Hi all, I’m very new to 3D printing and 3D model design, recently got an A1 Mini and have been mostly successful printing designs from MakerWorld etc.
Having my first real issue with a design I’ve created, it all prints ok but the top of the final print is a different texture to the rest of the print:
I’ve had a look online and have found similar issues but I’m still a bit confused as to why this is happening and how to resolve it.
In the slicer I can see that at the point the texture changes the speed and filament flow drops dramatically:
I know I’m probably missing something really obvious, if anyone can point me in the right direction I would be really grateful.
Thank you.
I’d hazard the guess that the printer is slowing down here to meet the required minimum layer time set in the filament settings.
You can enforce a prime tower or print multiple parts at the same time (far apart) on the same build plate.
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Thanks for the quick response and suggestions I’ll give them both a go and see how I get on.
Thanks again.
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Just having another look and the Prime Tower was enabled but I’m guessing because I’m only printing in one colour it’s not printing it? Can I force one somehow?
If I add another print to the plate it doesn’t seem to make any difference, however if I flood the plate full of prints it looks like it will resolve the issue, but I don’t really want to print 9 of them!
I’ve read people suggesting that I turn off slow printing down for better layer cooling but it sounds like this could cause even more print issues? Although the slicer does show a consistent print speed all of the way through. I might give this a go just as an experiment.
Is there anything else I could look at? Sorry for the stupid questions but still trying to get my head around all of this.
You can force a prime tower by taking the non-traditional timelapse in “Other” settings. If you place it far away from the part, this may increase layer tume sufficiently.
If you need many parts to achieve tha layer time you want, place them further apart or/or use a modifier to slow down travel speeds only at the top. Don’t go too slow (i.e. stay above 100mm/s) to ensure that the hot nozzle is moving away from the part quickly enough, but not so fast as to have a low effect on layer time.
You may also just want to give it a try when you have reached half the layer time of the rest of the print. It is difficult to judge precicely what is needed here. In my experience, 2 parts placed far apart have always achieved the result I was after.
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Thanks for the reply, I’ve tried the prime tower but no joy unfortunately, I’ll have a play about with a modifier and see if that works.
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If you can share some pic’s of the failure and slicer previews and/or the 3mf, we may be able to give better advice.
This is an image of it, after the hole there is a distinct change (ignore the scratches):
And some slicer views
If there are specific views that would be helpful let me know, I appreciate you taking the time to have a look.
Yes. Flow, Speed and Layer time previews with two identical parts (or the purge tower) spaced apart would be really helpful for comparison.
I can have a look tomorrow during lunch or after work.
Thanks for taking a look!
So I played around a little with some ideas which I unfortunately found to be excessively overcomplicated when trying a geometry similar to yours.
However, I got the result you are after by enforcing a prime tower (orange block in the back). You can do this by
- setting the Prime Tower to Enable in Other settings and
- enforcing it by changing timelapse to smooth
& 
Edit: Just for completenes: Without enforcing the prime tower:
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Great thanks for that.
Had a play about with the size of the prime tower and looks like I have success:
I’ll try printing it tomorrow and let you know how it goes!
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Just to let you that it worked a treat!
Thanks for your help, much appreciated.
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Just uncheck the box here
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