I’ll trying to find and prevent this issue in seeing in some of my prints. Both items used the same printer settings but different filament brands, yet the artifacts still showed up in identical areas on the items. I tried a couple lighting conditions to make it easier to see.
I’m guessing it’s a slicer setting but don’t know where to start looking. Ideas?
If your’re referring to the blobs along the Z direction those are due to retraction. You have a couple settings to play with (depending on your slicer). You can randomize the start points for each layer which will make the blobs spaced further apart, minimizing the visual seam. What you really want to do though is play around with coast, wipe, and retraction speed to remove the blobs completely. I can give you some starting values for testing if you can tell me a bit about your machine and which slicer you’re using.
Oh goodie. That will be useful for everyone to know!
@David_Sherwood Yes it does occur on other prints.
@Adam_Steinmark Yes, the “Z-blobs” (and that is now my new favorite term)
Used Cura 3.2.1 for this model.
Standard CR-10, no extra features.
@Adam_Steinmark Here’s another example of a recent print with the “Z-Blobs.” (Ran out of filament)
missing/deleted image from Google+
Alright so this is a tricky thing to get perfect and it doesn’t help that you’re using a bowden setup (vs. direct drive). You’ll have to go into preferences - configure Cura - settings and make some of these settings visible because they aren’t shown by default.
The first thing you want to do is dial in retraction distance and speed. I like to use this model for testing because you can print it off fairly quickly for testing: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:909901/ .
Print it with your current settings and then start to increase retraction distance in ~20% increments until you find the maximum retraction distance value that can be achieved without negatively affecting the print quality (you’ll start to see gaps where the layer starts). You should also increase retraction speed to as fast as possible without causing the extruder to skips steps. Oh also make sure your travel speed is at least 100 mm/s.
Next you want to play around with coast and wipe. Coasting allows the print head to coast without extruding a set distance value at the end of a layer. This lowers the pressure in the hotend to help decrease the blob size. Wipe adds a travel move on the outer wall to help minimize Z seams. For testing these values I like to use this model: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1903076
Print this initially with the default settings you calibrated from the step above. It looks like Cura doesn’t allow you to set a value for coasting so just turn it on for the 2nd print of this model. If you’re still seeing blobs after that try increasing the wipe distance in 0.2 mm increments.
This process should take a while, let me know if you have any questions.
@Adam_Steinmark I really appreciate the help. Sounds like I have some work this weekend.
