Elephant's foot? Mushrooming?

I am trying to print a round, 2.5" medallion, 1/4" thick. It looks great except for the top and bottom sides are swelled out, as in the picture. I am thinking there is an easy fix, but I am drawing a blank.

Printer: P1S, doors and vents open.
Filament: EPAX High Speed PLA, color is Burnt Titanium (glittery).
Settings: 0.20mm Standard Preset
EDIT: I missed a couple changes to the preset I will put those changes below. I should have mentioned temps and build plate prep.
Bed Prep: Dawn Dish Soap/warm water
Bed Temp: 55
Ext Temp: 1st-230, then-225
Speeds: All preset except Top Surface 65mm/s
Changes to Preset: 30% Adaptive Cubic-Sparse Infill, as well as Walls-3, Infills except for Sparse to Octagram Spiral, Line Width Top-0.35, Internal Solid Infill-0.35
Printed one model, dried for 6 hours at 45c, printed another with the same result.

Here is a picture. Any suggestions? Setting changes?

It looks like you have warping and as the external perimeter of the medallion goes up there is a build up of material in the top perimeter.

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Try printing it solid, so there is no difference between the ends and the middle. I think you have differential shrinkage because of the infill versus solid top and bottom.

If it doesn’t help, then at least you’ve eliminated one possibility.

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Second vote for warping being the issue. You can visually see the part lifting off of the bed in your picture. Start with thoroughly cleaning your build plate with dish soap and hot water.

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I was trying to avoid a Brim, as to it’s cleanup. As to both your reply and @JonRaymond I had cleaned with dish soap and water, and have currently tried IPA. I wonder if moving the bed temp (this was at 55 across the board) up or down would have an effect so I will try 60 and see if it helps at least the bottom.

So is your suggestion to take off the top and bottom layers as an experiment?

I edited the OP to reflect changes I missed/forgot to add.

No - go with solid (100%) infill.

Yeah, that looks like warping.

That is neither long nor warm enough. Give it more time and heat. Warping/Curling is one of the nastier moist filament indicators.
Filament Drying Recommendations | Bambu Lab Wiki

Try that again but add a diswashing brush to the mix. You really want to get to the bottom of the valleys of the plates texture.
Do not use only IPA. It dissolves contamination but when it evaporates, it just leaves it in the textured plates valleys. You need to wash/scrub those contaminants out.

What nozzle are you using?

Do you print with the door and lid open? To counteract warping, you want your chamber as warm as possible. I always print PLA all closed up to get a more even cooling. Never had a clog with PLA from this.

Quick note on infill: The more infill, the more severe shrinking => warping will be.

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Here’s a 2" x 1/4" disc, printed using what was on the machine (BL Matte Dark Red) that has been there for a week, humidity around 65% in the room right now although it was higher during the day…
0.2mm standard, concentric solid infill, top and bottom rectilinear as always.
I see no distortion. Using BL’s defaults, top closed, door closed.

Print your disks solid - just try it. All you have to lose is some filament…


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Hi there,

I am trying to improve a similar issue. My part is a half cylinder shell with covers on the top and bottom and a horizontal wall in the middle.

It seems to me like when a layer comes along that takes longer to print the previous layer(s) cool and shrink more creating an even shift across the whole part, so the newer layers end up larger than the previous ones by around 0.2mm. I’ve been trying to upload a picture but getting an error unfortunately.

Printed on an A1 mini and also X1C in PLA and I am getting the same result. I also tried 100% infill but it seems to make the issue worse for this geometry.

Does anybody have a hint how to improve this?

Thank you and best regards,

Nestor

Following up with a couple of pictures that show the issue, any suggestions are highly appreciated.


Hi there . Have you designed that model yourself ?

Sorry didn’t see this, are you asking of my specific issue in the OP, or the second one from @NestoriusBIG?

Unlike several folks on various forums, I have no issue with a “hijack” (I think they call it?) from someone who has the same, or similar issue. In fact I not only welcome it, but I appreciate it!

Because…

  1. There’s already folks helping me on the issue and by posting on mine, some or all of those helping get the alerts also. As we all know, especially with our love/hate relationship with 3D making, 9/10 of an issue becomes a roadblock that sends us down a rabbit hole for weeks sometimes.

  2. If they’re issue is different but related, anyone who sees it may have had that issue before and either gave up or skipped over it because it didn’t really affect the end result.

What Firmware version you are running?
I had equal problems out of nowhere after upgrade to 01.07.00.00
Then i working out all i could, but could not fix it. Some parts was fine, some not (always the same issue like you).
I then downgraded back to 01.06… the latest one before the 07. (must be done via smartphone app). After the downgrade, all works like a charm and no more problems.
Hopefully in a future firmware update this will be fixed from Bambu.