I recently got back into 3d Printing because it finally seemed like it had matured into a usable production method - where one could actually just make parts instead of spending all their time fiddling with the printer. That said, I realize there are still some benefits to some fiddling.
I’m wondering about other’s process using the calibration prints in Orca. Do you go beyond maybe a temp tower, flow rate and pressure advance? Do you do those in any particular order? Bambu owners, do you bother on Bambu filament, or do you find their stock settings are pretty close (I haven’t been bothering - most of it seems to do pretty well without).
I started thinking about this because I pulled out some OLD filament when I got my X1C, just to see if any of it was still usable. I dried it all thoroughly with a dehydrator, and have been pleasantly surprised. Much of it has been fine. The really old ABS has been fine as was the slightly newer ASA. The 5-year-old Hatchbox PLA was perfect, but a slightly newer generic PLA roll is terrible (it may have been bad when new). Old PETG has been hit and miss. I had all but given up on one roll, only to try tuning it, and suddenly got usable prints for the rest of the roll. Then the next roll clogged the nozzle on the pressure advance tower. I could just toss it all, but it was already paid for several years ago, so anything good that comes out of it is a win.
I’ve always followed Ellis’ guide start to finish. It really makes a huge difference in print quality and especially consistency of printer performance.
As for filament, I’ve found brands I really like that have good and consistent quality and stick to those. Before when I was trying different brands, I found I had to tune filament settings every time I tried a different brand which got really annoying.
Whew… that’s well presented and I do appreciate it, but I was speaking specifically of filament tuning. One of the things I paid Bambu their premium for is having the machine and baseline slicer profiles dialed in and they kinda do. All that machine calibration stuff is what I got frustrated with when I quit the first time!
I am kicking around the idea of rebuilding my Anycubic Predator with updated… everything, just to have that massive build volume again. It might actually work pretty well with a high flow hotend and klipper firmware.
I’m definitely bookmarking that guide for future reference.
I would definitely still tune extrusion rate on the printer profile and flow rates and PA for each filament profile