Is it by chance a printer that self levels by adjusting the head height rather than you adjusting the bed?Going up and down at it sweeps each layer? That would explain the pattern.
@cris_luna My Mendel (one with the issue) flips the belt around so the smooth side of the belt is touching the idler bearing. My DIY printer which doesn’t suffer the issue just has the belt teeth sitting directly on the idler bearings.
@Whosa_whatsis I don’t know about the OP but for me, neither of my printers has auto levelling of any kind and only one of them suffers this.
@John_Santiago Do you by chance use an ATX power supply on your printer? My Mendel uses an ATX from a PC while the DIY uses an old xbox360 PSU. I wonder if that is our problem?
DIY printer uses DRV8825 but prints smooth without that pattern.
My DIY uses Repetier firmware while the Mendel uses Marlin. I might try changing the Mendel over to Rep firmware and see if that fixes it.
@Steve_M I have a generic external power supply on my P3Steel. I was not having this issue until I switched over to the Bulldog Lite setup. Might have to go back to my old setup.
I didn’t like this look of this. The conformity bothered me and as I’m going to get an UM2+ I didn’t want to run in to the same problems, so I had a little hunt.
Quote from UM guy on their forum “it is the accuracy of the microstepping when a plane is close to either the x or y axis.”
From what I can gather it’s kinda like the model isn’t printing with anti-aliasing. You know, like what happens with 3d game models if you orientate them off the straight line, the lines get jaggy.
You’ll find the pages of experimentation in this thread
https://ultimaker.com/en/community/16357-why-does-my-print-have-tiny-zebra-stripes
Infill isn’t the issue.
Basically, it can be mitigated by correct orientation. Have a read it’s quite an informative post.
I hope it helps or at least points you in the direction of a fix.
I know this is dealing with a different printer to yours and any number of things could be ‘different’ but it’s the same problem, it’s unlikely to be a different solution. (I hope ;))
@Elf_Tablet that’s probably a different issue, unless auto-leveling tilt compensation is being used here to make the walls not vertical. The moire lines in the UM thread are caused by the 4988 being in the wrong decay mode for 24v operation with a low-inductance motor. Switching the driver to “low-current microstepping mode” 100% fixes the problem shown in the thread. (The Duplicator 4s that didn’t have the problem in the UM thread already has drivers in that mode from the factory.)
Well it’s the same symptoms, so there has to be a connection somewhere even if it hasn’t been discovered, because it’s not as if anyone else has offered a solution, plenty of ‘possible’ causes though.
I’d be interested in the results the OP would get if he followed the threads advice.
Ok it seems I’ve fixed my mendel, nice and smooth on the small test print I did. I changed from Marlin to Repetier firmware. That’s it. Nothing more. Needs more testing but I printed the same sized little cube thing (except this time it has no top / bottom unlike my previous cube) and no weird pattern.