ASA top surface giving me problems

Bambu Lab P Series Troubleshooting
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Printer - P2s
Filament - Polymaker ASA
.4 Nozzle
.2 layer
Filament very dry at 11%
Bed temp 96c
Nozzle 255c
Flow ratio .955
Infill Gyroid 25%
Top surface tested 30 - 150mm speed - monotonic line pattern
Top Surface acceleration 450 - 1500mm
Current top surface speed and acceleration with best result so far - 140 and 450

above are the current specs and here is my issue. The ASA prints beautifully in all respects EXCEPT for the top surface. No matter what combination I try to get a smooth top surface it still turns out with boogers and/or grooves (not nozzle strike FYI) to a varying degree. Strange that the supporting shell the top surface sits on looks great - even tried to mimic the shell settings but still not great.

This is for a production part so ironing is not going to work here - are there any forum members on the p2s that run Polymaker ASA have any ideas or possibly share your secret recipe?

Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated and thanks.

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Hi user_3734872440, are you able to add a picture so we can visually see the issue you’re having? It may help in troubleshooting.

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Grooves would indicate too little flow, blobs too much.

I would try (re-)calibrating the flow rate using the top-line Calibration that is available in Studio with Develop mode enabled in Preferences.

I currently have three ASA colors: two from Inland and another from Polymaker. The calibrated flow ratios are all different, ranging from .948 to .998.

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Hi user 373.., I’m new to printing and quite curious what this means, exactly? I’ve tried the famous ironing demos and was thinking of using it in a product…

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Welcome to the forum.

I think what to poster is referring to is that ironing adds substantial time to a print and in a production environment this added time limits yield.

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Hi Kioto, this is the worst of it based on the base generic profile… I managed to get rid of most of the pimples but still have some around the direction changes.

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Hi Ikraus, have tinkered with cal and flow ratio - the best for my setup is .955 flow ratio but will play around with flow some more… I was focused on acceleration as changing speed had the most dramatic effect on reducing the pimples but may have optimized that setting as far as it will help.

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Hi 327, JonRaymond is spot on… ironing is a way to smooth out surfaces - in most cases you can get a glass like top but it does take a lot of time to test, tune and print the product so not right for my situation.

If you want to try it out for your prints the settings are in quality section. I would recommend downloading the iron tests available on Maker World and tune for each filament - one setting does not work for all materials.

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Sorry did I uploaded an image but it appears I’m not eligible just yet to add photos as it’s not showing.

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Yes, my only experience so far was printing out one copy of Ultimate Ironing Test Original. I love that project.

I haven’t checked exactly what the Y “percent” axis is, but the X axis is clearly good speed. The default settings gave about as smooth a finish at the highest speed of 30mm/sec at 25% (whatever that setting is, I’ll check later) as even 10mm/sec at 30%. So to the extent that this speed is the inverse of time required, it seems like you don’t HAVE to iron at the slowest pace to get the best result.

I’m actually going to try printing my upper surface in PETG-CF and Hilbert Curve and Fuzzy Skin (.1 thick, .5 distance) as I think that’d give a “purposely rough” appearance that might disguise the fact it’s printed.

The alternative idea is trying acetone vapor for ABS, which gives a mirror-like finish. Apparently also possible in PC with methylene chloride but that’s highly toxic.

Third idea is to sand and apply epoxy.