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Stringy Print

Discussion in 'Troubleshooting' started by J_Man, Apr 11, 2017.

  1. J_Man

    J_Man Member

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    I have this item I make that's a radar station. There's a radar dish that sits on top. I tried making one on the C2 to see how it'd come out. It looks pretty good but there are a few rough areas. Mostly on the over hangs. I added supports and for the most part it was fine. There's a few areas though that has some stringing. Then I printed a raft and the bottom is really horribly stringy.I can solve the bottom by just not printing a raft but I don't know what would help the rest.
     

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  2. Geof

    Geof Volunteer Moderator
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    I'm not sure I see the defect you are talking about? Maybe circle it in the picture?
     
  3. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    I don't see a specific problem area either, but stringing for PLA can usually be addressed by dropping the temperature a bit.
     
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  4. J_Man

    J_Man Member

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    This should show better. The bottom of it. Also there is some warping on the left side too. I'm sure this would be fixed by not printing a raft. The raft is nice and smooth.

    I didn't touch the stock settings in cura. That might be part of the issue. I generally stick with recommended settings and for the most part I generally don't have any problems. This will need some adjustments though cause any over hang ends up with a rough banded/stringy look like this.
     

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  5. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    Yes, a little experimentation will help. Overall that print looks like it printed a little on the hot side. When you get that "glossy" effect from PLA that is usually the case :)

    Sometimes you want that and in that situation you take what you get in terms of trade-offs.
     
  6. J_Man

    J_Man Member

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    Yeah it printed looking like molting plastic. More like a liquid. The previous prints were smaller and didn't really show it that much.
     
  7. Luke W

    Luke W New Member

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    I think i see what you mean by stringing on the bottom, but i don't think that it is what most mean by stringing.

    It looks maybe like the infill in the bottom layers isn't fusing to itself so you are getting individual filament beads instead of a flat even surface? That can be caused by the the air gap between that part and the raft/supports being too large: the extrusion prints in the air and cools as it droops down onto the raft. this can produce sloppy corners and separating beads on the first layer.

    If this is the issue, you can lower the air gap so that the extrusion catches the raft just enough to keep shape while printing corners; a little more if you want the beads to fuse more together. This can be trickier with PLA than with ABS. Because of the lower melt temp; the first layer is more likely to want to fuse with the raft. lowering the extrusion temp will help, as will getting lots of cooling on the top layer of the raft and the following layer first layer of the print. I forget how print speed affects raft fusion.
     
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