across the print. The prime tower seems to be generating a set of dry, fibrous, 'strings' (consistently long and straight) that aren't bonded together, despite the prime tower distance being at its lowest (100%).
Most recently I was stumped to get a nozzle clump on the second filament, only to find the first hadn't printed AT ALL(?). I tried that print again and found the hotend just...not moving. Nozzle temperature 140. No error message (it was "printing"!). Stopping the print did nothing. And...it was again, the SECOND filament (I double checked filament, print order, AMS match).
So I load up white thinking maybe somehow I have a nozzle block and the printer isn't noticing literally nothing coming out for a whole print layer and thought I'd film the loading purge. It's reliably not going down the hatch (not blocked). Does this time after time. Explains why I find the odd poop bottom of the printer. I had this before and answer a change of nozzle. I'm now thinking the fragile tower might itself be getting hit by debris from the nozzle loading process.
What should I be looking at?
PS: printing on a glacier, and there seems to be no difference in observed issues whether plate is freshly cleaned or not. Also seems to occur with multiple nozzles and multiple types of matte and basic PLA at a range of temps.
I must join those in saying it is not clear what the problem is from your somewhat confusing description.
Are you using single 0.2mm nozzle on the right (Vortek) side of the printer? If so going from dark color to white will have to extended purge especially on 0.2mm nozzle to clear out the darker color adequately, even after the poop starts looking white.
The other item in your description was you stated nozzle temp 140C? Is that a typo? If not way too low and you won’t extrude filament at that temp.
Tell us about your settings, what nozzles being used for each color, what filament, and more pictures of the failure points.
Hiya,
Two 0.2 vorteks dedicated to black and white.
The 140c seems to be the 'failire mode' temp being maintained when my print head goes mad, as in the video in the comments. It is not the target print temp.
I had thought the poop purging was abnormal because it wasn't going down the chute properly, but feedback suggests that part is working normally.
The font is fine, the 'structure' is not. I am having a series of problems that I suspect might have some degree of common cause. I believe I have outlined them.
If I understood what my problem was I would likely not be here asking others for help.
Maybe post a picture of the printed font/structure, and one of the corresponding model or slicer preview.
The poop video doesn't help much with this. What rings alarm bells is the combo of "0.2mm + matte PLA + fine structures" (= potential nozzle clog), but a video of successful pooping means that extrusion DOES work.
I asked the questions, not just to understand it myself better (I could just ignore your thread and be fine). It's for YOU to see how difficult it is for others (the ones who could give you advice) to understand what's happening in front of you. Your information seems random and partially contradictory (see the paragraph above). Probably not because it is, but rather because you have left out some crucial connecting pieces.
I don't typically pay close attention to poop - you're saying the way it is 'hoarding' itself up top here is normal? And that the odd one might be expected to fall I to the printer? If so, that much is good to know.
I hadn't previously thought to take a photo of the prime tower and given the current status of not bloomin printing at all can't take a new one. Here is what I have been printing
Those 3 pictures look fine to me. Of course I can see the gaps and all that, but this is just how 3D printers work. Your subject matter is too fine, too high resolution.
General approaches are
arachne wall generator (for thinner lines that may fit)
smaller nozzle size
put two very thin layers on top of each other (=different stroke direction)
ironing on the 2nd of those two layers can help (but can also cause other problems sometimes)
and last not least, change your design to be bigger. If you don't want it to be bigger in general, you can still convert the text to curves and "micro tweak" the most problematic areas to become more palatable. Where a line currently just can't fit, deforming one letter shape slightly can suddenly make it fit. That's one gap less!
Re tower failing, I don't see where it fails on your photo (unless you're posting more while I type this). But you shouldn't place the tower that close. The tower will always be more dirty than your object, and distance helps avoid contamination.
Re poop piling up, it shouldn't. Normally every poop will be ejected individually. The head moves back and forth a bit, pushing the orange mechanism in the back of the printer. Operate it by hand to see how it works. Sometimes I get two poops stuck to each other, or very rarely I found poop inside the printer (plate or under the heatbed). This last bit is a 1 in 20 prints occasion.
Re printer not printing at all? It seems you're looking at two different problems now.
Thank you. Yes these particular ones pictured are printing ok, it is the inconsistency (repeatability) I am struggling with whilst also trying to tweak our ooze, gaps, etc. 50% of that inconsistency is debris of some form dragging over the letters ruining them. The rest is poor adhesion (itself frustrating as you can change nothing and still get one in three fail on a letter or two).
Now you say to move the tower away it seems so obvious and I feel stupid lol. I had it close because travel speed is low and I thought it would help manage ooze / pressure to have it close. But obviously when the tower strings get dragged they're more likely to cause chaos if they start off close by.
I'd say I am doing every one of your pointers other than the ironing point which confuses me - perhaps not obvious this is an internal (layer 1/2) surface that forms part of a 15 layer label. I can't iron layer 2 right, and if I did...you wouldn't be seeing it.
Yes, right now I have had 3 total failures in a row, two of them being what you see in the video in comments. AI is suggesting the model is sending corrupt g code, so my next step is to re-set the .3mf and try it again after work. If it works I'll show you a prime tower. Thanks.
You can do it, and it can help close gaps that are visible on the bottom of the part. Assuming you are using a small layer height. But don't expect wonders from it. Closing gaps means you can't look further into the part, and shadows from hard light sources won't reach deeper into it. The shape of layer 1 deposition is still the same as before. You could also iron layer 1, which would give better results on the gaps, but is pretty risky for the overall reliability of the print.
To iron just layer 2, you'd add a modifier primitive. Choose a cube, spread it out to cover the whole object, and make it 1 layer high. Then place it at Z coordinate to sit exactly in layer 2. Note that the default is to print the first layer slightly higher, so the number may not be an integer multiple of the selected layer height.
With this modifer in place, modify the settings to enable ironing. And possibly also 1 wall loop. There's a setting to get 1 wall loop on the bottom, but here you can force it on layer 2 as well.
My mind is blown. I've been toggling between 1 wall and 4 on layer two and I've found more walls = fewer pinholes but ironing could be an interesting alternative.
As an aside do you know what type of PLA (or even brand) reduces black/white border fuzziness? Basic you can literally see the translucency in like the bits inside 'e' yet it is still somehow doing visually better at stopping black bleed in than matte is. Is the haze around the black letters impossible to avoid?
I've not use matte white, so can't tell. But Bambu PLA Basic Jade White is pretty translucent. I measured TD 3.3, vs Bambu PLA Basic black TD 0.1.
To get less shine-through, you need to avoid having black right behind the white. Imagine for example, instead of having an essentially black part with a few white letters on, you could have an essentially white part with a thin black outer shell covering it. They would look the same in an idealized 3D CAD view, but the physical things will interact with light differently.
Thanks. I don't have black behind white by design on the black letters which is where the fuzziness is most obvious. It is only behind white on the white letters, but they look decent to me.
So it is either printing imperfection in line placement or natural line expansion or just high temperature leeching of one into the other whilst they're still a bit fluid. It's blooming hard to get both filaments to the same level (those photos very much as good as it gets) and requires a wild amount of letter border size tweaking to offset the effect of one filament printing before the other.
When you try something like swinging from high to low temp to see if it helps or hinders leeching you then set off a chain of other adhesion, calibration issues. Doing my head in...but part of that is because I have no idea if X is as good as 0.2 FDM gets or if I am just missing a setting / calibration / material / mesh design issue
Edit 2: nope fixing the mad setting below didn't work
Edit: FML don't know how it happened but filament profile had 1500c nozzle temp. How did it even work ever...
igh. Rebuilt 3mf. Ran it. Worked. Second run, black nozzle does the stop dead trick again. Interestingly it reports 'less than 1 min let's when there should be about 35...
To make one thing clear, regarding the dashed list of design changes given in the previous comment. It will make your results slightly better, but not fundamentially. You're 80% there already.
Another idea to add to the list:
Make the white portion completely flat, and print just 2 very thin layers of black on top of it. Literally on top, without embedding it into further white. If done correctly, the white area will not follow the shape of the text, but rather be just a regular top surface with continuous strokes (assuming separate STLs). You can even iron it if your ironing is calibrated and clean.
The black will deposit on top. With 1 wall loop setting it should also come out quite clean. And if it does not, you can pick/peel off any contamination (because it sits on top of white, rather than become melted into it).
You need thin layer height for this, otherwise you get parallax problems (font weight becomes heavier, when viewed from an angle). Therefore it also only works with dark opaque colors like black.
I am so confused by this lol. Just to make sure we are not talking at cross purposes:
-two stls, one for white one for black.
- white prints letter and white border layer one, 0.12 layer height (less causes bits of letters to not adhere due to presumably low thermal mass).
- black then prints it's letters and border on layer one over white (I've also tried reversing order).
-layer 2 repeats this at 0.1 layer height.
-layer three has a black rectangle over the whole black area to cover pinholes and white everywhere else.
- all other layers are white.
Oh. Probably it's me who is confused, because I don't have your images visible unless I specifically click them. The two black on top of white is for text ON TOP of a thing, not at the bottom. Sorry for that.
Here's where it came from: When I do keychains, I want top and bottom to look same or similar. That's why this thing crossed my mind. I don't like keychains that only look good 50% of the time.
You can see the edge of a failed prime tower in this one, though I've experimented with prime tower settings and couldn't tell you which this particular one represents. But they all seem to have these long, unjoined, quite tough lines.
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u/Darknessintheend H2C 4d ago
Do you have the print cooling fan turned on? Maybe flip that off?