SOLVED Z banding (?)

OK, we're all moving in together?

 

The lighting is simple: the trick is to light it from above, nearly parallel to the face of the part, to make the layers look as BAD as possible.

I hold a lamp above my print whilst it is happening so I get a really critical view of what is happening.

And whilst black hides everything, bright colours distract, white can prevent you from seeing much: light gray is excellent for creating the conditions for study.

I regularly see very perfect looking prints off Ultimaker printed at a ridiculously low layer height and so judge my efforts against that.

 

I have ColorFabb XT grey, which I didn't yet manage to print well and a purple nGen. E3D Everyday PLA (red, white, blue, yellow, silver, black). 3 Edge (Light Grey, Basalt, Racing Green (Krypton on the reel itself ) Also E3D Everyday ABS in black.

We could all benefit here from both printing tuning and photography basics

 

I have now printed multiple objects in white, which printed really nicely. Still tweaking it back a bit as I am slightly over extruding, but my print last night was super crisp. Have not tried my XT Black

I am using Wolfbite btw, as at least for me Elmers glue stick was like printing onto greased glass and nothing stuck... Not sure if I need a different glue stick or I didn't say the right incantation (do I put on glue stick after slaughtering the goat or before?).

 

Only Edge Grey 45 and PLA silver here but I will be in if either is acceptable.

 

Have Grey 45 and 28

 

So, to kickstart this little endeavour, I've prepared the following model in OpenSCAD:

$fn=120;

wallThickness = 0.97; // don't ask
diameter = 20;
height = 40;
difference() {
cylinder (r=diameter/2,h=height,center=true);
cylinder (r=diameter/2-wallThickness,h=height+0.1,center=true);
}

This is how it looks in OpenSCAD and S3D respectively:



There being so many settings, I decided to export the whole factory for this, reasoning that even though S3 seems to want to prohibit gcode sharing, the FFF file is only going to be useful to other actual S3D users. I have no idea how many of the settings will be in the file. My intention is to print this with my right hand side, 0.4mm, direct-fed, titan-driven nozzle. I'll go with the Grey28 initially as I believe the lighter material will show this particular issue more strongly than darker materials.

For photography, I'll use a decent camera. Lighting will be

1) directly above
2) shining in at 45% to the camera direction, lighting on the left of the camera

Neither retraction nor infill should be a factor for the exterior quality as there are only inner and outer perimeters being drawn. I selected optimal start points for print speed which, together with various settings related to retraction should mean there are zero retractions during the main print.

I'll print initially at 220/70. I won't worry particularly about "elephant's foot" behaviour as it should not be a factor anyway once we get over about layer 5. I've put the fan on at layer 3 at 50% and left it at that for the duration.

Printed and lit results to follow.

 

Very interesting.

I took the pictures as required, but in addition to taking the picture of the model standing on end, I also took pictures aligning it with the direction of the light when laying down.





This is the point where it all becomes so obvious. This is all about minor variation and shadow. The key secret to the photography seems to be to have the light at 90 degrees to the layers.

 

Good result.

You don't have an Ultimaker around to run off the same print for comparison?

 

Yes Alex, there is a need to consider the variables before people start rushing into results for things that were not being looked for. A standard can only be achieved through agreed dialogue that I thought you were leading. But, we do not want to discourage enthusiasm for the cause.