What is causing this printing surface?

[hoeby]

I printed some voron cubes, on my voron 2.4 (300). In the added picture, the black on is printed on the voron. But the surfaced has a little wobble, or how do you call it?

The green one is printed on my sapphire sp3. I know the green one is not great. The abs is cracked and the printing speed was to high. But still it shows that the bigger surface looks better then on the voron.

Don't know where to look for, what is causing this surface on the voron. Hope somebody knows where to look for 

[hoeby]

Both in black.

The left one is on a sapphire sp3. The right one on the voron 2.4. Clearly there is a difference in print surface 

[Dirk]

what is a sapphire sp3? I know windows xp sp3....

but the differences have to do with several factors.

at least all these points in this link have an influence: https://ellis3dp.com/Print-Tuning-Guide/articles/index_tuning.html

you can also look at this page: https://www.simplify3d.com/resources/print-quality-troubleshooting/ for some other points you can check.

 

[hoeby]

Sapphire sp3 is a 3d printer from the brand twotrees.

I looked at the ellis tuning part. But don't know what to tune or redo to solve this

Edited March 3 by hoeby

[Dirk]

heh. 

if you want to achieve the same results with two completely separate printers, you will have a lot of tuning to do.

The differences in prints can be caused by extruder, printer chamber, ventilation, isolation, slicer, firmware...

Even though this printer has the same corexy principle as the voron 2.4, it is a different printer... 

 

The main difference you see of the pictures of both cubes, is the adhesion between the lines of extruded plastic.

This is best visible in the overhang of the holes. You can see the individual lines.

You can also see that the lines are not adhered to each other. Especially on the right cube, this causes some curling. 

Also there is a big difference (if you would zoom) between the two surfaces. This also has to do with the adhesion between the lines. This has several causes. 

I think you can look on the net, for explanation of 'layer adhesion improvement' and 'layer adhesion on overhangs' and 'overhang optimisation'.

Maybe you can also look on this forum. there are some posts discussing it.

 

One of the reasons that causes these differences can be: cooling. temperature of the chamber. circulation in the chamber.

I would suggest not looking at the ellis tuning guide, but also following it for the steps possible on your twotrees printer. I think it would optimize it even more.

 

Good luck

[Dirk]

3 hours ago, hoeby said:

don't know what to tune

I had redo over this part of the question.

I will write down which sections I do, when I have done a change to the printer and I think it requires a 'tuning'. 

1- First layer squish: on the bottom of the page, you will see nicely explained what aspects of a surface Ellis pays attention to.

2- Pressure Advance: this, I use every time I use a new filament. it is very useful and might explain the differences between different filaments on different changes on your pictures. Like our forum regular @Buurman I also prefer the deprecated Lines method. 

3- Extrusion multiplier: makes sure you print out parts, that are as meant by the designer. Without a perfect EM, you will never have perfect fitting parts.

 

Because I use ABS only I do not need to tune the cooling (I set it to 10% after layer 4-10) and 100% at bridges. I also never have problems with stringing, so I did not need to tune my retraction. If you use another filament than ABS, consider tuning those as well. See a recent very good post from another forum user here But with Orca slicer. And he did that all, because he changed to a new hotend. 

and as I wrote before, I do not know if twotrees uses klipper or marlin, but Elliss guide covers a lot about tuning with marlin as well. 

[hoeby]

Thanks for your support, Dirk. 

I will read over them and check them on my printer. With your reaction to google on some words, i found some direction to tune the PA settings. But i will start at the top, and PA will come in one of the next steps.

Both my printers run klipper with mainsail. saves learning 2 different environments

[Penatr8tor]

@hoeby it looks to me like it could be an extruder issue. Here's a simple test, loosen the tension screw on the extruder and see if your surface improves. My thinking is, the little teeth in the extruder wheels are being translated to the melt from pressure applied. It's a long shot but easy to try.

[hoeby]

On 3/8/2024 at 8:57 AM, Penatr8tor said:

@hoeby it looks to me like it could be an extruder issue. Here's a simple test, loosen the tension screw on the extruder and see if your surface improves. My thinking is, the little teeth in the extruder wheels are being translated to the melt from pressure applied. It's a long shot but easy to try.

Tried this, but doesn't make any difference

[Penatr8tor]

3 hours ago, hoeby said:

Tried this, but doesn't make any difference

Well, the easy fix isn't always that easy.

It seems pretty obvious to me that it's more of a flow (extrusion) issue than wobble or looseness of the XY motion system. I can see, especially in the bridges, that there's some kind of pulsing occurring during extrusion. The pulsing can come from a number of things like the extruder filament rollers. Each tooth = one pulse. It could also be that the two gears (10 tooth on the motor & 50 tooth on the filament wheel) are adjusted to close to one another. Too tight and you get pulsing. It could also be that you got one of those cheapo 50 tooth gears that is out of round.

So, the thing to do would be to experiment a bit to really nail down the one thing that's causing the pulsing. If you want to solve this problem, you need to try things and check the boxes.

So, check the filament path. Can the filament be pulled from the roll without dragging or skipping.

Check the gear adjustment. Is it loose or tight, try different settings.

Is it the gripper teeth on the filament drive rollers. Try loosening - tightening.

And lastly... Try a installing a new "precision" extruder gear. You can get them on Amazon for ~$12.00 US

IMO, the extruder gear will improve extrusion and is 100% worth the 12 bucks, even if you don't have a problem.

Here's a couple video that I think will help. Knowledge is power right?

 

[hoeby]

Today i started with check alle mechanical things. Are all screws tight. Are the belts on 110mhz. Did the calibration steps that are on ellis. Changed the nozzle. Between each step i printed a voron cube to see what happens. 

But these steps where not the solution. Then i watch the belts on movement. But is not easy to see. But it looks like the belt sometimes is on a little angle. It looks like the 6mm gate belt doesn't fit propperly between the f695 bearings. Like said, not easy to see with all those movements when printing. Could this be a cause?

If so, could i try to put a 0.1 or 0.2 mm shim between the bearings, to give a little more space for the belt. Or is this not done?

I also will look at the information from penetr8tor. Thanks for all that information and movies

[hoeby]

14 hours ago, Penatr8tor said:

"precision" extruder gear.

This one is ordered, but will be end of the month when it will be delivered.

Last test yesterday, Loosening or tighting the gripper made no difference

[Penatr8tor]

@hoeby Did you try adjusting the clearance between the stepper motor gear and the 50t extruder gear? The gears will click, click, click, every tooth if they're too tight.

Specifically, this...

[Penatr8tor]

On 3/9/2024 at 12:50 PM, hoeby said:

But these steps where not the solution. Then i watch the belts on movement. But is not easy to see. But it looks like the belt sometimes is on a little angle. It looks like the 6mm gate belt doesn't fit properly between the f695 bearings. Like said, not easy to see with all those movements when printing. Could this be a cause?

It's possible that belt alignment can cause surface anomalies. 

Regarding belt alignment, if you assembled everything to spec., i.e. you didn't leave out any spacers, all of the pulleys will be aligned. If you have done it right and your belt is not aligned, i.e. centered in the pulleys, it's because the drive pulley (the one connected to the stepper motor) is not aligned. You can easily adjust the alignment by loosening the set screws and moving the drive pulley up or down without taking everything apart, you might want to loosen the belt tension a bit beforehand. While you're in diagnostic mode and checking things... I would check the motor pulleys and adjust as needed.

[hoeby]

14 hours ago, Penatr8tor said:

@hoeby Did you try adjusting the clearance between the stepper motor gear and the 50t extruder gear? The gears will click, click, click, every tooth if they're too tight.

Specifically, this...

Yes, these steps are done. There is little play. When the stepper doesn't move i can more the 50t gear a little. 

The alignment of the pulleys are correct. I see the pulley teathe above and beneath the belt. Also checken the height with a caliper.

Somewhere on the internet i found a post of you. That you have LGX lite mounted instead of the CW2. Could it be that i have a misalignment or wear out CW2 that causes this?

[7milesup]

How long have you had the printer? I am guessing it is relatively short, and if so, the possibility of excessive wear is remote.

Remember that when evaluating errors, whether on a 3D printer or any other part of your life, evaluate each error systematically as you progress. If you change more than one variable at a time, then it becomes a guessing game about what variable caused the change. Also, by covering one variable at a time, I find it less stressful because you are approaching the problem one step at a time. (How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.)

That said, you must start with the mechanical side by verifying that the printer is set up correctly and errors are eliminated, such as the gear mesh in the extruder. 

I do not have a specific area for you to consider, but I would follow Dirk's and Penatr8tor's advice and take it one step at a time.

 

[Penatr8tor]

On 3/12/2024 at 1:11 AM, hoeby said:

Somewhere on the internet i found a post of you. That you have LGX lite mounted instead of the CW2. Could it be that i have a misalignment or wear out CW2 that causes this?

Good that you checked the pulley alignment and gear mesh clearance. They're well worth checking and also helps to eliminate potential contributing factors.

Yes, I have an LGX lite on my Voron with stealthburner. I really like the LGX Lite, I have two RatRigs (V-Minion and V-Core 300) and both of them use LGX Lites. Obviously, my Voron 2.4 300 has one. My VzBot is using the VzBoT Hextrudort extruder. My experience with the LGX Lite on the RatRigs were really positive and after a number of worn out parts that needed to be replaced on my CW1 extruder... I decided that I'd try the LGX Lite. I've never looked back and have had zero issues. They have extruded every filament without fail, every time. So, for me... I probably won't ever use a 3D printed extruder.

As for your CW2 extruder... Yes, you could have issues or misalignments, etc. The most common issue seems to be the 50T extruder gear and is also why I recommended upgrading as they're not expensive to buy and pretty easy to swap out.

Would I recommend getting an LGX Lite? Heck ya but, Let's see if the new gear helps. If you install it and you have the same issue... then we should probably look elsewhere for some other issue.

Just a note on the LGX-Lite extruder. I'm currently upgrading my 2.4 and one of the things I'm adding a an LDO 2pc toolhead PCB. Sadly the LGX-Lite is too wide to use the PCBs as designed so I had to relocate it. I assume this would also be an issue if you were to go CAN bus as well so, something to consider.

Check out my Refurbishing My Voron 2.4 300 post in the build diaries section. I have a post on my LGX Lite issues.

[hoeby]

The last days i went back to the build manual. Checken every screw and alignment, to see if there was a mechanical issue. Couldn't find one.

Next i did new pid calibrations. And checked the stepper settings.

Redo the PA settings and started printing a calibration temp bridge.

Then again the cube, it already looks much better. Only have warping to fix