While I acknowledge the expectations Ellis tries to set, all the youtubers out there have me chasing a dragon looking for better and better layer aliment on my z-axis. I suspect (at least) one of you will come out of the woodwork and say your printer has better aligned layers than mine too 😭 I’m certainly not alone, but even in that thread you can find some people claiming that not everyone experiences the issue

So far, I’ve been through three iterations on my CW2:

Results below with me hand holding my cellphone and moving a Pixar style desk lamp to be at a progressively steeper angle to the face of the cubes. Left = FYSTEC Pom (I also used Orcaslicer), middle = BMG IDGA, right = ‘normal’ BMGs. Note that the cubes are upside down.

Vanity shot with very soft and indirect light

Direct light, 90 degrees to the face of the cubes (basically perpendicular)

Direct light, ~45 degrees to the face of the cubes

Direct light, ~5 degrees to the face of the cubes (basically parallel)

At this point, I am going to shrug, give up, and print with fuzz (or avoid harsh light).

  • @IMALlamaOPEnglish
    3•9 months ago

    Extrusion variance is one of the reasons why I was focusing on my extruder. I’ll have to try a different brand of filament though. I’ve been printing more or less exclusively in Pokymaker ASA. It’s cheap, and prints well enough, but I can’t find tolerance info on it.

    Z-hop is not disabled, I’ll have to give that a shot. This is a Voron 2.4, which has geared and belted Z. I’ll have to do the math to see what the actual resolution per full step is later tonight.

    I’ve given the gantry a once over twice now and everything seems square/right and moves freely.

    Right now I’m thinking my order of attack will be:

    • Try a print in atomic filament PETG since I trust the quality of that filament to reduce one variable
    • Check belt tension all around
    • Run through Ellis’s tuning guide
    • Input shaper
    • Print a cube in vase mode (I have a bunch)
    • Disable thin walls
    • Disable z-hop
    • Reduce (or eliminate) micro steps
    • Slow down velocity and reduce accelerations
    • JohnEdwaEnglish
      3•9 months ago

      Also check if you have TMC drivers and if they have Stealthchop enabled, it can cause these types of issues. Especially for the extruder motor.

      • @IMALlamaOPEnglish
        2•9 months ago

        They’re TMC2209 drivers. Looking through my printer.config, I think stealthchop is disabled on all my motors. They each have this entry:

        stealthchop_threshold: 0