Question First print off new printer,

[ChrisA]

I know about the tuning guide. I'll get around to that but just to start maybe someone knows what these defects are?

I just finished a V0.2 printer. The config is pure 100% stock from GitHub and I used the "Generic PLA" profile in Cura. This is the first part to come off the printer. I don't see any stringing and the round overhangs are all round. But notice some divots on one side of the hull. They are "stacked" and not random and they don't continue up the entire hull, also some horizontal lines and some very mild ringing. Then the worst defect, bed adhesion fails and the Benchy fell over.

I have no experience with textured beds like this. On my current, very old i# clone I use gluestick over bare aluminum. I've read that washing with soap and water can help.

Over all I'm happy but PLA is easy to print. My goal is to print functional robotic parts in glass-filled ABS or engineering-grade plastics.

 

[Dave32]

I'd say try calibrating the flow rate, and see if that helps. Overextrusion can cause both horizontal lines as well as print failures. The "failure" in that case isn't so much bed adhesion, but rather that the nozzle is pushing too much plastic out, and ends up running into a ridge of its own over extrusion and it forcefully knocks it over.

The divots might be seams?

You shouldn't need any glue stick or the like - I'd bet that tuning gets you where you need to be.

 

[Sanity Agathion]

Hi, those vertical lineas are called Vertical Fine Artifacts, VFAs, and are very common in 3D printing world. There can be more sources of them, if they are at the 2mm spacing it's the GT2 belt teeth; most commonly they are caused by motor resonances. You will have to go deep down the rabbit hole of tweaking and tuning TMC driver parameters and motor speeds to get rid of those. Easiest recommendation so far is to find speeds at which they are not present - most motors show these at certain ranges of speeds. As an example: 60-80 mm/s then 130-170 mm/s. If you print fast or slow avoiding these ranges, you will suppress those.

Another artifact is Benchy Hull Line - that's where solid infill inside an object starts. It has something to do with plastics properties, shrinking etc. Read more here. https://help.prusa3d.com/article/the-benchy-hull-line_124745

Z seam is also pretty visible in your print. You can tune Pressure Advance and then retractions to help get them less prominent, but it's not quite possible to get rid of them completely.

Print releasing from surface is a failure with bed adhesion. Clean the surface with dish soap (don't use your existing greasy kitchen sponge), thoroughly rinse in hot water, let try and don't touch it. Clean with IPA between prints. If that does not help, some bed adhesive helper like glue stick, InstaGoo, Dimafix etc. will help.

 

[Sanity Agathion]

Few more notes if I may add - VORONs are not suitable for printing engineering plastics, at least not those requiring high chamber temperatures. Maximum it can handle is usually PC blend (not even pure PC). They are great ABS printers though. Filled materials will not cause problems, you just need to have extrusion system for it (hardened extruder gears, hotend heatbreak, and nozzle).

 

[ChrisA]

I'd say try calibrating the flow rate, and see if that helps. Overextrusion can cause both horizontal lines as well as print failures. The "failure" in that case isn't so much bed adhesion, but rather that the nozzle is pushing too much plastic out, and ends up running into a ridge of its own over extrusion and it forcefully knocks it over.

The divots might be seams?

You shouldn't need any glue stick or the like - I'd bet that tuning gets you where you need to be.

Thanks. I was watching and it looked like the nozzle pushed the pat over, so you might be right. As it tipped the Benchy's roof was pushed up into the nozzle.

No, I don't want gluestick on a textured plate, it would ruin the texture.

It will be easy enough to know if the divots are seems by looking at Cura's code preview or maybe Mainsails' gcode vizualier.

 

[ChrisA]

Few more notes if I may add - VORONs are not suitable for printing engineering plastics, at least not those requiring high chamber temperatures. Maximum it can handle is usually PC blend (not even pure PC). They are great ABS printers though. Filled materials will not cause problems, you just need to have extrusion system for it (hardened extruder gears, hotend heatbreak, and nozzle).

I'm answering both your posts. to #1, I will put these suggestions on a punch list and work them off one by one. THis Benchy was printed using Cura defauts which as 1/2 the Voron standard, I used 2 walls and 20% infill. I would never print a real part like that. But it makes a good test. Already this printer is seriously outperforming my current printer in terms of both print quality and speed.

To post #2,

I have a Phaetus "Dragon". Good enough? It came with a hard steel nozzle.

Planned upgrades are the Orbiter 2 extruder and CAN (or USB) to replace the 14-wire umbilical.

Also, I guess I don't know the definition of "Engineering plastic". I was thinking of Nylon, PC and ABS all with or without glass or carbon filler. The parts are for small walking robots that tip over and fall down quite a lot. I also need to print TPU.

I bought the printed parts kit from Formbot. They use ABS with 10% glass fill. The parts are very good and just as Formbot claims, more rigid and harder than plain ABS. This worked well except for the DIN clips. They are designed to depend on the flex in plain ABS and broke when I tried to use them.

 

[NoGuru]

Dave32 and Sanity gave great answers. The only thing I would add is trying a different slicer. Cura has not given me great results from a few years now.
Think about giving Orca slicer a try. I use it for my Bambu labs and Vorons.

As far as what is "Engineering grade" I would consider anything besides PLA.