Bumbletoon

That is exactly what I'm going to do. I've been trying to avoid printing in any other orientation because I don't want the PEI build plate texture on the top and I've really been trying to avoid support marks on the print. If I was going to print, sand and paint that'd be fine. However I really like the finish of this filament and it's the perfect colour. So I'm just going to cheat. I'll print the top half and then the underside and glue them. When the print is adhered to the plate it doesn't curl or have any of these problems. It's only with supports. I can fudge the whole rest of the parts of this project by making cuts where no one's really going to see it and just get it done, move on and NEVER use this material again. I know this still means a lot of trees inside, however it's never caused a problem, it's just the edge shrinking and I can negate that. I'd love to push on with this, however the supplier of this PLA is now out of stock and I only have so much left (unsure if they're going to get more) so I think I need to just make it work. I've learnt a lot from everyone who's commented and it's genuinely fixed a couple of other issues I was having regardless so it's extremely appreciated.

I haven't and really should. I've just printed this little puck cut from the larger print and dropped the temps back to 205 and it's returned the outer wall to smooth. I left cooling at zero for the whole print. However, when it got to the top (image 2) the top layers sagged into the infill. as the top of the print is a large, flat disc that's not going to work. It's become a real balancing act.

[print file included] Unfortunately a bit gutting on this one. It's all stuck to the supports properly so that's a win!On the down site, it's created this cyclic texture pattern. The base layers don't have it, however, however the walls above them do. The only thing I've changed as far as the model print goes is increased temp from 205 to 215, removed all part cooling and printing inner walls to out. The inner walls have the same pattern so I don't think it's the latter. Previously it was printing like the cylinder example below, but that had the shrinking, non bonding to supports issue. Both were printed with Thin Walls enabled. EXPERIMENTING METAL PARTS TEMPLATE 215 60-60 20ms-60ms 0 Cooling Thin Walls.3mf

Unfortunately I think it's going to have a similar problem again. I've upped print temp from 205 to 215 and am printing internal walls first then outer with no part cooling. Supports now created as below settings. I'm still printing a layer height of 0.12 entirely because I forgot to change it to 0.2 So far the win has been all lines of filament seem to have stuck to the supports for the first layer of that floating, ring in the middle. I watched it print them; no loose strands. I also can't see any dramatic warping/curling upwards and yet there it is, those blebs of filament all around the edge, just for that one layer. I rechecked e-step and re-ran the PID tuning for the hotend before this run.

So far there's no external wall shrink at the bottom so fingers crossed it holds together at layer 282 where the main issue is! I also turned of enclosure temp regulation. A little way on the trees are sprouting what seems to be over extrusion 'branches'. They all have them in the direction the nozzle exists the support. I imaging a little over extrusion bleb is collecting each time the nozzle moves off the supports. The main print has one too, however it's on the back so unless it fails the print, I'm just going to cross my fingers harder. Honestly wish the forum allow for more than one answer to be flagged as the solution as I think it really was a joint effort

I've checked it with this PLA yes, however I'll run it again. To answer a previous question it's their all metal sprite extruder, however I get your point

Ya coulda been nice! However fair 😂 Aaaah okay. I'm familiar with stepper motors from robotics work. I thought you were talking about movement calibration not extrusion. I've checked and when I extrude 10 or 25 mm of material it matches that on a ruler. I should still learn how to modify it in case of issues. Very worth learning.

Heeey! I'm in Adelaide! My printer is in a lined shed. Part of the enclosure was my wife was concerned about fire risk. Then once it was in an enclosure I was getting warping early on and thought it was to do with the enclosure getting up to 35+ in there. Thin parts were warping. Very likely it was my inexperience blaming the wrong thing. That's really good local advice! This is what it looks like from the top and bottom. The flat surfaces have that non-bonded look, however the top is largely flat. Anywhere there's the non-bonded look it's been on a support. "Have the E-steps been calibrated for this specific material? " - no, and it's not something I know how to do. I'll look that up and learn about that too. For the most part it's been printing brilliantly cosmetically on the outside, bar the bottoms. So I've not been too worried about it if I could just get the damn print to bond. I'll look into this. Thank you and everyone for the assistance. There are all things I can try one at a time to experiment with outcomes. It's the most difficult PLA I've printed with and I swear I'm going to conquer it! I'm strongly thinking I'm printing too cool, cooling fan needs to be off or at maybe 50% (I'll experiment) and the support gap needs to be less. That all makes a lot of sense for what I'm seeing. I'll also look into how to calibrate E-steps for different materials.

I'll confess, I'm very new to this and just set Cura to Super Quality and used a lot of the defaults until I needed to tweak something if there were printing issues. As you said, PLA is pretty forgiving and this metal PLA has needed me to step up. I've always seen that gap between supports and the print in all printing I've done and did wonder about it. At a basic, yes I need this in crayon, explanation. If I'm printing at 0.12 layer height, I can safely set the Support Z Distance to 0.12 as well or anything great that but not higher than what would be two layers high? The reason I ask is, what I'm seeing when I set that distance to .12 is that still on layer 281 there's no printing for that support, however the support is already up where it needs to be for layer 282 to touch it from when it was printed during 280. There's still a little gap, however I'm presuming that's so we can get the print to come off the support. The enclosure is because the printer is in a room that's often down to as low as 4 degrees C / 32F for ambient temp and the printer just running in the enclosure isn't enough to keep ambient tempt inside above 15-ish c. Or less. I'm using heat mats on a temp sensor to maintain a 24 degree temp. Your thoughts on blowing air about the enclosure are definitely valid and to keep in mind.

Thank you for the edit, however it's worth a try anyway to see what happens. I think you're right on the layers! I had a very close look at the layers and the support mesh is printed on layer 280 and the next layer above it is on layer 282! There is some printing on 281 but not the supports where the print it failing. I've never changed the Cura default and have only found the setting now. 0.24

Thank you! I'll try it with the fan off again. I did that to start with but it became a stringy mess. However after seeing this up close it really does look like A, it's being extruded too cool and B it's cooling before it bonds with the layer below it. I'd not looked to heavily at layer adhesion as the brunt of layers stick great and it's a very solid print. However I did wonder whether I should turn the fan off at later 282 for that layer and see how it goes. I've changed a lot of settings throughout problems solving and it's probably time to reset to the start and try some of the suggestions above and see how it goes.

Thank you both for the replies! Hahah yes, sorry on the decimal points. Novice to 3D printing typing error. It's PLA with metal in it, not a silk PLA. I've not had any issues printing silk. I was printing at 210, however dropped it to 205 to stop the brim curling up. I like the idea of printing inner walls first as cosmetically they're not going to be seen. It doesn't fix the problem, however it may get the project done. I'm not sure I understand the chamfer issue. The sections that are shrinking are parallel to the supports below them. The 59 degree is the Cura default so I'll play around with that too. Oddly enough, those example chamfer bits in the image you've added actually printed fine. Likely it didn't even use the supports and just printed above them not on them. The issue is with the parts such as the one I've added below where the part that's not bonding is flat to the mesh support built on top of the trees. As you've loaded the file, it's later 282 that won't stick properly to 281. In the last image below, I can see a gap between the support mesh and the print. Is that meant to be there or is that just how Cura displays it in preview? Is there a 'distance support is from print' setting I need to learn? I'm using 0.12 mm layers because I was really trying to avoid stepping as much of it is angled, however I'll certainly try 0.2 Honestly, I think this may be a balancing act just to get this damn project printed and then never use this PLA again 🙂 It's a shame that it's the perfect colour and texture. Thank you both again for taking the time. I'm learning a lot and it's really appreciated

This is a setting I've never played with so keen to learn. It's set to 59.0 I've been printing that layer height for other non-metal PLA okay on this printer for really nice pints. I need to print 2.8 for the first layer with 110% extra extrusion for the initial layer, however other than that it's been good. Maybe it's just not going to happen with this filament.

Base Layer Issue.3mfAdded the Cura file in a separate post as it's 100+mb I also noticed that no matter what adhesion type is chosen, the remark line for it is created as ;TYPE:SKIRT it prints the correct adhesion all the same.

I'm in Struggletown with this one! [Ender 3 S1 Pro] - Having significant problems with what I think is shrinking/warping on the outer walls in the initial layer(s). It seems the outer wall shrinks away from the PLA it's printed on; trees, brim, raft, etc. but not the build plate. The outer wall filament strand doesn't seem to adhere. I've added the cylinder example to hopefully better show the effect. The wall or possibly just the very outer layer of the wall seems to not stick and shrink upward causing the following layers to gets crushed onto it. That causes the now excess PLA to bulge outward. In something like the cylinder, the ring of lumps happens routinely in each print at about the same distance from the base. When it's a larger area like the ring in image 1 it happens from the base. The final image shows the same layer on the inside of the print doesn't have this effect, and you can also that the first layer outer wall has again only adhered to the PLA below it in a few places making a sort of loose diamond shape. However, it still stuck and printed on from there. Otherwise the print layer adhesion is great and doesn't appear to warp. It's just maybe the very outer skin from the bottom or whatever new bottom is needed in build like the ring on top of the trees. I'm printing with Metal PLA (aluminium) at a temp of 205 with a hardened steel 0.4 nozzle. Initial layer is running at 20ms and main print at 60ms. This occurs at both 20 and 60ms speeds. No cooling on initial and 100% the rest. The layer that has this issue would be at 100%. Initial layer height is 2.8 with the rest 1.2 mm; happens on both. The printer is in an enclosure with temp controlled at 24 degrees, plus or minus .5 degrees and no higher than 30% humidity. Otherwise outer wall is fantastically smooth bar these base layers; even if they're part way through the print on a new 'base layer' on top of supports. I’m getting to the pausing the print and slopping glue on the supports stage but would rather fix it properly.