What on earth causes this sort of thing? It seems to be unique to thick solid layers just prior to transitioning to infill, and simply grinds against the nozzle.
Aaaand the infill just isnt working now. It isnt printing the infill at all, thats interesting!! Just a mess of fluff.
So there was a little clog… I heated the nozzle to 225 and it went pew!
I think I’ll try it over again printing at 225 and see if it does better (no?)
This has plagued me for the last year on the Ender series as well as the Bambu - never really knew what it was which decisively causes these garbage layers… is it really as simple as it clogging due to the filament not running hot enough thru the tiny nozzle?
Any folks who regularly use that 0.2mm nozzle have any advise/recommendations to achieve unrealistically perfect resin-quality prints?
My advice is that you are using the wrong nozzle for the print in question. I’m definitely no expert but that enclosure would print fine with an 0.8mm nozzle, there is no fine detail.
Now if you want to print a DND miniature with textured detail and only 15mm tall, then you want that 0.2mm nozzle, otherwise get out that 0.4mm and have way less issues and print oh so much faster.
The 0.2mm nozzle has so much less area to put out filament, delta r^2 in fact. It’s just asking for trouble. Now someone with 0.2mm experience may come along and tell you how to resolve such issues, maybe just leave the nozzle at 255, but it is still not the solution to printing this enclosure and things like it.
Oh to be sure you are dead on factual as can be - the 0.4 makes oh so smooth lines (or lack there of) when tuned to perfection.
In fact, and I accept open ostracization for preferring to slice in cura and print on ender anything which is curvy and pretty just because the oozy gooey goodness of a fine tuned slow boy ender makes for chef-kiss smooth surfaces, even compared to the bambu.
Now, that being said, I cannot remotely shame the Bambu’s quality for absolutely shredding anything remotely geometric or utilitarian in nature.
It comes down to two things.
I cant get that 0.2 nozzle to work on the blasted Ender 3 to save my life. It just always clogs and fails. I always get those fuzzy prints (and last time I checked, I DONT PRINT FUZZIES)(nothing agains that setting, just that supports are a nightmare in fuzzy mode). Where the Bambu seems to effortlessly print anything I want with that 0.2 as long as the filament isnt absolute garbage. (note: I did what so many do and tried my luck at printing Marble PLA through the HS 0.4 bambu nozzle… 45 mins, a half dozen cold pulls, and an eventual entertainingly catastrophic explosion of motlen filament later - necessitating quite the cleaning of the inside chamber - I learned to not do the thing that everybody knows NOT to do. Fun.)
Where was i…
… Oh, right, reason number 2: I am trying to be lazy. Trying my darndest. Why? because I WANT to just be lazy and print everything and sunder in the Bambu with a 0.2 so I dont have to accidentally break my pretty machine with fumbling man-hands every time I go to swap out the nozzle fixture. But it is what it is. I really do love the smoothness of the 0.4. I just like the novelty of the precision and fineness of the 0.2. But again, you’re not wrong, this machine can print down to… what 0.8 with the 0.4? Something outrageous like that??! Irregardless (I know, dont correct me), when a Benchy can print butter smooth at 0.4x0.20mm then honestly whats the purpose of the 0.2 unless you need something where the wall thickness is more of a factor than layer thickness.
230mm fox tower (common) printed on one of my beloved ender 3 pro’s in 0.4x0.12 chefkiss (but that was also sliced in cura sooo… I’m having a hard time getting such fine quality out of BS or Orca)
I think you might want a modular nozzle setup, I see people posting about them here often and if I ever feel the need for 0.2mm I will order one for myself pronto.
That dang fox is… foxy? I can see what you meant by wanting resin quality and you likely have much more experience than myself, I’ve only ever used the X1C.
Hopefully someone with experience in this arena will happen along and help out but in the meantime I’m sure there is a wealth of info on this very forum to search out. From my time here the only thing I remember is hearing that while you will get great results with X1C using Bambu PLA basic/matte or PETG with stock settings and the 0.4mm nozzle everything else is fair game for tuning. I’m not even sure the filament profiles are properly tuned for 0.2mm nozzles let alone the various other profile settings (likely the line width is the only thing you can rely on?).
And with the fox being so nice at 0.4x0.12 I would expect Bambu to be able to replicate that. I guess you are saying that cura is just better, again, out of my wheelhouse but I expect great things from bambu so I would attempt it as I’m sure you have, I mean it’s easy to get slow speeds if that is what does the trick, one can simply lower the max volumetric flow.
Ans yes, you can go down to 0.08 layer with 0.4mm nozzle but I don’t go that far unless its like a special case and variable layer height, for 0.4mm I think 0.16 is the sweet spot but maybe 0.12 is better for getting rid of layer lines with gloss, I generally don’t go for gloss because I figure it will be a painful road. But this fox is making me think I might have to give it a try.
I will be following this thread to see what you come up with, im interested even though I can’t provide much of an answer =)
I’ve thought about trying the modular stuff from BQ, but I’m a little hesitant after having some growing pains with their Ender motherboards. Probably user error, but the emotional pain is still there.
I’ve tried getting the gloss finish using the Bambu 0.4x0.12 with SilkPLA - but - the issues I run in to are probably based on speed alone… no, that’s not true.
I think speed is a big player, but the issues I kept having were based in flat out print failures. I had to learn hard lessons, such as the fact that BS/Orca refuses to print lower tree support interfaces ON model. No idea why, it just starts printing rings, gets about an inch up, then of course the supports break loose for sheer lack of surface area at the bottom with which to attach itself.
However, the “tree strong” for some reason DOES incorporate the lower interfaces - so if I wanted to bad enough then I could’ve gone that route.
However, most of the epic failures had to do with the simple fact that I failed to realize that (basically across the board) SILK PLA almost universally requires 5-10 degrees hotter nozzle temp JUST BECAUSE. No idea, but it is one of those “common knowledge” things which people who print stuff apparently are just meant to know?
Anyhow, I only realized it when I consulted my Ender/Cura settings and realized that I had been forever printing Silk at 5 degrees hotter than normal, but had always thought it had more to do with the 0.12 layer tendency whenever I print silk. It never occurred to me that the “fix” wasn’t about printing at 0.12 “better”, but, rather, that the higher heat promoted better printing in SILK at all.
Since my logic was backwards, it never occurred to me to ramp up the heat settings on the Bambu until I did it out of frustration and, surprise surprise, the Silk filament printed beautifully…
But the print still failed because of the support interface issue, and the layer lines still showed up because… I dunno. Some subtle coding difference between Cura and Bambu/Orca?
I’ve gotten epically beautiful surfaces out of the Bambu - but not always. I’m still learning it, big time.
I posted this main post though because I’m annoyed with not knowing how to get the 0.2 to reliably work. Questions like “should I be printing ridiculously slow?” or “should I be printing hotter/colder?” or should I keep the door shut, or aux fan on, or only print 0.20 on any given Thursday when the Browns win the Superbowl?
I have no idea. And the more I mess with stuff, the worse it seems to get.
And confound if I don’t have a little 0.2mm needle to ream out that flippin’ 0.2mm nozzle now that it’s under-extruding and shooting filament out sideways.
Go back to basics. Start with full filament calibration manually in orca, then calibration cubes and benchies to get to the required result in the quickest timeframe.
Of course you still need to examine what you want, I think that if you want the ‘lazy’ route as you said then 0.4mm nozzle is the common denominator and will save you many headaches.
I don’t have a lot of experience with support but I did recently have some problems with a small print of a 3d pentagram, I found that i could dork around all day trying to get tree slim to work properly, changing settings like a madman or I could just use normal snug and get perfect results with default settings. Maybe that was silly of me to attempt tree on a geometric shape, perhaps its best used for organics, I don’t know but it reinforces that a simple solution generally exists.
I’m going to guess you’re familiar with the speed view in the slicer, I’ve found that they have changed the software quite a bit in recent months so it’s a must to view it and massage settings to get a consistent outer layer when any overhangs are involved. I haven’t gone to the latest versions yet due to this, maybe it’s better but probably still need to address this when your going for the perfect finish (IE to get a consistent outer wall speed at least).
Negative! I dont know anything about the speed view.
I have, however, just recently had catastrophic pain in the butt experience with realizing that BS and Orca both defer to most bridging as “overhang” and thus slow down rather than speed up (counterproductive).
I had to do some critical thinking about that.
With the Enders, they generally run slow enough to where flying around overhangs is laughably just NOT a problem (at least as slow as I run them. I’m more about precision and fine results rather than speed - just my personal agenda. I’m not in a hurry. It’s just a hobby for me.) So on the Enders, in Orca, I can turn off Slow Down for Overhangs and just let it badger right along - and get good results. Forced any slower by that setting and there is a HUGE loss in quality due to drooping all over the place.
In Bambu, one would think that for the opposite reason one would need to absolutely slow down for overhangs due to the Bambu running terrifyingly fast even in Silent mode. The argument being supported by a video floating around which had something to do with the Prusa Mk4 being better than Bambu when it actualy had more to do with the software overhang settings than the physical machines themselves…
The video demonstrated that the Bambu wouldn’t print good overhangs because they moved too fast. So I made an assumption on that truth. Sure as heck though, when slowed down for overhangs, the false-bridging just absolutely fell apart.
So I said screw it and just turned the setting off and let the Bambu do its thing.
You wanna talk about pretty bridging and perfect overhangs? Bruh. The Bambu doesnt need to slow down. It knows what it’s doing. And if I’m printing overhangs that are gonna droop from being THAT far hung over out into nothing - I’m GOING to use at least manual supports.
All that being said - you’re probably right about the 0.4 nozzle though. It just does such a good job at printing darn near anything other than abrasives.
AND EVEN THEN! I just dabbled in the abrasives with the 0.6 at the BambuLab recommended layer of 0.16… woah! SO SMOOTH!! The only drawback of the 0.6 nozzle is the wall width preventing really sharp detail… but I mean really, honestly, if I’m printing abrasives, it probably wont be something with ultra fine detail anyway (it will be something larger and more functional).
So yeah, color me impressed.
I still wanna unravel the mystery of this blasted 0.2 nozzle though.
Well now you know about the speed view, just set the view type in the menu there in the upper right:
And that is how I discovered that many things one would consider a bridge are considered an 100% overhang wall. The actually made a separate setting for it now at least so that is good, it can be fully controlled.
No, just to visualize the result of the slice, on the Preview tab in the upper right it defaults to ‘line type’ but you can change that to visualize speed, flow, layer time etc…
It can be quite useful to look over these, especially speed as it might relate to a problem and in some cases it even evidences it. I had an issue with ugly tearing on the inside of an overhang for a manifold I was printing, it was organic which meant the overhang percentage changed by layer and even within the layer, with default settings the speed was all over the place and the speed view showed the problem exactly as it appeared on the part and I didn’t notice this until after I was trying to solve the problem so it was quite interesting:
Maybe I don’t have the perfect tunning on that PETG-HF filament but the speed changes during overhang were just not working at all, the part literally came out looking just like the speed view screen minus the color.
Lol, that’s a fascinating way to look at it.
I’ll definitely be adding that to my troubleshooting bag.
So, uh, lol, I made a teeeeny tiny mistake when tinkering with this problem on my way to just getting back to printing. Look at it for a chuckle perhaps
