MakerGear Forum

Hi all,

As you can see from the picture, I am having some trouble printing the 3 islands of this part. The base layer is printing perfectly (although the picture is very upclose and personal), but as soon as it hits the pins, it starts messing up.

I have print islands sequentially switched on, and layer speed can be reduced to 15% under cooling. Normal print speed is 50mm/s. The layers do not seem to be "aligning" as if it's starting/stopping at a different position each layer. If you run your finger up the side of it, it feels very rough. I don't think it's a cooling issue, but I could be wrong.

This is the black MakerGear pla. Any suggestions?

Ryan

There's a condition called heat-soak that occurs when the time spent on a layer is not long enough for the previous layer to harden up before the next layer is laid down. You can give small items (like those posts) longer to cool if you print multiples on the bed at the same time. (or print a sacrificial tower)

Thanks Jules. So this looks like heat soak? I've not encountered this before but assumed it wasn't heat related. I'll try to add another print or a sacrificial lamb and see if things improve.

ryaneb85 wrote:Thanks Jules. So this looks like heat soak? I've not encountered this before but assumed it wasn't heat related. I'll try to add another print or a sacrificial lamb and see if things improve.

I've never had it happen, but it looks like what some of the guys have run into when they try to print really tiny stuff.

Forgot to mention it, but in S3D, there's a way to slow the extrusion WAY down on small stuff that sticks up like that - Go to Cooling tab, and change Allow Speed Reductions down to 4% instead of 20%, or whatever the default is. Gives it more time to harden on previous layers.

Also verify that you have your bed fan running for PLA.

I am gonna go in a different direction here.

I saw in another thread you are a fan of .10mm layers. If that print is at .10mm, you should try to print it at .20mm instead of .10mm. My guess is that it will improve the appearance. .10mm generally is not worth the trouble and rarely improves the look or quality. I rarely even bother with .15mm. You get near zero return for the effort and the surface quality can suffer greatly if you don't have your settings nailed down.

So even though the others are right about adding objects or slowing the speed, I don't think that is a complete solution.

If you are printing .20mm layers then there is definitely more going on.

Well, I just couldn't get it to print despite trying 2, 3 and even 4 parts on the bed at once. Fan on 100% and with 'after market' duct installed. Similar results to the picture attached. It was an order off 3dhubs and he requested it at 0.1mm, otherwise I tend to agree with you that the difference between 0.1 and 0.2 on a quality filament is too marginal to worth worrying about. I will be printing at 0.2mm going forwards.

I swapped to another roll of filament and tried the print again, and it printed perfectly first time. Now, I'm not sure if it's the filament, or the fact that I printed it at 0.2 instead of 0.1. It may be a bit of both. I also live in Singapore where the humidity is consistently around 85%, and considering the makergear PLA is my oldest roll and has just be left on my desk, it's probably seen better days...

Badly water soaked filament is my guess. I have had similar issues only to discover it was wet filament.