Lulzbot Mini printing Ripples

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1

I purchased a Lulzbot Mini a couple of weeks ago. Since then I’ve printed enough pieces to go through a 1kg reel of ABS.

I printed a fairly large piece last night and I noticed that there are ripples being generated in the outer layer. I presume this is something to do with the head “bouncing” when going round tight corners.

Is there something I need to do to the printer to dial these ripples out? Has the printer loosened up now so I need to tension belts or something like that? Or is it simply a case of lowering the speed/acceleration values?

Any help would be appreciated.

Cheers,
Dan

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Hey Daniel,
To see if we can half split the issue, could you try slowing down your prints and seeing if the problem becomes more noticeable/worse?

In any case, it wouldn’t hurt to do some maintenance on your printer and make sure it’s all up to scratch. Check out this guide for more info.

3

Ok thanks,

I’ll give that a go and let you know the results.

Cheers,
Dan

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4

Slowing down the print from 40mm/s to 30mm/s hasn’t made any real difference.

I’m going to have another go at tightening the belts tonight because I may not have gotten them tight enough.

I’m also going to slow down just the outer layer by a fair bit more (to 10mm/s) to see what that does.

Cheers,
Dan

1 Like
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@Daniel25998, how did things go?

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Tightening the belt on the print head has made a big difference. There is still a little bit of ghosting on flat edges after sharp turns however…

I’m going to have another go at tightening the belt on the print bed because I seemed to have 3 left hands in the last attempt and I don’t think I made any sort of change to the tension.

Not sure that changing the print speed has made any noticeable difference… I will need to do some back-to back runs with difference speed settings to really try and understand how it also affects the problem…

Cheers,
Dan

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7

Definitely think belt tension is the key to this. Getting the belts tight has made the most difference.

Having said that, I’m also printing now at top/bottom 20mm/s and Outer/Inner 15mm/s and I’m getting good quality now. The ghosting is still there but you have to look very hard to see it.

Cheers,
Dan

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Glad to hear it Dan. Aidan will be in later tomorrow and may have some further ideas on optimising that quality for you.