I am getting this bulged line after a flat base transitions to a vertical wall. I circled it in the first image and drew a line where it begins to occur in the second image. I am printing in PLA+ with a mostly default 0.2mm profile. Tried slowing down the exterior wall to 50mm/s. But that did not seem to help. The effect seems to diminish if I drop the wall count from 4 to 2, but I want some strength in these parts. Any suggestions? Thanks!
Hi @mikecoscia
Can you check the slicer preview for flow and layer time? Or better, share a print screen.
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Agreed, it’s impossible to offer up an intelligent diagnoses by a photo of the end model. What can’t be seen is what was the slicer’s “Intent” before it was sent to the printer. Both the model in the “prepare screen” and as a slice in the “Preview” screen will allow the community here to give more granular feedback as to what might be going on. Please do not take a photo of the monitor, that’s harsh, screengrabs are necessary for a quality response.
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Thanks for the response! I added the extra images, sorry about that! I noticed the layer time has a change right where the artifact appears.
Thanks for the additional data. Could you also add the line type screen grab? What we are looking for is to determine what kind of layer the slicer was laying down. The layer speed doesn’t tell the whole story.
What we’re looking for is to try to determine what kind of layer the slicer was putting down. The line type tells us this. So as an example, I think I’m seeing a brim.
But what I really want to understand is if there is overhangs and what kind of structure is behind the surface.
So another useful view would be to show the layers right at the problem area you want to diagnose such as this.
What this reveals is what’s going on at the walls and inside the model which has great influence over the side wall structure. It will help in hunting down root cause.
At the moment, I would have to guess that somehow the filament is either flowing too slowly or perhaps the wall thickness needs to increase to compensate. Another possible explanation is that the filament temp is too high or perhaps the part cooling fan too low. Did you by chance calibrate your filament manually?
BTW: Don’t get caught up in marketing BS. The difference between PLA and PLA+ is largely what they a overcharging you for. There is no industry standard that defines what constitutes “plus” and I in my experience, one has to find a unique set of circumstances to see a difference between one filament from the same maker vs one they make with the “plus” adder. Often, that difference is negative.
Thank you! Here are the additional images and information…
The filament settings are mostly default for generic PLA. I only changed the flow ratio after performing the auto-calibration (0.955) and bed plate temp (60 for the G10 plate I use). The nozzle temps (220C) and fan speeds were not touched.
Totally agree on the PLA+ I have found it is no different than regular PLA. I just buy it from IIID Max as it is cheap and typically prints well.
Thanks for updating the info. This helps a lot.
So from the image I see that you have walls set to 3. That kind of rules out deformities being caused by inner layer shrinkage which often happens with thinner walls. Nevertheless, you can try to increase wall thickness to 4 just to rule this out.
The other thing you just stated was that you’re relying on auto- calibration. Put simply… bad idea. There are way too many posts here where people “trust” the technology or settings on the box only to be chasing their tails.
Click on this for a quick guide to manual calibration
Summary
I would recommend that you do a manual calibration. The best tool for the job if you haven’t already done so is to switch to Orca Slicer.
Orca
Bambu Studio
This video is among one of the easiest to follow. Even after a full year I find myself referring back to it as a reminder. He does a good job. There are other’s but his I find the simplest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02mLDrxEpwQ
This is part 2 which goes into the more advanced and nuanced aspects of filament tuning. If you’re feeling confident, this might be worth a look too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymywqch6R8w
Here is the link to Orca slicer. Both Bambu Studio and Orca can coexist on the same machine but Orca is written by hobbyists, for hobbyists and has a number of quality of life enhancements that Bambu Studio just does not have. So there is no downside to use both. Release OrcaSlicer V2.1.1 Official Release · SoftFever/OrcaSlicer · GitHub
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The one word of advice when running manual calibrations. Between each calibration, save the filament profile and load a new project. This will ensure that you always have the last calibration loaded. I learned that from another calibration video and it explained why I was going crazy. Apparently when you exist the slicer and you skip the save, you lose your calibration.
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Other diagnostic steps.
I am bothered by this zig zag pattern.
If I would theorize, your infill is shrinking faster than your walls can set up thus causing the infill to tug on the walls to create this zig zag pattern.
Before you manually calibrate your filament
Change the infill pattern to something else like Gyroid for Sparse infill and Honeycomb for solid infill.
The goals is to create a different interior pattern to see if it changes the wall texture. If it does, that means the filament is likely the problem and not mechanical. It means the underside of the infill is shrinking faster than the outer causing the rippling you’re seeing.
Here are some steps that you can take to see if it remedies this BEFORE you manually calibrate.
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Increase wall Thickness
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Change the wall order from the default of inner/outer to outer/inner. This will print the wall first and the infill second. That means the wall will have more time to cool down, hopefully firming up before the infill is laid down.
Last, Manually Calibrate the filament.
Only now after you’ve had a good understanding of where the problem might lay, is where manual calibration will make a difference. The reason for this is that one can calibrate a filament to overcome some weaknesses in the model but that will likely manifest itself in other problems elsewhere. So it’s the last tool in my bag. Note: There is no place where it is written to do this in that order. It is personal preference.
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Thanks Olias, I really appreciate the help in understanding the root cause of the issue.
The print should be four walls, that is my go-to setting, but I will double-check. I also noticed that z-pattern and glad you said something. That was next on my troubleshooting list. I also typically use gyroid as my sparse infill pattern, but haven’t changed too many settings on this particular model. I merely loaded up the owners default and tweaked a few things for my filament. I’ll set it back to gyroid. Solid infill is set to rectilinear, I do not see a honeycomb option, just concentric, monotonic, hilbert, rectlinear, archimedian and octogram. I am using Bambu Studio, but I did not see it as an option in Orca either. I left it as rectilinear for now.
I’ll try the steps you mentioned and report back. Thanks again!!!
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@Olias completed all the suggested steps (minus honeycomb for solid infill as it was not an option) and made another print (second image). The flow and pressure advance settings were pretty close to the auto calibrated ones….0.96 vs 0.97778 for flow and 0.38 vs 0.27 for pressure advance.
The ridge is not gone, but definitely reduced. I still have the zig zag pattern on the surface. I am using the Bambulabs anti-vibration feet as I have two printers on the same table. I was concerned the movement of one would effect the other. The other is a CR-10 S5, but it was not running during these prints. I don’t think those feet would cause the ridge, but maybe the zig-zag pattern?
On a side note, I noticed my brim gap of 0.1 is no longer present. The brim is fused to the model. Flow might be a tad too high. Might lower to just 0.97 and see what happens.
Any other suggestions? Thanks again!
Since the normal items seem to have been ruled out, now it comes down the the unusual. Have you dried your PLA filament. Yes, I realize that this may seem counterintuitive but I had way too many experiences with bad filament that drying helped, not cured, but helped. What we’re looking for is for the printer to give us an output that has simply changed.
But before you do that, did you ever perform a first layer test on the filament? If not, just lay down a cube primitive and scale it to 200x200x0.20mm which should be enough to see if there are calibration issues that normal calibration didn’t pick up. It’s also under 5 minutes so it’s a quick test.
Yes filament was dried over night. I have desiccant packs in my AMS and humidity reads at 10%. Although I find the filament still gets brittle after being stored in them for a while. It actually breaks where it is loaded into the feeder. However the white rolls for these prints are all brand new and I use them up in a few days for this project. I will try the the test you suggested and let you know. Thanks!