Yes, that was one of the first things I did after buying the printer, replace the nozzle with a hardened steel one.
In the end I didn’t really like the CF derivates (PLA-CF, PETG-CF), I found they are quite course in comparison to the PLA. PETG-CF is a nightmare to remove from the plate (both textured and smooth) without glue, I found.
To cut a long story short, I am looking to use a filament that has better heat resistance suitable for small computer cases. The PLA ones look great and are easy to print, but I had the top of one case distort slightly due to heat from inside the case. PETG seemed a possible alternative, although the glass transition temperature doesn’t seem to be hugely higher than PLA, although possibly high enough, but PC/ASA seemed like possibilities as they have much higher heat resistance…but I sense that when you start going for these tougher filaments that need higher temperatures things become a little bit less plug-and-play.
PLA has been joy to use with the P1S, for someone like me who is completely new to 3D printing.
For all my raspberry PI cases and anything requiring structural integrity and accuracy, I use PC. It does not print as clean as PLA in that there is some stringing and zits but those are quickly remedied and I found that PC in particular lends itself to sanding and drilling. In fact, I used to use brass thread inserts for my screw holes and now exclusively use PC and tapped holes instead, it works amazing well.
The trick is that you do have to calibrate the filament for X-Y hole and X-y contour if you are doing your own CAD work. But once you have it calibrated, it’s set it and forget it.
Right. So for PLA I also use self-tapping m2/m3 screws to secure the case and it works fine. Was expecting to do the same with PC/PETG whatever I end up using.
What do you mean by calibrating the filament? I use shapr3d for my case designs.
So what you want to do with any CAD design is to print out a small primitive of a known dimension and known hole size. Then you print it and measure those dimensions in the real world. You would then change the X-Y hole compensation and X-Y Contour compensation until your filament is producing an exact dimension that you drafted in CAD.
So what I do for hole is I’ll take a drill bit shaft of a known size and use that as a pin gauge. Since drill bits are very accurate, I can measure them with a set of calipers to be certain. Then I take my cad, use that dimension for my hole and print, adjust, rinse and repeat until it’s close as you can get it. You can also do the same with a hex wrench too. In fact, Orca has that as part of their calibration menu already baked in.
What I’m seeing in that last photo looks like an extrusion issue. Is that PLA or PETG. If it’s PETG or PC, I’m thinking you’re going to want to take the extra measure of drying the filament before you go any further. In order to rule out moisture as the culprit, make sure that you weigh the filament before and after drying to determine how much moisture was contained. I can tell you that I am not a big believer in moisture being the root of all evil but it has been known to produce the artifacts you are seeing. Plus, let’s be candid… it never rains in the UK, right? The point is, I’ve seen cases where I left a spool of PETG on the printer during a 12 hour print and watched the quality degrade over that 12 hours. After weighing and drying, low and behold, it had gained 4% moisture.
You can do some compensation here. Go through some simple calibration test. Or if you want to try a really simple test, place the printer in quiet mode after it has started printing. This will obviously slow everything by 50% but if you see a difference, then you know that flow rate is being impacted somehow. At the very least, it’s a troubleshooting lead.
That is PETG Basic and I dried it for 8 hours at 65 degrees in an eSun dryer and I keep all these filaments in airtight vacuum bags when not in the AMS.
I am currently testing at the highest quality setting (0.08mm Extra Fine @BBL X1C) at 50% speed so I’ll see what different that makes!
That rules out moisture then. I might suggest going easier on the model and first trying out a 0.28 draft layer height at 50% speed. First, it will speed up your experimental print by a significant margin and second, it will lighten the load of the extruder by allowing less passes with a thicker layer height.
Alternatively, you can do both by applying a modifier to one portion of the print or if you have more than one model on the print bed, simply change the variable layer height for that model to 0.08 and allow the other to remain at 0.28. This would be an ideal scientific experiment because you will have your control example right next to your experimental example. It will tell you a lot.
Yeah, there’s clearly something nasty going on with your extrusion. This almost looks like a retraction issue but the fact that you appear to be getting great first layer adhesion on the build plate gives me pause.
I’d run a Pressure advance tower test and see what the PA value would be. If you’re not familiar with that test, then make sure you download Orca Slicer and use that instead of Bambu Studio.
I found this guys’s video to be a generally well-rounded how-to for Orca.
This is the Orca Github page which is also pretty good but the video above does a better job.
After you do the PA Tower test, I would then run a Max Flow rate test. Between the two, it will torture your filament settings and let you know where you want to dial them in. Just one tip I’ll offer that I didn’t figure out until recently. After you run the calibration, save the settings to your filament and here’s the most important part. Start a new project and verify that your settings have stuck. I failed to do that and I couldn’t figure out why I was getting random results between prints. It’s because when you run the next calibration, it over writes some of the other settings.
You may have a misunderstanding of Orca. It is Bambu Studio. The developers of Orca have taken the Bambu Studio source code and augmented it to include many features they deemed were missing from BS and they produced a fork of the product that maintains compatibility with BS. It might be helpful to note that BS is itself a fork of Prusa slicer but heavily modified.
What’s more, Orca and BS can be running on the same machine at the same time. In fact, you can start job in Orca or Bambu and go into their respective device menu and watch the video from both programs at the same time.
Among the big thing missing from BS that was in Prusa Slicer that Orca put back in was the calibration features. Prusa supports extensibility while BS does not. So the Orca team made up of fellow 3D printer hobbyists, put in quality of life enhancements directly into the BS code.
So in short, there is no real learning curve here because if you know BS, you already know 95% of Orca. Plus, you don’t have to give up one for the other as I stated above.
OrcaSlicer looks like Studio, and works like Studio, but has more built-in calibrations and some additional options. Everything you know about Studio will work the same in OrcaSlicer. (except possibly MakerWorld)
I used the top-line OrcaSlicer calibrations to dial in my PETG settings after the Generic PETG presets in Studio failed miserably. They showed I need different flow and pressure advance settings, and a higher nozzle temperature than either the Bambu or the manufacturer’s recommendations. PETG prints great now.
So, out of curiosity I printed the same model using OrcaSlicer (latest stable release, 1.9).
As with Bambu Studio, I chose the Default PETG Basic settings.
It looks pretty good bearing in mind this is default settings, no calibrations, no ironing or tweaks of the kind I had applied to my best PLA prints…hell, I didn’t even clean the plate…so this does beg the question as to what Bambu Studio is doing?
They seem to be, yes. There are some different parameters for the two slicers, in various categories, so I can only assume one or more of these explains it.
The point is, I’ve seen cases where I left a spool of PETG on the printer during a 12 hour print and watched the quality degrade over that 12 hours. After weighing and drying, low and behold, it had gained 4% moisture.
