I’ve been working on this project that involves printing a logo with a compass rose. I’m fairly new to 3-D printing, and still getting the hang of working with silk PLA (printing on the Bambu X1-C). This particular logo requires a metallic gold/brass look, so metallic silk is a must.
My main problem is on the compass rose arms. As you can see from the photos, I’m getting a lot of bumps and irregularities on the triangular angles of the arms. I don’t get those artifacts if I print this with matte PLA, so I’m pretty sure my problem is with silk. The filament being used is Justmaker silk bronze PLA, but I also get these warts when using Eryone silk PLA and CC3D.
I’ve calibrated all these filaments, run temperature towers, and done everything else I could think of to get these printing at the best settings. Tried z-hop, slowing down/speeding up the nozzle, and harsh language. Nothing seems to work.
Right now my top surface and outer wall speeds are 50. Printing outer wall first, then inner. Rectilinear sparse infill at 20%. Quality is at best setting: .08 extra fine. Solid infill is monotonic line, top surface is Archimedean chords. All other settings are default.
There are a few musts for this project:
I know I could use matte PLA and paint it gold, but I don’t want to. I need the metallic look you get with silk, and the finished product will use two colors of filament. So painting is out. I need specific tones of gold/brass, so the filaments I listed above are my best options unless anyone here knows of another filament that looks like actual metal gold as opposed to the garish yellow metal look that most gold silk PLA has.
The Archimedean surface pattern is also an absolute must. The circular brushed effect it provides is essential for this logo, and the next closest option - concentric - goes in patterns I don’t like.
I’d appreciate any advice that might help with this problem.
If you can print other PLA’s fine only Silk is giving you problems…
Use the Bambu Generic settings & set Hotend Temp to 215*
Don’t change anything else.
That print is so damn near perfect I think you may have to sacrifice some small animals near the printer in order to get it better.
I was thinking maybe some small amount of filament builds up on the nozzle edge then finally deposits at some random point. Not sure how to address that besides bumping the nozzle temp a bit. Maybe @lion7718 suggestion aligns with that?
Anyhow, best of luck, let us know how it turns out!
Thanks for your reply. I did exactly as you suggested. Bambu silk default settings, and everything else at .08 extra fine default settings. No luck. If anything, the “warts” got slightly worse, and my flat surfaces were duller and slightly blotchy in a few spots. The blemishes are never in the same spot from one print to another, which also leads me to think it must be some problem with my silk settings.
Order of inner/outer walls doesn’t seem to matter; it blotches either way. The printer is fairly new, and some small vase designs I printed came out fine, so I think my print head is unclogged and in good working order.
Still at a loss. I can’t help but think that this has to be some user error on my part, since I just started this hobby a couple of months ago. But I just can’t figure out where it’s wrong.
Silk PLA is pain in the arse. It’s very sensitive to settings (and very sensitive to temperature and print speed), the flat top surfaces are very hard to dial in (and when you want ironing it’s near impossible at least I haven’t found a way yet).
One “trick” i found about silk filament is that if I need something flat to print in silk, I need to place it on the side, so that the silk effect is retained and doesn’t suffer from flat surface drama
Yes. It looked even messier, but now that I think of it, I was using different settings. Maybe I’ll try that again in a few days (out of town at the moment).
I’ve actually been hesitant to play with too many new filaments, but there’s been enough variety in regular PLA to satisfy me for now.