I have been trying to print these for years with mixed results. Single color, no problem (other than filament dye lots not matching, etc.). Multiple color prints remain elusive. With the X1C, I’ve had the best results so far, but the problems have led me to give up.
I’ve had problems with “poop” since day 1, and it appears that this has never really been fixed with this printer.
Chute clogging
Random “droppings” all over the build plate, confusing the spaghetti detector to stop with false positives
Random “dropping” inside my prints, causing extra weight and a rattling sound.
Random print head cover falling off. Most of the time I can recover from this by just clicking it back on, but many time the X-axis becomes misaligned, ruining my print.
Perhaps I am being too demanding. Are 16-day prints a bad idea? I have had some succeed, other than having the print filled with random poop, but just because the printer can do it, I’m guessing means that I shouldn’t try it.
I get it that the H2 holds the promise with the head switcher to reduce this problem, but given that there are still “not quite ready” features, and this is a V1 implementation, I’m thinking I’m tired of turning perfectly good money into worthless trash.
I’m happy to consider I’m wrong. I would buy a new H2 if I could thoroughly test it first, which means at least 2 months to try and print this.
I would attach the job, but I don’t see how. I tried uploading it to my profile, but the system rejected it with this (sic):
I have done my fair share of long prints on my X1 and share some of your experiences.
While I was spared the tool head cover coming off (so far) and didn’t have so many issues with poop dragged into the print, the poop chute clogging is the bane of long prints on my X1.
My longest was a 9,5 day multi-color, PETG support print. Despite preparing the poop chute with Kapton tape, I still got a few clog’s (but far fewer). One bent the nozzle, forcing me to change it mid-print. After 10,5 days, the print finished with a (barely) acceptable layer shift.
So from this experience, I’d recommend going easy on the multi-color aspect to keep print times shorter on an X1. Perhaps settle on a monochrome lamp or try to limit color changes to be more in-plane rather than vertical?
Regarding the H-Series, the H2D was a bit pricey for me compared to what it offers when it came out.
But when the H2C came out, I could not resist. While I have not tried prints longer than a couple of days on it yet, I absolutely love the machine. Very little poop (literally: it poops less and smaller, like the poop itself was engineered ), faster filament change and a load of extra’s I either haven’t had a chance to try yet (cutter, laser, engineering materials) or am eagerly awaiting (multi-nozzle size printing)…
Considering its complexity and capabilities, I am also impressed at how few issues are reported in the forum. It is not problem free of course, but I’d have expected many more issues for such a complex multi-process device.
The only regret I have at this stage is one I knew about in advance: While I know I can finish off my roll of PEKK-CF on it, I either need to fiddle with the filament change gcode or bin the nozzle afterwards. So I’ll wait with that until I have crossed the 1,000 or 1,500h mark .
Your extrusion multiplier is almost certainly wrong. If your printer is extruding correctly it doesn’t create any excess material, period.
There is zero reason to not be able to print the models you linked. Although I’m a bit curious why the print time is that long, something seems very off.
The poop process is really sensitive to filament moisture levels. I printed a lot of ABS/ASA and Nylon on my X1C and those filaments are like sponges. If the filament wasn’t dry enough, I’d get poops that stuck in the chute or got flung on to the build plate. Redrying always fixed the problem.
I too have switched to a H2C. Gifted my X1C to my brother in law. But I ran the X1C extensively, many, many multi color prints. Never a problem when the filament was actually dry.
Go ask the designer how long did it take them to print one. It’s hard to believe a designer would create something that takes 16 days to print. I wouldn’t, nor would I print one. If something takes that long to print, I would make it another way, not through 3D printing.
I am the designer. If there is some other way to fabricate this, I’d love to know.
If you look at the other versions I have posted, you can see that I have been working on this for years, trying various printers (even designing and building my own) with differing degrees of success.
I appreciate the precision of the machine, but the reliability is not up to what I need.
Means nothing. In fact, if you assumed your brand new filament right out of the bag was dry so you didn’t bother to dry it, there is a high likelihood that not drying is your problem. There is no guarantee that a sealed filament bag contains dry filament. The packaging is not hermetic and the desiccant package inside is small.
As I stated in my original post, the site wouldn’t let me upload the entire project with profiles, even though it slices and prints fine (up to a point).
Hard to make a constructive comment without knowing what “it” even is.
Perhaps you should design “it” in sections to later be assembled so that a failure in one part does not bring down the entire project.
And yes, a “moist filament” failure can pop up at any time. Depending on the setup, filament actively being used for printing will absorb moisture as that very spool is being used. Were you drying while you were printing?
Finally, you refer to a “two week print”. Do I understand this as the machine is running continually for two weeks, perhaps using the AMS filament refill function to swap over to full spools as old ones are used up? That is quite a long time for a printer to run without any attention or maintenance. And yes, I’m aware that print farm machines run for extended periods.
Yes, it does look like moist filament. What I see is lots of stringing and malformed poops. That’s exactly what moisture does. When the filament has moisture in it, that moisture turns to steam in the hot end and it drives filament out of the nozzle even when the extruder isn’t pushing. Every time the extruder stops extruding, filament will ooze out on its own. When the nozzle is idle for any length of time (like the pauses that happen during filament switches), potentially lots of filament. Which is why the poops are malformed.
There is no other mechanism that can cause this phenomenon.
To me, it looks like your filament is much wetter than you think. The only other way this mess can happen is if the extruder motor runs when it’s not supposed to run. The odds of an extruder failing that way are exceedingly low, IMO. More likely it’d stop extruding entirely than randomly run on its own…
Check out a project called “Steinwipe" by a guy called “Leckiestein" - he started out with an improved nozzle scrubber, but he went further and added a bunch of really good code mods for the X1/P1 machines to help with a lot of reliability issues.
The big ones that you would benefit from are chute tapping (gives the poop chute an extra hard whack to dislodge any stuck poops) and there’s a setting to wipe the nozzle every X number of layers. There’s also sidestepping, which gets the nozzle to move slightly during purge, so the poops are less likely to “blob up” and stick to the side of the chute.
I HIGHLY recommend his mods, they’re very easy to implement and have made a huge difference for me.
It’s a lamp, already in multiple (4) sections. Each section is 12 - 18 days to print. I’ve had many prints work, but the ones that fail at the end are what is killing me. Here is one that worked:
I gotta say. My stomach twists when I put a 3 day print out there. I don’t think I have the temperament for a 16 day print. I’m also 121% convinced that from the image appearance, a 2 color print, does not need to be 16 days long even if it were filling every atom of the build volume with plastic. This is that moment when the added layer height of a .6 or .8 nozzle decreases your filament swaps per centimeter, as well as whatever flow benefits it’s normally doing.
The reason why this takes so long to print is that I have slowed down the printing speeds so that I can get the clear filament to be as clear as possible. If I could, I would print this out of glass, that is the appearance I am going for. I could actually print in glass with Nobula (Sweden) or Maple Glass Printing (Australia) {no web site yet, maybe out of business}, but it looks like the technology isn’t here yet. Maybe I could use 3D printing to create molds for glassblowing or casting, but I don’t think there is a plastic that can withstand the heat of molten glass.
I have printed several of these lamps over the years, slowly refining the design and slicing configurations to get to something that looks good and has adequate structural and optical properties. Ideally I would print in ABS or some similar material, but the availability of tinted ABS filaments in the colors I want is basically zero. PLA yellows very quickly, so I have stopped using that. Subtle differences in color from spool to spool of what are supposed to be the “same color” can also ruin a print that looks correct while it is printing, but obviously doesn’t match when taken off the build plate.
I am close to giving up and moving on (for now, until the technology is ready?), but I am open to suggestions.
You can see in these early attempts that wall thickness, speed, infill parameters, and layer height have a significant impact on the look of the final product.
), faster filament change and a load of extra’s I either haven’t had a chance to try yet (cutter, laser, engineering materials) or am eagerly awaiting (multi-nozzle size printing)…
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