Hello! I’ve been trying to print a pair of earrings on my new X1C and I can’t seem to get the same level of cleanliness that I used to get on my Prusa i3Mk3s. Does anyone have any tips on how to fix this? I have already tried using the flow dynamics calibration setting as well as the flow rate calibration setting, and both have not affected the issue in either a positive or negative way.
I have attached an image in this post for reference. The earring on the left is from my old i3Mk3s, and the earring on the right is from my X1C. You’ll notice that towards the end of the toolpath lines on the X1C it starts to get blobby, whereas the i3Mk3s has consistent lines throughout.
The i3Mk3s was printed using a 0.25mm nozzle The X1C was printed using a 0.20mm nozzle
Both are using arachne perimeter generation at high quality 0.10mm layer height settings.
Thank you! Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Have you tried slowing down your print speed? For such a small item, you won’t be giving up much.
Thank you for the reply! That sounds great. I haven’t thought of doing that yet. I’m still relatively new to 3D printing in terms of tinkering with settings like this, so thank you.
If I slow down the speed, would I have to tinker with any other settings to compensate for it? Or do slicers automatically account for that? Do you think that slowing down by 50% is a great place to start? Is there such a thing as slowing it down too much?
All good questions. From what I’ve heard, if you change your Printing Speed mode from Standard to Silent, it will make all the changes in a parallel manner. The main thing would be to see whether doing so leads to an improvement, because then you would have a clue as to whether it’s a dead-end or whether going further in that direction might yield even better results.
Hopefully others will join in with their suggestions as well, but at least this is something constructive you can try to get started.
Thank you so much! Okay I’ll try to run some experiments here, and I’ll be sure to share my results here (:
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Despite the settings I also think that the size of the part causes that in combination with the nozzle size, the level of detail won’t get better. If you look on the upper right corner, it looks like the X1 gives a better result. If this is your main size you like to print, maybe a smaller size nozzle would be an improvement.
Hi Robert! Agreed, the X1C does give some better results in other areas for sure, most notably the ironing quality and the complete absence of stringing.
However, I did forget to mention - that improved corner detail is actually the result of me improving the 3D modeling of that detail, not any difference in the actual print quality between both printers. That corner looks relatively the same between both printers when using the same 3D model.
Okay, just got done running some tests. I tried running the default settings at silent mode, and also editing the speed settings manually to match the settings for the MK3S. It looks like there is a very subtle improvement in the smoothness of the ironed surface finish of the pink portion, but the white lines are still not as consistent as the MK3.
For the Prusa, the lines are a consistent 0.25mm throughout, exactly per the settings. For the X1C, the lines start out at about 0.17mm and end at about 0.30mm.
Perhaps this points to a flow rate setting that could be changed?
Well, I would agree that on its face this does look like it might be a pressure advance issue. When you did your flow dynamics (aka pressure advance) calibration, did you do the manual or the automatic calibration? I’m under the impression that manual is more accurate.
Also, what kind of filament are you using? If it’s PETG, you might want to try it with PLA as a compare/contrast. It’s a controversial topic, but more than a few people think PETG seems more challenging on the X1C than on the Prusa MK3. However, aside from the speed related differences, I haven’t heard any good theories as to why that might be. Just observational.
Thank you for the reply! As suggested, I performed a manual calibration of the flow dynamics, and while I was able to get a more accurate calibration that way, I noticed that it still didn’t have any effect, positive or negative, on the actual print. I have made sure that the calibration value is active on the filaments in my AMS, so it should be applying it. Strange that it has no effect.
I also performed a manual calibration of the flow rate, but the existing value was actually spot on, so that can be ruled out I suppose.
I have been using various colors of PLA by Overture for both printers.
Another observation. It looks the new flow dynamics calibration value has markedly improved the quality of prints that use the classic wall generator. I also tried printing these earrings using classic generator instead of arachne, and it looks like the thickness of the walls is much more consistent. I suppose this points to an issue with the arachne perimeter generator in Bambu Studio? I wonder what could be done about that.
I’m nearly out of ideas. Assuming you’re using orca slicer, you might try enabling small area flow compensation:
It’s a new feature that was only just recently added. It seems like it might have some bearing on your situation. You can read about it in the release notes.
Thank you! I’ll give it a shot and let you know how it works! I actually haven’t used OrcaSlicer yet, so maybe when I dive into it I can try to see if there are any other settings I can use too. Will report back!
