Dire Printing quality on Test Parts

I am again struggling with printing a part on my P1S Combo. This part uses supports, but the outcome of that is an unusable print once the supports have been removed. There also seems to be an adverse effect on the reverse of where the supports have been placed.

There is no issue when I print flat parts, but as soon as I add a new dimension (for example an alignment wall (as in this picture) it doesn’t seem to be able to handle it.

This should have been a flat surface as shown here

The only difference is that I added an internal tube on the opposite face.

So, I’m not sure what’s going on here, but I know that I used to get better results than this with my old Ender 3.

I have tried to play with support settings to make them easier to remove, but that doesn’t explain why the surface of this flange is this bad.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

Machine: P1S-Combo
Machine Firmware: 01.06.00.00
Bambu Studio Version: 1.9.3.50

eSun PLA+ (White)
AMS Humidity : 1
Textured PEI Plate

Layer Height : 0.2
Print Speed
Outer Wall: 150
Inner Wall: 200

Strength is set at 40%

If you flipped that model, you have entire bottom surface overhang because of the tiny notch. Not the printer problem, it’s the model.

@kip How would you suggest printing it?

Pic 1 and 2 were both printed oriented as they are shown?

Whats the difference between the 2 models? You mentioned alignment wall, but I cant make it out in the messed up print pic.

@binfordw Picture 2 is the flat print, both picture 1 and 3 are after the introduction of the central tube.

Picture 1 was printed in the orientation as Picture 3 so that supports were kept to a minimum.

So in the pic below- this was printed opposite/face down?

Assuming you had supports on for the build plate? I"m not sure I’m seeing support material.

Obviously if you didn’t, this tab is the only contact with the build plate as Kip suggested.

Maybe its an issue that the support layer is taller than the tab, so it doesnt print supports?

I’d check it in the slicer and see what your first layer(s) looks like.

image

I have (had) similar problems
what helped me is:

  • set the number of top and bottom interface from (default) 2 to 3.
  • note that the direction of the pattern is rotated 90 degrees with respect to the bridge pattern.

OK , My apologies, I’m not being clear enough here. This picture was to show what happened if I printed the item flat.

There were no supports used at this stage. The tab you see is used in the print as a locator marker and would usually be printed in a different colour.

This picture shows I have flipped the print 180 Degrees and added the new “tube”.

But when I flip it back to the original orientation and print it I get this result

I don’t know if that helps?

What may help is to view a screengrab of the sliced file. If you can show the two scenarios, this may add clarity. This will also clarify how the parts were oriented on the build plate before you sent them to print and most of all, clarify what your print intent was.

@ user_3453042581 That’s very helpful, thanks so much. I will try changing my settings as you suggest and see what happens.

:clap:

@Olias I am hoping that this is what you wanted to see.

This shows the original orientation of the part as it was imported into the slicer.

My intention in flipping the part before printing was to try and limit the use of supports, which typically are difficult to remove and tend to damage the more delicate parts, making this print useless. I did not print it in the default slicer orientation because of the amount of material I would need to waste.

Just realized that you asked for both scenarios. Here’s the flipped model.

And here it is with the supports turned on.

I dont see “all” supports in your last slicer pic, just supports for the inner section.

With that tab, the entire part would need supports, that would extend past the edges and be visible in that image.

Maybe the tab is lower than the initial layer/support settings height- so it doesnt print the needed supports?

Slide down to layer 1 and see what it looks like.

I changed the supports section of the slicer to reflect some of suggestions made already in this thread.

Here is the layer 1 slicer view.

Then I re-ran the print. There is some improvement, but the underside where the support went is still a mess that is impossible to remove and leaves a very messy surface.

This is how it looks from the top.

And this is the bottom surface after trying to remove some of the support.

Thank you. That helps a lot.

I think I now better understand the challenge now that I can compare the orientation with your print result.

The short answer is that I don’t think you can get both sides to create a clean print as if you were to have them flush. Since neither side is flush, you obviously do not have that option.

So here is one method that might work but there is a leap of faith as this may seem counter intuitive.

If I look at your print, what I see is very shallow supports. They are a bitch to get off clean as you no doubt have shown in your image.

So here comes the counterintuitive part. Make the supports taller and they will snap off away cleaner.

There are two parts to this solution and you can try them separately or together. I might suggest cloning the part and trying them three ways.

Levitate the part above the print bed by using the assembly feature.

You know that the slicer won’t allow for you to just pick up a part, it will just fall back to the plate. So here is how we trick it.

  1. Create a small primitive object. I usually use a cube primitive and resize it to 5x5x1. That makes it easier to pick off the plate with your fingernail after the print. for my example, I just so happen to have a part similar to yours on my build plate right now. How ironic. :grin:

  2. Now select both parts and make it an assembly.

  3. Now click on the object in the object menu( It’s easier than trying to click on it while it’s on the plate) and select the up arrow(blue) and drag it to how high you want the supports to be. It will now stay suspended above the plate because the slicer thinks it’s part of an assembly and that 5x5x1 square is the lowest part of the assembly thus anchoring the whole thing down.

  4. Make sure supports are selected under the supports menu and click slice. This will fool the slicer into thinking that this part of the assembly needs support. The square is just a throw-away part. Now that you have a taller support, it may be much easier to pull them off with a snap rather than trying to pry them off. You may have to experiment with taller or more denser supports to get the right mix.

The down-side of this approach is that you waste more filament and of course it can double or even triple the print time.

Change the variations on the support width.

This image is the sliced image but note that I have check off the check boxes for everything else other than supports. This is so that we can see what the affect is of changing supports. Here is the default.

Now if I change the interface spacing to 5 mm, you can see that the supporting filaments become much farther apart. It’s a lot easier to remove wide supports than narrow ones but this will come at the cost of potential drooping in between the lines depending on your filament and temps. But you can use smaller amounts too such as 3mm and experiment. That’s why I suggested cloning the model and printing multiple examples.

You can also increase the maximum interface layers to 3 which may make it easier to snap off. In that example, you are relying on the brittleness to help you.

One last tip.

Before you try to snap off the supports, stick the entire plate in the freezer for 5-10 minutes. This will make the supports much more brittle and make it easier to snap off.

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My first choice with something like this is… sometimes its just easier and cleaner to split a print like this in two, and then bolt it together in the end. That way you can print both sides flat on the bed.

If you don’t want to assemble it with hardware, this would be a great place to use a support specific filament for the interface layer and 0 out the heights.

Another solution you can try to print something like this orientation. With decent support settings this will fall right off.

If you choose to follow the advice of Olias with levitation (resin 3D printing support), I’d use this type of orientation (45 degree) to minimize the support usage.

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This is an astonishingly detailed answer and just the kind of suggestions I was looking for. Thank you so much for taking the time to post these responses, it’s very much appreciated and gives me something to get my teeth into.

As an attempt to fill in the purpose of this build, it’s going to be a mount for a Beeline Moto II GPS. Here’s what the unit looks like (from the back) once it’s in place on the current prototype docking ring (what I am calling the print we have been discussing)

Hopefully it will explain why I need these “lugs” to be so clean and why they are so thin.

This is a profile angle without the core tube I have shown above. As I have not been successful (yet) in printing the part there is no photo.

Thank you again for all your help. I will let you know how this goes by way of an update.

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The indexing tab is really messing things up here. Can you modify your model so that it is a separate piece? That way the surface becomes flat and easy to print

Index

A quick update on this one.

Earlier today I made some modifications as suggested by @Olias (couldn’t find the “Assemble” option, looks like in my version of Bambu Studio they have changed it to “Merge”? Anyway I was able to experiment with the raised print approach with the following results.
This is the print with the new raised supports in place.

And the base pattern;

And now, with the supports removed.


As you can see, there’s still quite a bit of “rough” on the print.

I think what this is telling me is that I need to start segmenting my prints more and looking to print the design with a view to manually attaching each at the end of the build process. In any case, I learnt new skills today and am continuing to learn a better ?? approach to designing parts.

Any more suggestions would be gratefully accepted, but thanks again for all your help.

You’ve hit the limit of FDM. Gravity sucks. :yum:

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@B0M0A0K Do you happen to have PETG filaments?