Uneven printing in parts of the print

[dskux 0]

Hey y'all,

 

I made sure the bed was level and got good print bed adhesion. I am using the Ender 3 and I am curious to know why parts of my 3D print are messy and how I can fix it. 

 

Appreciate your help! 

[Smithy 1,141]

I guess you mean the top layer which looks messy? 

Try to print more top layers and/or try to print cooler. I think the base plate is not so thick, so it would be better to avoid that there is one or two layers of infill, print it solid with more top/bottom layers. But if it is thicker infill makes sense, but then print more top layers 5-6 to get a smooth surface.

 

Your levelling and first layer looks ok to me.

[dskux 0]

@Smithy thanks! Will experiment with that. If the temp was the issue, won't the whole surface be messy in the top layer? One side of the top layer is coming out great while the other side is this bumpy mess. 

 

Is it possible that there is some dirt in the slider beams which is causing this unevenness or could it be something else?

 

PS smaller prints come out great. It's just that when I do bigger prints around that area of the print bed, things start to get messed up.

Edited September 25, 2020 by dskux

[gr5 2,069]

I think your bed isn't perfectly flat.  If it's off by 0.1mm (thickness of typical paper) and if the bottom layer is 0.3mm then 0.1mm error is 33% different (over or underextruded) and it takes maybe 5 layers to finally reach equilibrium.

 

Use a metal straight edge of some sort to check to see if your bed is a little higher or lower in that corner.  Use a piece of thin paper (or a metal gauge that goes down to 0.05mm) as well to slide under the straight edge in different spots.

 

 

Like @Smithy said - if you make the bottom of your part thicker it should look much better.  Anyway this looks functional - like the inside of a box.  Does it really matter for this area of this part?

[gr5 2,069]

If you really want top surfaces to look much better you can look into the "ironing" feature set in cura but the default settings might not be ideal - the guy who invented ironing (neotko on this forum) recommends you extrude slightly (like 10% maybe?) while ironing.  More here (concentrate on posts by neotko):

 

[dskux 0]

21 minutes ago, gr5 said:

I think your bed isn't perfectly flat.  If it's off by 0.1mm (thickness of typical paper) and if the bottom layer is 0.3mm then 0.1mm error is 33% different (over or underextruded) and it takes maybe 5 layers to finally reach equilibrium.

 

Use a metal straight edge of some sort to check to see if your bed is a little higher or lower in that corner.  Use a piece of thin paper (or a metal gauge that goes down to 0.05mm) as well to slide under the straight edge in different spots.

 

 

Like @Smithy said - if you make the bottom of your part thicker it should look much better.  Anyway this looks functional - like the inside of a box.  Does it really matter for this area of this part?

 

Interesting! Will look into this and make sure the bed is flat. It doesn't really matter since this piece is functional enough. Wanted to use this as a learning opportunity to see where I messed up! Thank you :)

 

19 minutes ago, gr5 said:

If you really want top surfaces to look much better you can look into the "ironing" feature set in cura but the default settings might not be ideal - the guy who invented ironing (neotko on this forum) recommends you extrude slightly (like 10% maybe?) while ironing.  More here (concentrate on posts by neotko):

 

This is super cool and I didn't know you can do it. Thanks a lot for sharing :)