I’ve managed to get ironing to look relatively good (apart from a few missing features). But i’ve noticed that if multiple items are being printed that the ironing quality can become inconsistent for a few seconds while it starts ironing the next item. Basically it would appear that the nozzle isn’t fully primed before it starts the next print and thus the ironing has patches/holes where the filament is missing.
Anyone else have this issue any have ironing settings that work well across multiple prints on the same plate.
Yes, there a number of posts here regarding layer differential when the nozzle travels from object to object and ironing is just one such casualty. The usual manifestation an be seen when a tall object is next to a shorter object. The smoothness changes dramatically on the taller object once the shorter one is printed. This is thought to be caused by speed and flow changes but there is some debate on that in the community.
However, there is a baked-in solution in the slicer that can eliminated this. Have you tried to use the “print by object” as opposed to “print by layer”.
This works great because it doesn’t start printing object #2 until it has finished with Object #1 and that really helps out with layer uniformity and ironing because the print nozzle movement is minimized.
BTW: This trick also works well if you’re not quite sure if you have enough filament but you know you can at least start printing some of the parts until the filament runs out. At least you won’t have a plate of partially completed prints you have to throw away.
But… sighhhh… like everthing else in 3D printing you have to sacrifice one thing before you gain another. Print by object costs you plate real estate in that the slicer will now complain that the objects are too close together. The reason is that once you have a taller object somewhere on the plate, the slicer has to calculate a safety margin to navigate the print head around the obstacle which would not be there on the normal flat surface. Think of it like the control tower at the airport guiding a jet around tall buildings or mountains, same principle
If you haven’t experimented with it yet, this is what that looks like.
So you have to shuffle the models around the deck until the boundary circles are no longer showing, then re-slice. Using auto-arrange works too but I find it maddening in some of the algorithm logic in that I can manually sort the objects to not collide but if I use auto-arrange the stupid logic will sort many of the objects off-plate. Manual arrangement will was be more optimized but often this will still force you to break up the print onto multiple plates, which is what I mean by trade-off.
Thanks for the detailed response, really appreciate it. I did do a search but maybe my search terms were limited.
I haven’t yet tried print by object because normally i’m printing 75% of the bed real area so the print by object would be pretty limiting. Nonetheless, an option to try when i’m printing a limited number of objects.
It could be overcome by it printing by layer up until the last few layers and then uses the infill to prime the nozzle ready to go. In my circumstance the objects are the same height.
Well then in your use-case, you’ll want to explore the more esoteric side of filament tuning and nozzle movement. As you probably know, that’s in of itself almost a dark art.
I might suggest first try out quite mode which is always fallback since it slowes every movement down to 50%. If that works, then you’ve at least identified that it’s either a speed issue or a filament tuning issue.
For speed, I would focus on the speed under Object not the global first. At least you won’t slow down your whole project. In fact, I haven’t looked there in a while and at least under Orca, there is an advanced setting for Top Surface speed. Maybe try that one first under Objects for that model. Just a thought.
I have the same issue. When I do a single print with ironing, it comes out perfectly. But when I duplicate the same object multiple times, it turns out poorly. I thought it might be another problem, but it seems to be specifically related to ironing with multiple objects
Manual arrangement will was be more optimized but often this will still force you to break up the print onto multiple plates, which is what I mean by trade-off.