Banded Buddy and Broken Benchy (Image Heavy)
Hi everyone,
I'm new to the world of 3D printing and the Prusa i3 MK2S is my first printer. I've heard and seen a lot of great things about this machine, so I was eager to try it out for myself. I got the kit and had a lot of fun putting it together (it really took me back to my Lego-obsessed childhood), and much to my relief, I managed to pass both the self-test and XYZ calibration with a Good Job/slightly skewed and then a Congratulations/properly aligned result. It took several runs of the nozzle calibration test to get the filament to stick, but after tweaking Live Z to around -.680, everything looked to be in order and I felt the printer was ready for an actual print. I loaded up the models on the SD card... and that's when I started running into issues.
Buddy came out looking okay from a distance, but up close I noticed semi-regular banding on his back and sides, and the bottom of his tail looked pretty rough. The top of his head was also messy. The areas that weren't marred by the banding did seem quite smooth, however.
Benchy was a disaster. The side facing the front of the printer was relatively smooth, but there was another rough patch on the bow and an odd dent on the port side (facing the back of the printer, circled in one of the pictures). When it came to the roof, the printer jammed and failed bridging the gap altogether, and I got to unclog a nozzle for the first time lol. 😕 After I got everything straightened out, I tried the print again and got the exact same, if not worse, results. No roof, dent in one side, stringing/overextrusion on bow.
I've also included pictures of the first layers of each print. As I'm still new to all of this, I'm not not sure whether these would be considered acceptable quality for first layers. I have a feeling they're not, so I'd welcome any advice on how to improve them.
I haven't tried printing anything else using a slicer yet as I'd like to make sure the models included on the SD card print properly so I can rule out any mechanical/calibration issues before I begin tweaking gcode settings with downloaded and/or original models.
Troubleshooting Info:
I've been Googling around and scouring the forums for a solution, but I can't seem to pinpoint the problem, so any advice would be very much appreciated. Thanks!
Re: Banded Buddy and Broken Benchy (Image Heavy)
1. calibrate your extruder, seems that you are underextruding
2. get your first layer right
3. do a pid tuning for the hotend and increase the printing temperature a little bit (about 5 - 10 °C)
dem inscheniör is' nix zu schwör...
Re: Banded Buddy and Broken Benchy (Image Heavy)
Hi Jeff,
Thank you for the tips. I've spent the last few days making adjustments and setting up Octoprint, and print quality has improved dramatically as a result, although there are still a few kinks to work out.
What I've done so far:
1. Readjusted live Z using the calibration square from your thread. It helped a lot and I was able to get the nozzle much closer to where it needed to be (currently at -.745), which has resulted in consistently stuck and squished first layers. Here is the first layer of my latest Benchy. Now I have to wonder if it's almost too squished? At least my Benchies are coming out with roofs now; no more detaching mid-print!
2. Calibrated the extruder using this excellent guide. One thing to note is that the guide mentions saving the new Estep value to EEPROM using the M500 command, but I noticed this is no longer possible in the current firmware version, so I've simply added the M92 command to my gcode in Slic3r. That seems to work just as well. I also have set my extrusion multiplier to 0.9 to more closely match my Estep adjustment. My latest Benchy has come out looking much smoother on the whole, but there's still a tiny bit of roughness on the bow. Not too big a deal, though.
3. Despite overall improved quality, however, I'm still getting this unsightly rough spot in the same location on the Benchy as mentioned in my original post. It's driving me crazy and I'm running out of ideas as to how to get rid of it. The aft is somewhat ridged as well, making it hard to read the text. Is there something out of alignment on the printer that's causing it? This is truly the last thing that's really bothering me about my print quality. I'm jealous of people with their MK2S' printing perfect Benchies first time around! 😛 Otherwise, I'm quite happy with how things have turned out.
The Benchy is the one off the SD card (only made an adjustment to extrusion multiplier and Estep value, all other settings are the same). Thanks in advance for the help!