Hello all, AZ here, I recently purchased an A1 and I love it (despite the recent recall). I’m not exactly new to 3d printing, been dabbling in printing for about 5 years, started with an Anycubic, went through a few Elegoo printers, and now have the A1.
This was a 10 hour print and I noticed at the top it started to distort . This piece is about 10 inches tall. I’m thinking this might be caused by shaking of the machine? I had it sitting on a two door file cabinet that has wheels, and I’m think the vibration and movement is causing this as the print becomes less stable at the top. I’ve moved the printer to the tile floor temporarily as I print the next section to see if that’s the case, but does anyone have any input?
That distortion is called “ringing”. The mechanics of the positioning system vibrate when the printhead is accelerated (any speeding up or slowing down requires acceleration). Those vibrations last a little while (which is why it’s called “ringing”, like a bell). If the printer continues to print, the vibrations become printed-in. They’re worse wherever there’s a corner because changing direction requires a lot of acceleration.
(note: without seeing the rest of the print, it’s possible that it’s the print that’s ringing, and not the printer’s mechanics).
BBL printers do a calibration to determine what frequencies need to be “managed” by the stepper motor control system in order to prevent ringing. It’s actually the primary design feature. Your calibration appears to be no good. Re-run the full calibration sequence. You should probably tighten up the belts first. If that doesn’t fix it, there’s an issue with your machine that BBL will have to diagnose via a service ticket.
Thanks all, I decided to run one more print with the machine on the floor just to see if the stability helped, and it looks like it did. I probably need to run the calibration and maybe check the acceleration like mentioned above, but this print came out great without any adjustments to the machine. Just a little bit of ringing on the top, but nothing like what I had before. I’m definitely not using the filing cabinet as a base anymore.
It is always necessary to run calibrations when you change any configuration on your machine that can alter the structural behavior of your printer. For example, if you move the spool holder from the top of the printer to the surface of your desktop or even if you change the location of your printer.
