Problems All Of A Sudden - Poor Prints

[TheKrakenWakes 0]

Hi

 

Ive had my Ultimaker 2+ for about six months and ive been printing relatively troublefree apart from some odd tinkering with settings.  

 

Recently though im having a lot of problems.  Rigid Ink ABS has always been my preferred material on my flashforge dreamer and Ultimaker but now im getting poor prints with large seams.  I also tried their PLA and got very poor results compared to the same model printed in Ultimaker filament.  Can anyone offer any advice please? 

 

Problem 1

The green model is printed in ABS at 235, 30 mm/s.  I got rid of the seam (never seen one so big) by changing start points to random and also increased the layer height to .1mm  but im still getting wobbly marks where the gap is and when I print more than one at a time it breaks apart where the model gets thinner at the top.  Other settings are pretty much stock for .1mm apart from a slower print speed which helped improve the top of the model from pic 1 to pic 2.  

 

The red model is printed in Rigid Ink PLA and the silver next to it has the same stock .1mm layer settings from Cura apart from a lower print temp.  Silver is at the printers standard PLA settings, the red one is at 185 as per Rigid Inks suggestion.  

 

thanks

[gr5 2,210]

These "errors" in the red print are very tiny - much smaller than the eye should be able to see.  So how do we see it?  With glint.  Having a light bulb in the ceiling and holding the piece such that tiny changes in angle have large changes in contrast which let you see these errors.

 

You don't see the errors in the gray because it doesn't have the same kind of shiny sheen to it.  It's more Matte.  Also, it's a lighter color making the glint have less contrast.  

 

So one solution is to spray paint your prints.  First coat should be a primer - I like automobile primers which are designed to stick to both metal and plastic.  Then use a Matte color on top.

[TheKrakenWakes 0]

Thanks for your advice, appreciate the light does highlight issues on that filamant more than on the silver but there are definitely more imperfections on the red model which are visible to the eye when not in direct sunlight etc. I think i angled them like that to highlight them a little more for the picture.