Banding / Ringing type artifacts?

It gets worse from print to print :expressionless:
Nothing modified on my printer!

Are lines visible from all angle, or does your picture is taken with the worst light angle ?

Hi, yes they are visible at all angles.

Sorry, if u look from the bottom it looks fantastic

Sorry, is this thread about VFA or horizontal banding/ringing?
Have some photos and observations for the later …

Well the thread have a title self explaining :slight_smile:

Thought so too, but reading some posts and looking at the pictures made it not so clear :slight_smile:

Ok, I noticed banding/ringing in some simple prints (cylinders with wall thickness >1mm) in white bambu basic PLA and decided to do some tests.

The print is 2mm wall thickness with 0.2mm standard settings. I only played with the temperatures.
(Right 220°, left 205°)

Interestingly, it does not have any impact on the bambu basic grey. I guess it is due the pigments and/or different manufacturer.


Oups, this topic is marked as solved, maybe open a new one you will get more answer.

That said, you should not have that much visible layers, maybe try to retentioning the belts (there is a bambulab procedure to do this)

Just did that a couple of days ago. Sadly, it did not change anything.

And just to be on the safe side. I was refering to these bigger bands:

But you mean the genereal layer to layer “wobble” like this?:

I’m printing silk at 18mm/s and its still shiny

Carbon bikes do not have bare carbon exposed to the outside. Most likely it’s about preserving prints and lacquer. Carbon fibers and epoxy they are made from shouldn’t be affected by IPA.

Right, but look at my picture. At that low speed, the VFA is awful. The suggestion to boost speed to avoid VFA is incompatible with printing shiny silk.

Have you already tried to simply place the printer on the ground for a testprint? Sometimes these kind of artifacts simply appear from a wobbly surface or resonance compensation feet.
I would test it right on the floor without any extra dampening and see if that helps.

I have really no clue of what are causing you this artifact, especially with PLA wich often works great.

Anyways I reallize that this thread have turned to talk only on VFA, that’s why you should open your own topic, and give as much information as you can in your first post.

About VFA, Prusa have resolved this problem (visible on MK3) ont their new MK4 by using 0.9° stepper motors, so maybe this is only related to stepper motors used in Bambu printer

Could it be that the better stepper motors are more expensive? I myself work in a company that manufactures frequency converters. Here, even with the smallest fan, every cent is turned over 3 times. The main thing is that the components are cheap and the margin increases. Surely it’s no different here in our case - the majority of customers are satisfied with the printer, so why should the manufacturer change anything?

Of course, I don’t know if that’s the case, but it seems reasonable to assume that it is. :frowning:

This needs to be un-flagged as solved since it is still happening after the post 195 for some, and the hunt for the squareness of the carriage is under scrutiny.

Anyhow - this issue will be an ongoing thing for a while. We thought long and hard on the smooth pulley, then someone finally did a test and disproved that one.

Then it was a calibration thing, kind of helped but not a cure

Now, as mentioned above squareness and belt tension is the target.

Someone will get around to a stepper motor change (this printer does not like TL smoothers at all, which should have worked - caused a feedback loop and the carriage sit and vibrate). Wondering if it is running on a PWM.

Changing the steppers to .9 degree will also require some additional start Gcode to set X/Y steps, but as with people trying to “calibrate” for dimensions, you have no way to know what the current values are. That said, for my Prusa, .9 steppers definitely help with VFAs (hence Prusa switching to them for the MK4.)

Currently for a print going, using PETG. I placed the part at 45 degrees on the bed. The long sides of the print are clearly showing the worst VFA’s I’ve seen on my printer. I’m wondering if the orientation means only one stepper is driving the position of the tool head? If my understanding of core XY is correct? Would they explain why I’m seeing the VFA’s? The PETG doesn’t help as it’s quite shiny

Maybe someone can invent a tool for checking x square to y.
Something that has a little notch for both axis so you dont need have four arms to held a rightangle to the steelrods.

I second that. Having a x/y tool for checking square seems to me like it’s a must have. Just another issue that’s popping up with these machines.