Anyone have any ideas on what I can do to fix the waviness/lines at the top and overall quality with this print? It is from the torture test that Make Magazine did.
This is my first 3d Printer - a Geeetech Prusa i3. Printed with 1.75mm PLA.
What machine do you have and what settings are you printing at?
It is a Prusa i3a from Geeetech. I believe I printed this at 190c bed at 70c with 1.75mm PLA.
What are your speeds? The waves almost look like you’ve got a chatter in your belt(s).
Just using the defaults… All belts are tight.
Is that where your infill is?
15% rectilinear… But I don’t think that it is the infill… it is a wall, same thickness, top to bottom.
These should disappear by adding more perimeter walls. The infill is interacting with the wall so more walls should hide it. It’s one of the trade offs - more material and time for a smoother exterior.
Brook
Yes. Buy an injection molding machine and pay for a set of molds.
Well, it is just a test print… I am really a noob at the whole 3d printing thing… I am just trying to get the best out of my machine.
Do the bumps line up with the infill?
I thought my belts were tight until I put some torsion spring tighteners on them. I was suprised at the difference.
Hmm because of the repeating bulge, I’m going to say that your board is overheating, causing your motors to start pulsing. Looks perfectly normal in the first half and starts to appear later on as if your board starts to overheat.
I would repeat the test print with a fan cooling your board and see if you can replicate the results. If it still appears, then you can start looking into the hardware (loose belt, etc) or increase the perimeter as Brook suggested
@Brook_Drumm is definitely right. I had the same thing occur. I just added two perimeters and dropped down the infill and perimeter overlap percent in Cura and the problem went away.
And @ilya_svatutsa one of the reasons as to why we have 3d printers is the ability to make parts without using a mold. Id much rather spend my $600 on a 3d printer than 20k on a mold to find out that the part has flaws.
The board has a cooling fan and I touched each of the heats inks and they felt warm not hot.
Also if you have loose belts you can always tighten them or just print some belt tensioners.
Just ordered the tensioners… But my belts feel tight…
@Keith_Applegarth if they are then they might not be necessary. I had a belt very loose one time just to see how it would affect the print quality and I was amazed in the reduction of print quality.
And check http://thingiverse.com as there are belt tensioners that you can print on there.
I am guessing that it has a RAMPS 1.4? If so then turn the current down on the step sticks. There are tons and tons of guides for this on google.
Too much current is a bad thing?
@Keith_Applegarth yes too much current can cause steps to skip as well as the motors and stepsticks to heat up. The best way to do it is to pull all the parts off of the ramps aside from one stepsticks and one motor. Then use a multimeter to measure across the power supply to see how much current the stepper driver is supplying. Most of mine are set at around 200 mah I believe. And the extruder a little bit more. At first all my motors ran hot which is bad. Now the axis motors are ice cold and the extruder gets a tiny bit warm which is fine.
I can send you a link to the video but unfortunately it is in spanish without subtitles.