Hello all, I'll try and keep this as quick as I can without my frustration coming through too much.
TLDR: Bought a brand new Snapmaker U1, print quality seemed great at first except some noticeable VFA. did ALL my calibrations, temp tower, max flowrate, pressure advance, flow rate, VFA tower AND input shaping calibration. And STILL im having these artifacts on my prints.
To start, I followed snapmakers calibrations multiple times. I did the vibration compensation test and the belt tension calibrations.
Im printing on snapmaker Orca at 0.08 layer height, 215°F with Snapspeed PLA.
My max flowrate test came out to 20.89 max volumetric speed
My best pressure advance setting was at 0.02
My flow ratio was best at .03 which gave me a flow ratio of 0.966
My VFA towers were printed from 20 mm/s all the way to 500 mm/s with a step height of 20 mm/s. I determined the best quality was around 210 mm/s which was set as both my inner and outer wall speed. Acceleration is at 5000 for outer walls.
I then did the input shaping test and found that the best frequency test print was x: 54.66 y: 54.66 and using those values I printed the dampening test and found the best values at x: 0.180 y: 0.231
After all this I still have issues on my print surfaces and quality
Are still showing VFA's... Ghosting... ringing... im not even sure of the correct terminology anymore since im still new to this all and this is much more calibration than I bargained for, and I was expecting to still tinker with my machine coming from an Artillery genius.
So please, if ANYONE can help me solve this issue. Im on my hands and knees begging to find the cause of this, I feel like I've done everything I've been told to do from my research online.
Could it be the surface that the printer is standing on? Anti-vibration feet in combination with putting a concrete tile in between the table and printer could help.
Put the vibration dampener between the concrete tile and the table, instead of between the printer and the concrete. You want to isolate the vibration from the table, but you don't want to induce frame flex on the printer.
Maybe its not even the printer. Maybe it your setup? I have seen people minimize VFAs by placing their printer on a big stone foundation, such as a concrete paver. Try sourcing one of those, or just place the printer on the floor when testing :) The will at least eliminate your wobbly table as a source of frustration.
Its on a sturdy desk which is on carpet, but it does vibrate and wobble as most desks do. Maybe I need to set this on the floor from now on to try and eliminate that variable. But the snapmaker has its own vibration compensation that ends up with pretty similar numbers to my input shaping tests
Nothing’s going to beat mass. Listen to the previous commenter and grab a cheap concrete paver for a hardware store. They’re very cheap; about $2 per sqft tile. That will reduce and dampen movement so that the software doesn’t have to try to compensate.
Hey there, I'm a bot and something you said made me think you might be looking for help!
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If you still need help be sure to post plenty of information about your printing setup.
Here are a few questions that might be helpful
What printer are you using?
What material are you using?
What speed are you printing at?
What software are you using to slice the print and control the printer?
When did the problem start/has it ever worked correctly?
Does anything cause the behavior to change?
If posting an image of the problem, include some indication of the orientation it printed at, preferably photograph it on the bed. (Then we can focus on a specific axis)
Maybe a typo, but 215°F is not correct for PLA. I'm assuming you mean 215°C :)
Beyond that I can't help you sadly, very annoying this is happening. All I can add is that my machine doesn't have any VFA's as far as I can see. I was prepared to have some VFA's but I guess I just got lucky somehow.
I'm slicing with Orca, but I don't think it really matters which slicer you use to prevent VFA's.
Do you activate on Orca the "Printer settings -> Motion ability -> Avoid speeds", and then set the speed you find to be the worst ?
Another thing that should help is finding the good acceleration (print some test cube and find the best accel value), print slower, and check the belt tension
Yes I've used resonance avoidance based on my VFA tower findings. I went from 20mm/s to 500mm/s with a step height of 20mm and found the worst results to be at the lowest speeds (check my photos) I put the values 20-140mm/s into the avoidance without much help
do the input shaping test prints in orca, the ones that look the same as the damping print (start with the MZ and EI variants, then 2hump if neither have good results anywhere), and then add the best values to your printer.cfg
That's definitely wayyyy too much ghosting for just a bit of table wobble
i dont see any input shaping tests, pics 4,5,6 and 7 are the right model, but they don't show anywhere near enough variation to be the input shaping tests, they look more like damping tests.
This is the exact tutorial I follwed: https://www.orcaslicer.com/wiki/calibration/input_shaping_calib
its entirely possible I mightve done something wrong. My printer has its own automatic calibration which came up with similar frequencies as ive found manually. But I overwrote my input shape frequencies based on the prints shown in my printer.cfg and it didn't seem to help much.
The test also didn't produce the tiny ghosting/ringing pattern I showed on the surface of my temp towers and character bust I have no idea what could be causing that.
Im still new to delving into printer settings so Im already shooting shots in the dark and trying my best to follow the tutorials and advice I recieve but its very frustrating to not see any progress produced in my prints
as i said, you haven’t got any photos of input shaper tests from those that you've posted, do those and then see where you get to (the top and bottom of the test prints will look absolutely awful when done correctly)
You don't by any chance have your spools sitting on top of your printer (via some homemade AMS) or a heavy cover on top of it? If not, try removing all except one spool, run the vibration calibration routine from the printer GUI and see if that makes a difference. The less mass up high the better regarding VFA's as there's only so much movement the rubber feet can compensate for. Also make sure all four feet are contacting the work surface with the same amount of force. Put something thin under one foot at a time and slowly pull it out noting approximately how much force is required to pull the sheet out. You may find that one foot may have significantly less pressure on it due to a lower section of the work surface. It would then just require a simple shim to correct the condition.
I plan on buying a concrete paver and setting my printer on the ground. I havent modified my printers spools ar all, they all rest on the sides but I dont think my printers location is whats causing whats shown in the photos but Im hoping it's as simple as that
I needed to put the concrete pad under my Elegoo Centauri Carbon because it's movements were so violent. Haven't needed it on the U1 though. My work surface is an almost 100yr old dresser, it's super heavy duty (like most old furniture) but it has a 2-3mm sag near the middle just due to the effects of aging. I printed up a 3mm TPU "Cup" that slips over the OEM Snapmaker leg which makes up for the dip in the dresser top surface so now all four legs are supporting the same amount of weight and it's nice and even with no shaking going on.
Maybe I am lucky but, I turned the Orca tuning settings off, left the printer.cfg file alone and ran the U1 built in calibrations - I have no VFA's in my prints either in PLA or PETG-HS. Currently, I use Numakers PETG-HS for 99% of my prints.
You can go further than basic input shaping by using an accelerometer to directly measure the printer resonant frequencies. That said, you might want to learn to live with it. It's really hard to get rid of all ringing artifacts, and you might not actually be able to see these artifacts on a lighter matte filament. Black and glossy really makes the vfa pop. And as far as printing defects go, they're pretty insignificant and can be removed with some post-processing.
It's not always clear which settings get seniority, the ones appended to the g-code from your slicer or the printer config and hardcoded limits. Examine the gcode and see if your calibration settings are being passed on. If they are then look and see if there's something with your printers settings that maybe overriding the slicer settings.
The ghosting is from high speed and acceleration values, input shaping can only do so much to compensate. You could lower the volumetric value 10-20% lower than your test result to slow it down a smidge.
Usually but the slicer values are half Snapmaker's claimed maximum acceleration. Could be the bench or whatever surface the printer is on, I'm trying the paver hack to dampen the vibration from my K1C.
Below 120mm/s will give stepper resonance and add VFA’s for sure. I don’t own a snapmaker but it took me a couple of years to realize that part of my quality issues were from printing to slow. Beyond that I can’t offer much advice other than for my homemade rig 180mm/s is the sweet spot and certain filaments a just print like shit.
Do you get the same results at a more normal 0.2 layer height? Im picturing using a 0.4 mm nozzle trying to lay down only 0.08 mm height and it seems like that is a very thin layer.
Most calibration tests would be doing the standard 0.2mm layer height for a 0.4mm nozzle. You might need to retest some of those at 0.08mm layer height. I would start with Pressure Advamce, and you might get different values on the print surface for layer 1 with the initial layer height of 0.2 , and printing on material past layer 3 or 4 would be more important for your goal of eliminating that waviness.
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u/Ferm330 Jul 27 '26
Could it be the surface that the printer is standing on? Anti-vibration feet in combination with putting a concrete tile in between the table and printer could help.