Hey guys, In my college’s robotics club we have 2 xyz da vinci 1.0 flashed with Repetier firmware. Everything seems to work fine except that every single time that we print something with overhangs, they seem to come out horrible. Everything else seems to come out alright. I did some tests by printing some benchies and as you can see the overhangs seem to be more pronounced at the front of the boat. I have tried lowering the temperatures, printing slower, etc, but nothing seems to fix the issue. I am also not sure if it might be an issue with over extrusion or something else. We have been printing them at 190c hotend and 65c for the bed. Thanks a lot guys and keep up the good work.
@Angel_Mercedes You are printing PLA? Are you using a fan to cool the material directly while printing? If not, that might be the cause.
That is typically what I see when printing PLA.
@Bjorn_Marl yeah pla. And they do not have active cooling by default (aka no cooling fan)
Definitely a fan will help with PLA.
@Gary_Craig yup it will for sure, but the problem is that the XYZ da vinci is one of these pre built machines that are not open source. I cant redesign the extruder to add a cooling fan bracket. Cant really modify it much since it is not mines it is school property. I was mostly thinking on going towards doing passive cooling.
I have a cooling fan and still see that kind of printing… a fan may not help much.
Isolate the heating element of the nozzle using high temp silicone, kapton and cotton wool, or something else and use just a big ass fan to blow at it.
do you have the pla “compatible” head for the 1.0 davinici? i ran into this problem with mine. 1.0 NOT 1.0A. I fixed it by buying a Rostock Max 
my davinici only does ABS becuase of this design flaw imho.
@Jules_Hoehn it has the stock hotend. I dont think the hotend can only print one material properly.
That’s what I thought, until I started checking out the heat sink mods alot of 1.0 people were doing to get play to print. Are you ever getting jams? Do you have a part/layer fan?
@Jules_Hoehn It only has the fan to cool down the hotend and no jams at all.
Overhangs with PLA are an art. Despite common belief, too much cooling and too low temps actually cause curling which will look ugly on overhangs. (Fan increases the rate of thermal contraction which ends up being a curled overhang)
Try printing your PLA at 205c+. If you don’t have a layer cooling fan, you need to print extremely slow to allow the layers to cool properly and I would suggest using a clip-on desk fan to blow on the print some.
If you need additional help, let me know! I have spent a lot of time fine tuning PLA in recent months.
@Mike_C
Thank you Mike, I will try that. I have also tried slowing down the print and it seems to help just a bit. I think it might be a mix of overextrusion and not enough time to cool.
You can probably drop the temperature to 185C (I print PLA at that temperature) and, in the absence of a part cooling fan, try printing two.
The extra time spent printing the second object will give the other one time to cool.