I’m loving the X1C so far, but I’ve noticed that any small details with sharp edges or corners are pretty severely rounded out and lose a lot of their detail. In the pictures below, you can see the same part from the X1C (left) and my old printer, an Ender 5 Pro (right). The small protrusions below the cone shape (about halfway up the part) are rounded out and and almost blended into the surface behind them, whereas they are clearly defined on the E5P.
What can I do to get the same level of detail on the X1C? I have already performed a manual pressure advance and temperature calibration with the help of OrcaSlicer. It almost seems like the toolhead isn’t “turning the corner” abruptly enough.
Here’s a better side by side example - the slicer preview and the actual output. To eliminate speed and acceleration causing this, this was printed at only 8mm/s.
You could return the printer, but any FDM machine you buy as a replacement will have the same “issue”. You can’t fix it. Any more than you can eliminate the layer lines. It’s the nature of the FDM printing process. You’re trying to exceed the “resolution” of the printer.
If you want more detail, you need to go to a smaller nozzle or switch to an SLA printer. SLA is vastly superior to FDM (but slower, and messier). But even with SLA, if you zoom in close enough you’ll see that corners are only approximations.
In the “slicer vs real life” image, the print in the lower half of the pic was printed at only 8mm/s - absurdly slow, but just to test. The amount of distortion is remarkably consistent - printing at 8mm/s looks the same as printing at 100 mm/s.
I see all these pictures of highly detailed prints on these forums and on Reddit, and all any detail in mine are very muted and blended in with their surroundings. I’m clearly doing something wrong.
This might very well be an artifact of the input shapi g. Input shaping tends to round the corners to avoid ringing. It would also explain why you don’t have the same issue with your Ender.
It is hard to know for sure as you printed very slowly but I have no idea how the algorithm would react to that. Unfortunately I don’t think it can be turned off to see how it impacts the print.
For better results you can try re-tensioning the belts Belt tensioning procedure | Bambu Lab Wiki and then run resonance calibration from the printer menu. Also you should try slicing at different speeds and acceleration in Bambu studio and see which gives you the best results. Slower (unless extremely slow) does not mean better. There should be a quite fast sweet spot going below which actually reduces the quality and produces more ringing. Check actual speed in Preview by selecting Color scheme → Speed in dropdown menu. Also in some cases order at which outer/inner walls and infill are laid out can make a significant difference. Using either Classic/Arachne slicer also can make a significant difference and its not cut and dry which is the best, it depends on 3D model you print. There is no single easy answer what will produce the best results, depends on 3d model, filament and other things.
I found changing the default “Order of inner wall/outer wall/infill” to outer/inner/infill and slowing down the “outer wall speed” to ~40mm/s makes for cleaner, more defined corners.
I would suggest dropping your accelerations for the inner and outer walls, and using the variable layer hight option go over to the side bar and toggle up to the overhangs where you can left click on the highlighted area to drop your layer hight
I don’t bother with the automatic variable layer hight but opt to do it manually and get nice sharp overhangs
It might also help in the filament profile under the cooling section to increase the layer time from 4 to 8
Also try selecting the Precise Walls option if you are using Orca to help speed things up a bit
Also have this issue with anything I print. I do a lot of prints with text and the X1C always produces ‘webbed’ characters, like the X is not sharp. Same prints on my Flashforge printer come out perfect and it cost a 3rd of the price. It’s so bad that I barely use my X1C for anything requiring detail anymore because it just ruins it.
The fact we get told to retension the belts or change all these micro settings to ‘make do’ is just hiding the fact this printer was released half baked and we’re beta testing a £1500 product for them
Also good luck trying to return it as they basically will refuse and try and get you to change a ton of settings that mostly have zero impact on the final print so you end up just wasting filament trying. I’ve seen guys have to strip down the entire printer to change sensors etc that never fix the issues because most of the issue are with the printer firmware and their slicing software.
Unfortunately its a lot of slicer tuning to figure it all out and different models with different orientations require different tweaks
Some get ironing, some don’t, some have more purge and some have less
The absolute biggest help for me is using the variable layer hight option and doing it manually with the side bar
For better lettering on a .2mm layer hight try going down to .08mm on the lettering, when the letters are on the top its easy but on the sides its important to slowly transition the bottom and top sections otherwise it shows the transition to .08mm on the other walls of the print
I’ve tried both Classic and Arachne with no noticeable difference in quality. I am doing a test print now with the outer wall printing first, we will see how it comes out.
I found changing the default “Order of inner wall/outer wall/infill” to outer/inner/infill and slowing down the “outer wall speed” to ~40mm/s makes for cleaner, more defined corners.
Just printed with these settings, it every so slightly did improve the angle on that protrusion (still not close to the Ender 5) but at the expense of surface quality - see pic.
The Ender 5 Pro is running a lower filament temperature what is the nozzle temp @ ?
Do you have a 0.20 nozzle by chance ?
Did you use the variable layer height option already on this part ?
If you only have .4 nozzle you can try something like this and see how it works out.
Let’s see if you can get the quality needed on this part you are the 3D test pilot
E5 was running 205 nozzle temp. I have the 0.4mm nozzle on both printers.
I think you’re onto something here. I combined your speed and line width settings with variable layer height and the corner in question is much sharper (see image).
What else can you think to change to get it even sharper than this?
I would drop the nozzle temp down because we have lowered the speed and the amount of filament being extruded you can bring it down to like 210c and work with 5c changes the cooler you can get it the better these edges will look you have to now find the happy spot.
To get it any better after this you will need a .2 nozzle so you can get finer details if needed.
A flat color the filament is cooler
A shiny color the filament is hotter
This is how I know from your photos the E5 was lower
If you want set your acceleration to 500 or 1000 for outer and inner walls.
