Top surface divots near debossed letters

I’m printing matte PLA disks with debossed letters and getting divots in the top surface near the letters using my new H2D with all default parameters.
PXL_20250602_143347540
I tried these changes:

  • top surface width from .42mm to .35mm
  • top shell levels from 5 to 3 (with 0mm thickness specified)
  • top paint penetration from 5 to 3
  • top surface speed from 200 to 100 mm/sec
  • top surface pattern from monotonic line to concentric
    No joy. Any suggestion?

Face up or face down ? could it be better with the other ? (ex)face down rather than up especially if using a textured pei plate side

Turn on Arachne. Make sure fill-small-gaps is enabled. Do a manual flow and PA calibration.

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Looks like a flow issue. There’s another person that tried everything and could get the flow to increase to a normal level, but this is a similar problem. It simply isn’t flowing enough filament to fill the gaps on those specific toolhead movements. Follow @RocketSled’s suggestions and do those manual calibrations.

Arachne is the answer, if they persist after that turn up the flow rate slightly.

image
? Could this be any use

Thats the factory setting and looks correct. I have had to change mine on a couple of prints to get small gaps filled. I used a value of “0.03” and that helped on my specific file that had small holes. Most files I leave it alone.

image

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I was just going to add this too … thanks

Keep us updated on what worked for you! I’ve also had similar issues in the past.

Thanks for all the suggestions!
Changing from Classic to Arachne for the wall generator reduced the divots by about half.
But then changing from .049 mm to .03 mm for the slice gap closing radius didn’t improve it any more.
I don’t see how to directly increase the flow in Bambu Studio. I can increase the speeds, but that would only increase the flow in proportion, so the flow/mm is the same.

I did a “Flow Dynamics” calibration from Bambu Studio, followed by a “Flow Rate” calibration. It didn’t help. Here’s a closeup of what’s still happening.
IMG_0061

What brand of filament are you using? Have you tired it with any other filament?

Also can we see a picture of the sliced file?

I’m using a pretty new roll of Bambulab PLA Matte filament.
I’m not sure what you mean by “a picture of the sliced file”, but here’s a piece of the top (13th) layer from the preview that corresponds to the photo above.
layer13

This is somewhat normal when doing letters.
You need to bring the line width as small as you can. or spread the letters out more

You can change by-layer the layer settings. there are guides on youtube and also you could try adaptive and select the bottom layers to be as fine as possible.
Screenshot 2025-06-02 at 6.20.19 PM

You can see it’s telling you

“LINE TOO THICK!!! IT NO FIT!!”

3 Likes

You can also apply a lower one wall modifier to the text if your part requires more than two outer walls. However, as Unloco mentioned, you’ll need to increase the letter spacing some. After that, you can fine tune the infill/wall overlap for your filament if necessary.

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This is why I wanted to see the sliced file because it will show you in the slicer that there is going to be a gap due to settings or text spacing. You can try to mess with settings and then look at this view and see if it helps minimize those gaps. if the gaps are really large, it won’t be able to fill it in with just extrusion. If they are very tiny, you will probably never see them in the print

Those letters are too close together. If you can change the letters to be more spaced it’d be better. Besides that make sure to be printing at a high quality small layer like .08 with wall generator set to arachne. Also try slicing in concentric for top layer infill just to see what you get. Concentric will fill by following the outline of the letters.

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Dont run the calibrated flow rate, run a higher one by a few percent more.