First XL Multi Color print ... Epic Fail ...
I finished my first multi color Prints ... and well ... didn't turn out as expected ...
The print worked at the end after walking through a couple of collision detections ... but the stringing was massive:
All filamens except the red one were original Prusament PLA ... Vanilla White, Oh My Gold, Opal Green and Royal Blue. The Red one was from "Das Filament", metallic red. ...
Printed with a .6 nozzle and the standard PLA settings in Prusa Slicer ...
The oozing is massive ... not only the strings ... but alone the movement from the tool parking position to the wipe tower creates a several mm long extrusion, which piles up on the wipe tower and causes crash detections from time to time ...
The print is not useful as it is ...
Nevertheless, it looks like it can be improved by tweaking the parameters ...
But:
- The oozing of the new gen extruders seem to be worse than with the "old" mk3 setup ... I recognized this on my MK4 already and the XL seems to be even worse
- It looks like the hotend is slightly warmer than the temperature set ... I assume this because the PLA seems to me more liquid than on my other printers with the same settings (default 215°C for PLA) ... But didn't find a proper way to measure the temperature relyable ...
- Retraction while in park position should be increased dramitcally, so that the PLA is not liquifying when still in the hotend
- Frankly, I would have expected that a proper profile is available for a released Prusa Printer with original Prusament filament ... 🤔
Base functionality achieved, but not really usable with default settings ...
Does anybody have similar or completely different experiences?
- Made by me -
RE: First XL Multi Color print ... Epic Fail ...
There's a big thread on the stringing issues. Drop the temps is the consensus. I agree though, how have Prusa not picked this up and created a working profile. This is their flagship product.
RE: First XL Multi Color print ... Epic Fail ...
I have to confirm that the tools swaps are quite fast and the layer alignment is quite good for a real multi-Head print ... Wondering how this works out when nozzles wear slightly different. As far as I remember the height calibration was only done with one tool ...
So this is perfectly fine for me ...
To run a 14 minute calibration after every couple of prints would be anoying ... but maybe there is a step I didn't recognize or catch ..
And yes ... you can tune in the parameters ... but for printer and filament from the same vendor I'd really expect a perfectly tuned in profile ... That shouldn't have been much effort compared to all the other engineering challenges.
Frankly, with this price range they cleary moved out of the "maker zone". At this pricepoint I expect a out of the box experience ...
This is my fifth Prusa printer ... but the most expensive one grounds me the most.
And what anoyes me even more ... I had a MK3 which came with unlimited filament spool discount .. after that I bought a factory built MK4 which came with unlimited filament spool discount ...
Now I bought the preassembled XL and now my spool discout was limited to 5 ... WTF?
This really disapponts me ... Looks like all companies after growing beyond a certain level get evil on their customers to make even more money ...
- Made by me -
RE: First XL Multi Color print ... Epic Fail ...
Oh ... and one more thing ...
I tried to adjust the temperature during printing ... this did not work ...
I tried to set the temperature for the extruders down to 205°C ... but as soon as I left the tune menu and got back everything has changed to 215°C again ...
Tried it with a single extruder print as well ... there the setting of the temperature works fine.
Can anybody else also check on this ... then I will file an issue in github.
- Made by me -
RE: First XL Multi Color print ... Epic Fail ...
I think the temp reset is normal behaviour in the sense I am sure it does the same for MMU prints on Mk3s
RE: First XL Multi Color print ... Epic Fail ...
Well I used a method from a YouTube video that is out there to add a G code to the filament settings, which retracts the filament and moves the head to the back of the build plate for a second before docking.This pretty much alleviates the stringing ( also dropped my temperatures to 190 ) but did nothing in the way of fixing or helping the sheer garbage, poor layer, lines, and inconsistencies. The photo on the left is of the piece I did with the updated G code settings and the 190 temperature. The object on the right was the one done straight off the USB Gcode code provided by Prusa. This machine has hard evidence of extrusion issues, probably related to pressure, advance or linear advance with configurations of the new design extruder. if I do a single tool head print, print quality seems great with the G code and temperature settings soon as I try a multitool absolute garbage extrusion layers. 
RE: First XL Multi Color print ... Epic Fail ...
Ok ... understood that it is the same with MMU now ... Nevertheless ... The possibility is there it should work ... also it makes sense to adjust when seeing issues in the first layers. When it is the same on your side I still consider it as a bug ...
Let's see what SW dev is saying about that 🙂
- Made by me -
RE: First XL Multi Color print ... Epic Fail ...
Ok ... I will try to find the video you referre to ... Maybe you can support me with a link to have the right one. It is hard to tell beyond all the strings, but I didn't observer the layer issues you faced ... but this might change when printing larger things with less stringing.
Currently printing a larger object with one extruder ... this seems to work fine. But that's not the main reason I bought the XL ... My main intention is to print with multi colors AND larger models ... I also have an MMU for my MK3 but after tons of unfinished prints because in every second layer I had to fix filament jams ... I completely stopped using it some time ago ... didn't want to go down the rabbit hole since at this time the XL was announced. .... I hope this turns out better after fixing some "first adopter" issues.
What I still expect from Prusa is to deliver functional device specific for their printers and filaments, that just work in 99.5% of the cases.
- Made by me -
RE: First XL Multi Color print ... Epic Fail ...
Oh ... and one more thing ...
I tried to adjust the temperature during printing ... this did not work ...
I tried to set the temperature for the extruders down to 205°C ... but as soon as I left the tune menu and got back everything has changed to 215°C again ...
Tried it with a single extruder print as well ... there the setting of the temperature works fine.
Can anybody else also check on this ... then I will file an issue in github.
Yep does it on mk3 with and without mmu
Please help me out by downloading a model it's free and easy but really helps me out https://www.printables.com/@Hello_474427/models
RE: First XL Multi Color print ... Epic Fail ...
Ok ... even more frustrated in the meantime ...
It took me quite some trys to optimize temperature and retraction, but I ended up to find a "on-the-edge" setting that seemed to work ... Stringing is ok-ish, Surface is ok as well .. I had to go down to 195°C for original Prusament PLA ... Retraction when in parking position I changed to 8mm! ... that helped a lot to avoid material pile up at the wipe tower ...
So happy as a penguin I started my first large print ... 3 1/2 days ...
It started really well and I was quite happy.
After 1 1/2 days the active tool (Toolhead 3) made some serious strange things ... It created a multible diagonal line and at a certain point the software reported that a tool change error occured.
I was not there at this point of time .. and when I heard the printer beeping it was cooled down already and the Extruder in position of the strange artefact. And with the XL also the plate cooled down ... WTF? ... the parts already started to separate ... Nevertheless I removed the artefact as good as possible and restarted the print ... Realizing that I might to have reprint the part(s) with the failure ... Nevertheless, wanted to finsh the rest ...
It repositioned, took the new tool and started again ... There was a slight misallignment, but might have been ok still ...
But two hours later the same effekt with tool 2 this time ...
This finally ruined the print ... almost 1kg of filament ruined .. and even worse ... don't trust the printer to start the job again ...
🤮
- Made by me -
RE: First XL Multi Color print ... Epic Fail ...
I full understand cooling down the nozzles after some time ... that makes sense to stop oozing and avoid a possible fire hazzard ... but the Printbed ... Why? .. The print is almost certainly ruined after that. Already after the first cooldown there were some popping noises which might have resulted in the layer shift ... after the second cooldown the parts only were lying on the bed ... ...
- Made by me -
RE: First XL Multi Color print ... Epic Fail ...
Update on my support call after I came through in chat after 1h+ ...
After some standard questions like Firmware, height of the mishap and age of the filament I was asked to print a cylinder full height with color swaps in most of the layers ...
So the printer is now printing 1 1/2 day a colorful cylinder ... let's see that will be the result ... I keep you up to date.
- Made by me -
RE: First XL Multi Color print ... Epic Fail ...
@M.J.Caboose: This might be the video you are look for about the filament change/stringing:
RE: First XL Multi Color print ... Epic Fail ...
Well ... finally ... I got a pleasing result ...
But:
- The settings are way off then the slicer profile suggested
- Temperatures 200°C and 195°C depending on the filament
- Retraction: 12mm (!!!) (also played with the retraction speed, but that did not help much)
- Z-Level rising set to 2mm instead of 0.2mm ... Even when this is supposed to worse stringing, it helped in my case - I had several failes prints which I have no glue about the reason ... the result looked like the the images posted above ...
The extruder was moving in an diagonal line several times spitting out material until a tool homing error occured. Even when continuing might have been possible after cleaning up, the parts delaminated from the plate since heating was turned off (nozzle & bed) ...
Finally I managed to printe the pices separately and they went through. I will give it another try with a full print bed ... let's see whether this was a "multi"-Hickup or whether it is working now.
- Made by me -
RE: First XL Multi Color print ... Epic Fail ...
In my print the surfaces look quite decent ... so I am happy with the prints ... but it was quite expensive .. took at least twice as much filament as originally calculated due to the failed prints and the print for Prusa support (which was partially compensated though) ...
- Made by me -
RE: First XL Multi Color print ... Epic Fail ...
12mm retraction? wow! or is that the retraction when parked setting?
RE: First XL Multi Color print ... Epic Fail ...
Yes .. retraction when parked ... You're right ... that helped to avoid oozing crap on the park position and even more when the tool is unparked. Since it always travels to the "old" position first it left there a ugly blob. I should have been more specific here.
But I increased the regular retraction as well .. Let me check ... I also doubled it to 4mm ...
Still had some strining, but on an acceptable level similar to single-color prints ...
- Made by me -
RE: First XL Multi Color print ... Epic Fail ...
I've found 12mm for that setting is working for me too so that's good to know. My retraction setting is 0.9mm currently but I need to do more testing.
Yes .. retraction when parked ... You're right ... that helped to avoid oozing crap on the park position and even more when the tool is unparked. Since it always travels to the "old" position first it left there a ugly blob. I should have been more specific here.
But I increased the regular retraction as well .. Let me check ... I also doubled it to 4mm ...
Still had some strining, but on an acceptable level similar to single-color prints ...
RE: First XL Multi Color print ... Epic Fail ...
Your lastest prints look great. I haven't changed much yet on my printer or slicer. I am waiting to get past a bunch of this alpha and beta testing to update my printer and slicer.
I have been having good results with some temperature changes.
RE: First XL Multi Color print ... Epic Fail ...
@M.J. Caboose: Maybe it is a good idea to create project on Printables with your print settings (3MF-file) and a small example model.
The things that are tested and posted here are not very easy to find. And it might be hard to track the lastest changes.