I’m noticing on quite a few prints that the top surface layer is getting these rather odd artefacts. I think it has something to do with how my P1S prints in sequence per layer. There’s a few ideas I’ve thought of:
Infill. If using grid, it might be displacing the layer below causing the layer to be slightly higher in a few areas.
Method of layer lines, i.e. it’ll print on area continuously, stop once complete, then move to another area making me think it’s possibly hot filament causing it to look shiny.
My gut tells me it’s a slicer setting. I always leave ‘Bed Levelling’ checked, so I don’t think it’s that. I sometimes use ironing, although this increases the length of the printing process and isn’t always the desired effect I’m looking for.
To me this looks like different starts and stops of the infil on the topsurface. While filling it in, the printer stops at different parts and starts again later fo fill in the part completely. This causes the lines to cool down differently and this shows up as the surface you have now.
I don’t know if I explained it good enough but I hope you understand. (Not a native English speaker here…)
Righto, I’ll give that a whirl. Bambu calibrate their filament to work with their printers, so by default the Basic PLA Black comes at a flow rate of 0.98, but I’ll see about dropping it down to 0.9 and see how we fare.
Ironing is good for areas that are printed “without breaking the strokes”. Otherwise, ironing can make the appearance even worse, because the parts that are shiny now will become even shinier.
Try printing a Yin Yang (medal) without ironing and with ironing. I tried ironing on a Prusa MK4, but I was a bit disappointed. When I have some time, I will post some pictures here.
This was one of the reasons why I returned my X1C to the seller and am now waiting for a refund. I am afraid that the X1C is not capable of printing FAST and QUALITY at the same time. Not to mention printing with a small layer height (0.08mm).
The printer can move the tool head fast, that doesn’t mean the plastic can keep up with that speed.
It’s true that, BBL profiles suck, need a lot of tweaking to get it right. Not to mention they use cheap hardware: such as cheap timing belt, cheap pulley cheap bearing… At the end of the day, BBL printer is just a giant hot glue gun that can move around along 3 axis, just like any other 3D printers.
I think you should buy Markforged Mark Two. I heard the print quality is superb, no need to fiddle with print profile and all.
Honestly, after coming from a K1 which was a heaping bag of shite, Bambu are absolutely awesome and I’ll never stop bigging them up. They have their downfalls, sure, but they’re a great bit of kit compared to competitors.
Anyway, I decided to try another print with ironing turned on and it turned out subpar:
Can you check if your hotend is perpendicular? (Perpendicular in all directions to the bed).
I had bent mine and it took me ages to work out why I couldn’t get a smooth top surface.
It didn’t have to be bent very much to make a difference.
Anyway, how would one go about checking if it’s perpendicular to the bed or not? I can’t visually tell if it is (it looks it?) - is there a test I can do?
