So, I’ve only been helping my team use our 3d printers for robot parts and prototyping for the last 2 seasons. Last season stunk, but this season has been much better. However, I have a big issue that has now happened on two different printers and I need help in figuring out the solution… And any suggestions are welcome/appreciated!
Printer is enclosed and these settings have been used on other parts with no problem. Print settings are the same as many successful prints, except we are setting it for 8mm walls and 30% infill. It seems like the first few layers go fine, but then the wall section ends up higher and messy in certain sections (as you can see from the side view picture below). It’s very strange and I am struggling to figure out why. I’ve attached some close-ups and am hoping some of you might be able to help me figure this out…
When I’ve had print issues in the past, I’ve babysat the printer to try to figure out what’s happening - sitting there watching it print when the problem happens often gives you the biggest clue as to what’s going wrong. Heck, one time I set up my iPad to record it (a nice, long, 8-hour video while I was at work!) so I could play it back to the exact time the issue happened.
Does it happen at the same height every time? If so, that could be a big clue… depending on how the STL was put together, there might be something that’s screwing up the slicer. Does your slicer have a preview feature? That could be useful for walking through the layers virtually to see what the printer is supposed to be doing at that level. If you want to post or PM the file, I can take a look at it, maybe even try a print on my printer (assuming my team ever gets done with it this year… getting close to 6 weeks of 24-hour per day usage!).
Yeah, can u send the stl and the Gcode for the print? Also, are you doing the print on the printer via sdcard, usb from a laptop, or octoprint? I’ve had similar issues using octoprint and the cura + octoprint plugin, seems like when left open the cura plugin destroys the pi 3b running octoprint and the print gets like that when commands are sent too infrequently and the print becomes jittery. Do the printers movements seen abnormal when this is happening? Also, 8mm walls? Are you crazy?
The first printer we’ve had it happen on is a Taz 6, with Octopi, and actually sliced and controlled via Astroprint. Which is a lot of “middleman” stuff that could screw things up.
However, it happened again on a different printer, a Sindoh dp200, using their proprietary slicer (3dWox).
I’ve also had the issue on 2 different STL files of the same part, and then another design iteration that we tried ad the same issues.
The only thing I can think of is that it is the 8mm think walls that are causing this. We have 2 printers that run ABS, and both of them are going right now, but I want to try a print with 3.2mm walls to see if the same file prints.
I think another issue might be the fact that in both slicers, I cannot set the number of walls, only the overall thickness. Do you think that would be an issue?
Also, I would direct your attention to the third photo I posted up above - notice how the 8mm thick wall is fine on the right side, but then as it goes up, you can see where it all gets super thick. The walls were actually about 1.5-2mm higher than the infill by the time I stopped the print, but perfectly fine in that one section.
Are you able to modify the filament size in your slicer? It looks like it’s over extruding to me, and (maybe based on the wall thickness and part geometry), it’s not noticable until quite a few layers are laid down. If this is the case, you could use thinner walls, and (potentially) start seeing it higher up, or thicker walls and see it lower down.
i would agree - 8 mm is very thick and if there is any overprint then you could have that problem. I also noticed a problem with my TAZ 6 with thicker walls and it was not squared quite right and only showed up after 1/2" of print height (although if you are using two different printers then likely not it). If you share an STL file I could confirm and review with Cura slicer as well.
