It makes a mess.
(There you go, you can skip the rest.
)The pics below tell the tale......couple of interesting points:
1. If you don't use a shield, the brim gets attached to the print. If you do have the shield turned on, the brim attaches to the shield, so it makes for easier cleanup. (And a more stable brim.)
2. The priming tower does take care of that initial gap that appears from the idle extruder on the first layer. But the priming tower is a solid chunk of plastic - it really rips through the spool if you have a large one enabled. The default tower in S3D is huge.....I cut it down and it was still a large waste of filament, you really only need it for the first layer if you have a shield on it, and the shield duplicates much of that priming function anyway. (The tower's a toss-up.)
3. On the current print, I'm running a shield with 2 outline widths, and it is really much more stable. Using a 12 outline brim. And a 5 mm priming tower. (Which might get knocked over here any time now - that one might be a little too small.) The priming tower does cut down on the sheer quantity of oozies, but since most of them are going to land on the shield anyway, you can save yourself some filament by not bothering with one. (Also don 't want to lose it halfway through the print - that will make a mess too.)
4. Distance of the shield from the print is best at 2.0mm (the default). I moved it out to 2.5mm on the current print since that last one got a little too close, and now i'm getting some little bits dropping down onto the print. Looks like the distance to set it is going to depend on the shape of the object being printed to a large extent. Anything with vertical sides you can move the shield in closer.
5. I'm printing PLA, and it's interesting to see how much cleaner the side of the print is that faces the fan. The left side is covered with blobs, the right just has a sprinkle. I've brought that desk fan back out to use on the left side. (Currently no fan guard on the bed fan, so no way to improve on that.)
- Just using the Wipe Tower - no Shield
- Wipe Tower.jpg (246.94 KiB) Viewed 5551 times
- Left side looks a lot worse.
- Fan effect.jpg (330.12 KiB) Viewed 5551 times