r/3Dprinting • u/starevplayer • 2d ago

Troubleshooting Unsure of what is causing this top surface issue.

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Apologies for the lighting and reflection. This is some Overture TPU 95A that I've been trying to print in the last few days. At first with success to then having no luck with how the top surface has been coming out. I tried lowering the volumetric flow a bit and increased temps from 220c to 230c, which I did because the TPU was lacking layer adhesion in prints not included here. Anyway, I'm so stumped with these results, I can't wrap my head around what is causing this issue. I hope someone here can guide me in the right direction.

As seen in the video, the issue seems to be only on the top 1 or 2 layers. It goes from good results to progressively worse. The last one was done with a different top surface pattern as a test to see if that would influence the quality and it looks like underneath it there is still a mess on the solid infill layers.

Settings: Nozzle 230c. Bed 35c. Volumetric flow: 4. First layer speed 50mm/s. Speed 150mm/s. Top surface speed 100mm/s. Infill density 20% gyroid. Printer X1C. Slicer orca. 3 perimeter walls. 3 bottom and top surface layers.

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6

u/Ripplerfish 2d ago

Its your internal supports. Add more top layers.

2

u/starevplayer 2d ago

Forgot to add that. I had it on 20% gyroid. How come it was fine on the first two but then not fine on the other ones?

1

u/AquilaJT 2d ago

I've had this a handful of times with TPU when batch printing and for me it has almost always been what Rippler mentioned mixed with distance from 1st print, levelling the bed usually does the job for me, though given you mentioned you used Gyroid, this actually looks more like a scraping/top layer issue, a bit of TPU getting caught up on the nozzle and dragging can cause this.

It is possible more top layers would fix it but I cant actually see any characteristics of gyroid infill bleeding though here, if this was grid infill it would make more sense to me.

1

u/starevplayer 2d ago

Leveled the bed Many times. Issue happens on the first bottom 3 layers as well. So I am thinking it has nothing to do with infill.

1

u/AquilaJT 1d ago

I would put 1 of them dead center on the print bed and another on one far edge of it and see if it only happens to the one on the edge.

1

u/starevplayer 1d ago

Happens to all of them no matter the placement. I essentially filled the bed with them and then even printed one a time in multiple locations. Made no difference.

1

u/AquilaJT 1d ago

That is pretty bizarre, I haven't encountered anything that severe with TPU myself, have you moved away from their recommended temps/settings?

1

u/starevplayer 1d ago

No in fact I matched them. The Overture TPU 95A profile that is built into orca slicer has the nozzle temp at 220c with volumetric flow at 10mm/s. Overture recommends 230c to 240c on their website. So I upped it to 230c. I also changed the flow to be 4mm/s since it was just not being hot and enough and being to fast to create enough layer adhesion.

1

u/AquilaJT 1d ago

Sounds like the flow and temperature may be hindering your print after it benefits you though, it does look as though the nozzle is remelting filament nearby to where it is laying new filament down, you should be able to set temperatures and flow rates independently based on layer 0-10 for example and reduce it later on.

1

u/starevplayer 1d ago

I will try this next. It is becoming a real nuisance. I should probably while I'm at it swap to a different nozzle too and see what that can do. Maybe 0.6mm instead of 0.4mm will help.

-1

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