I opened the filament today (color black), dried it for 6 hours at 65 degress C (in the Eibos filament dryer with the rolling mechanism) and measured the weight before drying and after. The values are pretty much the same, which was interesting.
I did the temp tower from 230 to 255 and the look wasnt great but also not extremly terrible. Almost no stringing, but the surface quality wasnt the best.
Next, I did the “YOLO” flow rate calibration in Orca Slicer. The flow rate range for top and bottom layer goes from 0.94XX to 1.05XX. The standard flow rate value in the profile is 0.95.
I am using the standard PETG-HF profile (which was enabled after the AMS recognized the filament) and then did the first YOLO calibration in 245 degree C (just finished the same test with 255 C. The same results). Every tile showed under extrusion on the top layer and bottom layer, which was an unfortunate surprise for me. Usually, with a decreasing flow rate, you will see under extrusion eventually. In this case, even the tile printed with a flow rate of 1.05 had under extrusion on the top layer.
What could be the problem here?
Printer: X1C
Hot end: BIQU E3D Panda Revo
Nozzle: 0.4mm (high flow nozzle)
Slicer: Orca Slicer 2.2.0
It’s hard to visualize what you’re asking. Can you upload an image of what you feel is unacceptable print quality?
You have third party hardware in your printer. Troubleshooting 101: Did you revert the nozzle back to a factory state and verify that the output changed? I say that because there have been many reports where a high flow nozzle doesn’t mean it matches with the hotend’s ability to deliver enough filament to the nozzle. Think of it as having a 40mm garden hose fed by a 5mm spigot. It doesn’t matter how much fluid can come out the nozzle if the nozzle isn’t getting enough volume to begin with.
Have you performed a Orca Slicer max flow rate test? If so, what was the measured output versus what you have set up in the filament profile?
And also inconclusive since it could be drying conditions didn’t let the filament dry much, or that the filament was already dry. I get this odd feeling of deja vu… (inside joke)
Any chance you happened to notice the humidity reading in the dryer just before you took the spool out?
When you heat a spool of filament in a dryer the humidity will spike. If you aren’t already familiar, many prop the doors open a little when drying filament. This lets the humidity out since many dryers don’t do much to sweep the moisture out.
The other thing is ambient humidity puts a limit on how well most dryers work. If it’s high it slows drying and limits how much moisture you can remove.
I did a test print with the XYZ cube, because it is a fast print. The sides of the cube look really good. The top layer has under extrusion. I did not do a flow dynamics calibration before the print. So, the default flow ratio is 0.95. Currently, I am printing another XYZ cube, with activiated flow dynamics calibration. Just for comparison.
Yes, I do have a third party hotend. The hotend and also the nozzle never caused problems. I calibrated my materials the usual way via Orca Slicer and then I only tweaked the profiles for specific features , depending on the part itself. I only have BL filament and e.g. PLA, the previous PETG and also TPU 95A had zero problems, after I dialed in the settings.
I did not do a max flow rate test, because atm I am going for max flow rate. The max flow rate of the PETG-HF is default with 21 mm³/s.
I still have to get used to the filament dryer.
So, errors can of course happen, because of the user (me).
I believe it was something about 32% ? and at the end, it was around 10%. At least, the display was showing this. There was not a single water drop spotted, during the drying process.
I had the valve closed at the top, but there are some small holes, where you can feed the filament to the printer. The were not sealed/closed.
I understand, that a material is really moist, it lookes like trash. But, the XYZ cube looks quite good, the only problem (so far) is the under-extrusion on the top layer.
After the current print is finished, I will post the result here.
Edit: I bumbed the filament flow ration up to 1.0 and the top layer looks much better now. I will do another XYZ cube with a filament flow ratio of 1.05 and compare the results.
The prints do look pretty good. My reply was more because I thought it was funny what you said about weights as I had just been going round and round elsewhere here with a guy here over a similar discussion. Your comment was supporting what I had tried and failed to explain to him.
You probably won’t see water, though. The chamber is heated and the water comes off as a gas. You’d need to be in a really cold room to get water to condense. I’ve seen the photo of the water dripping on the inside of a Sunlu S2 and think it was faked.
Well then how do you know if you’re exceeding your filament/nozzle combination parameters if you didn’t test it? Unless I am misunderstanding this. Just because the box says 21mm³/s doesn’t mean its true. As an example, Elegoo max says it’s 24mm³/s but my max flow rate tests place it performing best at 15mm³/s. Likewise with Bambu PETG HF which didn’t perform anywhere near what the box said.
Call me jaded but I make the assumption–like Bambu Benchy Test–that anything said to us by a Chinese company is 85% bullshit and if it’s a Western Company, 65% bullshit. As I’ve posted too many times to count. The only thing that can be trusted is what you measure on your rig, everything else is just marketing hype or someone’s opinion, that includes myself.
The cube is a good model for testing pressure advance and accuracy, it doesn’t really do anything to prove extrusion issues. For that, a simple cube primitive works just as well.
As a fallback, what I generally recommend is to do when extrusion is in doubt, a simple first layer test. Take a cube primitive and scale it to some large dimension. I generally do either 100x100x0.28mm or sometimes 200x200. That 0.28mm height will ensure that there is only one layer and you’ll save a lot of time and filament. After you’ve laid out the layer, look closely to see if it matches your cube, if it doesn’t then extrusion is becoming less likely and it may be something else.
Just on the off chance that you overlooked it. Did you clean your carbon rods with IPA? It wouldn’t be the first time than any of us have overlooked that.
Also, did you run the test using a direct feed outside of the AMS to ensure that the AMS isn’t contributing to filament feed binding?
BTW: This example is what I would call perfect pressure advance so it again points to flow being perhaps less of an issue although not conclusive.
“Well then how do you know if you’re exceeding your filament/nozzle combination parameters if you didn’t test it?”
Hats off, yes, you are actually correct about this aspect.
“The cube is a good model for testing pressure advance and accuracy, it doesn’t really do anything to prove extrusion issues. For that, a simple cube primitive works just as well.”
I actually did the cube as some sort of a habbit, because I am used to print it.
Yes, there are other methods to check the first layer and I actually did these in the past.
“Just on the off chance that you overlooked it. Did you clean your carbon rods with IPA? It wouldn’t be the first time than any of us have overlooked that. ”
I am not one of those, who print several rolls of filament in a month, so …I do it from time to time. But yeah, I should do it more frequently.
“Also, did you run the test using a direct feed outside of the AMS to ensure that the AMS isn’t contributing to filament feed binding?”
I only do it with filaments, that should not be used with the AMS.
(sorry, the picture quality is not really good and it is hard to grasp)
The left cube was printed with a filament flow ration of 1.05 and the right one with a filament flow ratio of 1.0. I believe the culprit was the flow ratio, which was (way) too low for my setup. Right now I am doing a final YOLO test, to verfiy the results.
This is a good test and the presentation photos yield good data. Have you tried more extreme flow rate values such as 0.9-1.2 just to see what happens? What I think would yield interesting data is to use extreme parameters to see in which direction the quality moves.
BTW: You can cut the cube for a 10mm height which will save a lot of time and filament but the use of the Z axis face gives a lot of good data by itself.
So, my final filament flow ratio is now 1.0381. Just ignore the .04 on the test print. I will calibrate PA tomorrow, then I will calibrate the shrinkage and after that, I will print my test cubes to see, how the overall quality it. Afterwards, I will start printing my project.
It doesn’t matter how much fluid can come out the nozzle if the nozzle isn’t getting enough volume to begin with.
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