I print boxes mostly and I use PLA almost exclusively. Suddenly the flat floor of my boxes (the inside) is very rough while the walls are fine. In 8 or 9 years of printing I’ve always wondered why I never have problems with humidity while others do.
And even though I’ve never had the problem, I figured that must be the problem now. The spool had been opened for weeks or months which is typical for me. Here’s what I tried:
Opened a new sealed spool. No change
Dry different heats. No change
Super clean my PEI textured plate. No change
Change hot end (complete). No change
Perform full calibration. No change
Reprint the model on my A1 using same settings. Perfect!
Any ideas? I’ll appreciate any suggestions.
One infill looks almost fine, the other two very rough.
I assume the culprit is in the infill and calibration.
If the bridging layer/first solid infill layer is bad then the surface won’t come out clean unless you have 20 or so layers.
And if the sparse infill produces a rough and incomplete surface…
Did you observe the print by any chance or took a video?
Sparse infill is 15% on both printers. Been using that for a long time and getting great prints. No, I didn’t make a video. I’ll do that.
I didn’t change anything. It just went from smooth to rough for no apparent reason (though I’m sure there is one).
This might sound strange but what position is the rough part printing on the plate? if you rotate the model to put the rough part in a different position does the circle stay rough in the new position or does the roughness change to a different part of the model. If the model always prints rough in the same position maybe there is something loose/stuck to/or moving the axis when the print head is in that position, If its the same circle that prints rough in any position its probably be a slicing problem. I had a piece of filament flung up to the corner where the camera is and when the print head was in that position things were not right(you cannot see it either looking through the door)
It might be a good idea to do the initial calibration test where it checks and calculates for vibration/resonance thing.
Thank you. I will take all that under advisement.
Meantime, I considered that my plate heater might be failling, so I printed these 9 patcches to see if there were areas of the plate getting hotter. However, it should probably print fairly smooth with no heat at all. But just for kicks, here are photos of my study?Whoops, BBL will only allow 5 photos. I’ll do it in two post.
I don’t think the heat bed is failing as you can print cold with PLA, I would check for either rare movement, obstruction at the rear(have you fitted a temp/humidity gauge at the rear that may be rubbing slightly) or maybe a loose pulley that would be more noticeable when the print head was closer at the back than at the front, even something like damage or something stuck on the belt that only runs over the pulley when the print head is at the rear of the machine, the filament waste can be flung all over at times It’s a very strange problem but looks to me that something is happening when printing towards the rear and the non smooth running of a belt over the pulley could cause a jaggedly finish say if a strand was stuck to the belt and running over the teeth of the pulley.
Thank you for your suggestions. As much as I hated to do it, I filled out a support ticket. If you’ve never done it, it’s quite a chore. So, at least for a few days, I’ll let them try to figure it out. If they don’t get back with me, I’ll resume hunting the problem myself. Here’s a picture of a 220x220x2 PLA sheet I printed just before submitting the ticket. It’s my understanding that logs from Studio and the printer itself will along with the photo will give them some clues. I’ll report when/if I get the problem resolved.
That photo gives a better idea, I’d say it was something on the belt or pulley as its only at the rear, should be an easy fix, hopefully. Though the rear centre threaded rod could be loose, when was the last time you manually checked the bed level? does it give you any error as being out of range with auto bed levelling.
Interesting. I never would have suspected either of those. To answer your question, I did a complete cal when the problem started. I’ll take a look at the lead screw to see if it’s loose (assuming I can tell).
That last pic is about as great as it is confusing…
For once it is a bit cooler here, so I tried printing some thin patches with the door open.
All came out nicely, so no help.
Looked at the pic again and thought Whiskey Tango Foxtroot - makes no sense.
The top infill is diagonal, so if it is a movement problem the defects should appear with the fault, not in such a large and uniform area.
It IS a shot in the blue but could you print something small and thin just in the rear area of the plate and observe it from the from the first layer onwards?
Try to set the bed temperature to the upper max for PLA, like 60 to 65º Celsius.
It is rare abut if your bed heater is faulty it might just heat up this weir looking area.
A little FLIR camera would be really nice to check if the bed heats up evenly.
Just curious but did you try some higher temp filament for comparison already?
my guess is either a bad bed tramming or an issue with the back lead screw (like a loose pulley or a worn trapezoid nut) because the error pattern looks like a tilted bed.
Is there anything non stock on the printer like a PTFE tube guide? could it maybe be that when the toolhead is on that side of the bed then the filament is getting pinched and not extruding properly.
Are you sure about the tilted bed?
That should be compensated for with a multi point homing and I assume Bill tried this and not just the quick single point method.
If tilted the first layer in the back wouldn’t really stick to the bed while the front area would have to be squished down - which does not seem to be the case in the pics.
To me it looks as if the surface of the previous layer was really bad.
And those weird patterns I see in the back areas look identical to those I get when printing too fast on small areas where the layer (infill) does not have enough time to cool down.
All starts to wobble around and to smear.
I appreciate your idea though as it is still feasible and will be interesting to see what to real cause and solution will be.
A really unique problem we see here…
Speaking and @BillByrd : Starting with a properly cooled down bed, set the bed temp to let’s say 40ºC and check with your hand if the back area heats differently than the front area of the bed.
Good idea. Thanks. I had thought about that general idea but instead of my hand, I was going to use slices of glue stick to watch the melting differences if any. I may still do that though the consensus of those with suggestions seem to think it mechanical rather than thermal.
I have the hardest time navigating on this forum. Can someone please point me to the maintenance section for the P1S. I want to try some of the suggestions for solving my problem while I wait for BBL to reply. Thanks!
