Printing Lampshades of Natural PLA

[kakaoo]

Hey everyone, I am a new user of BambuLab printers and software.

I am trying to build a lampshade using esun natural PLA. Iam inspired from WoojDesign and CremeAtelier’s work. Their printing is quite presentable and looks solid. I’ve designed and printed couple of designs yet there are some differences with respect to the filament itself.

As you can see in the above picture the printing is quite nice and presumably printed natural PLA.

This is something I designed but the surface is icy and not clean enough compared to others.

However when i change the design with multiple pattern extensions the design is smoother.

What I miss to have the surface of the second picture to look like that smooth in the above picture?

The slicer settings almost identical yet the result is different.

Is there any technic or something I can’t catch with the settings? Any help would be highly appreciated.

[Lenyo]

Hi and welcome to the forum!

The icy one looks like just one wall, it seems very thin. The icy one also looks like it has rather sharp edges compared to the model you featured, that one seems to have a nice fillet on the ‘fins’, which are maybe a bit deeper.

The only similar material I have used is PETG translucent by bambu and its very cloudy when printed at higher speeds and clears up the slower you go, perhaps this material is similar.

Finally, I think you need to do a better comparison, the featured model is lit from inside and photographed at dusk so you should try to make your shots similar.

Edit: I should have said straight off the photo isn’t that great, its hard to tell what is going on, looks grainy. Get some up close shots and different angles, let us know if you dried and calibrated the filament. Include a .3mf so we can see your settings (is it vase mode?) etc…

[kakaoo]

Thank you for the reply,

The tickness is actually 2mm and infill is 30%. I’ve tried increasing the infill rate but no improvement was observed. Went up to 60%. I’ve taken a new picture which is lit from inside

I also took some close shots on the surface

Unfortunately I didn’t save my settings since they were very close to the defaults. Just slowed the printing down to 100mm/s for inner and outer walls.

[Lenyo]

Thanks for the pictures, now we can see what you mean. It’s an interesting finish but you want it uniform, so we better start with the basics.

First thing first:

Did you dry the filament? And calibrate it? I only see one eSun profile in my list of filaments so I would imagine you can’t trust the default settings but what do I know. You should calibrate the filament once its dry using the calibration tab in Bambu Studio or Orca Slicer.

When the above is known good:

I’m not familiar with the featured design but I would want to be sure what filament they are using, you might have to search on this forum and others to see if there is a trick to getting that finish, perhaps printing hotter with less cooling, the shiny specs versus more matte areas of your pictures are giving me this vibe at least. I think I could get a similar finish as the featured model with PETG translucent, and its very slow 6mm^3/s.

[MalcTheOracle]

You may find tweaks to your infill and walls will assist.

Take a look at this calibration model I created to see how to make something look as translucent as possible.

That isn’t your goal, but, you could learn something to get get more uniform light through it.

Transparent PLA & PETG Filament Test Model by MalcTheOracle

Rectilinear is a good place to start.

[kakaoo]

Thanks man, I just tried to calibrate it and tried a print, miniature version of the actual surface there are some improvements for sure yet there is something like tiny holes on the surface. I can’t understand why it happens maybe the sharp edges in the design results this failure.

[kakaoo]

Thanks for the participation guys I think I understood what causes the cloudy surface finish. I tried 0% infill and 3mm gap between inner and outer walls, it turned out pretty clean compared to the pictures and i think its closest to the aimed surface so far. I’ ve calibrated the filament (Esun Natural PLA) on Bambu Studio. I’ll upload a picture here when i get back home.