Printer Bambu A1
Filament Overture Easy PLA white.
I print lithophanes for lamps and have for a year now. Pretty much has it dialed in until the other day I noticed some layer shifting.
I did maintenance: Cleaned and lubed Z lead screws, Cleaned and lubed X and Y axis. Adjusted belt tension per wiki.
Updated My firmware and my bambu studio software.
Cleaned my Cryogrip Plate.
Recalibrated.
I also use a bring on my Lithos.
Printed 2 lithophanes that came out near perfect!
Then after that Nothing but trouble and worse.
Major layer shifting. Then I noticed also Warping which I usually never have.
My printer is in an enclosure, got that to keep dust off the machine but also to keep it warm while printing in the winter in San Diego.
Th e warping tended to happen ONLY on the front corner closest to the front of the printer, which would then cause a layer shift higher up that would diminish as it went toward the back, I assume because it was only the one side warping.
The I noticed Intermittent warping on the back corner but not as bad as the front. There are no drafts.
I also noticed that when this warping would happen the print started to get knocked around when it got higher up, due to the warping I believe. But everything always started happening towards the top.
I will now preface this with what caused me to do maintenance.
I noticed the printed, no matter which ones I did would all come with some later shifts that were even across the whole lithophane, and always in the SAME GENERAL AREA of the middle. This is what caused me to do the major maintenance of cleaning everything. So after this maintenance I printed 2 panels and as I said previous they were perfect, but after those two, it all fell apart.
Started researching about layer shifting and warping and have changed some settings. I was also starting to wonder about my Z axis screws and hearing how sometimes they because loose but they don’t seem to be loose. I tried lifting up and down to see if there was any noticeable looseness and there was none.
I have also changed my nozzle, bought a new plate thinking maybe this older one was the issue, same thing.
I checked as many screws as I could think of. I tightened the 7 hot end and heating element screws. The 4 element screws were a little loose but not real bad, but were tightened anyway.
Re adjusted belts. Recalibrated many times. still the same thing. Right now I am starting a new print with some slight changes to my settings.
I will post images of settings, prints and I have a video that shows the top part getting hit by the nozzle.
The 2 almost perfect prints, the backsides, showing lines and quality.
then after the above two prints it just goes south.
Notice the lines are in the same general area, and this is all the time. The one panel on the left shows the diminishing layer shift, and arrow points to the corner that warped.
this just shows the front of the one I stopped during this writing as it was starting to lose grip on the plate.
My Settings:
I did change the cooling to not cool for the first 5 layers.
I also changed the layer height back to default as I was trying .3 as a layer height to see if quality changed.
As the print gets higher the nozzle starts knocking the print.
I’ll see if I can figure a way to add a link to the video.
I’ve been researching and trying things, recleaning the printer and I am not getting any joy. just about ready to open a support ticket but thought I’d try here first.
Any help is appreciated.
here’s a link to the file you can print:
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dqMEvR0lw4zq4PbzHrceSNnrPYDMLZ6t/view?usp=drive_link]
this is the video:
