Print failures can come to even the most experienced of users and can heavily discourage novices users alike.
War Magnetics tabletop terrain system is designed to provide an easy printing experience free of supports, reducing material costs and running time. In this post we've included useful tips for batch printing that you may find helpful in achieving success and quality parts.
Machine Set-up
Machine Set-up and maintenance is an important factor in successful prints. The ability of a printer to run for extended periods of time is heavily reliant on a fine tuned, well maintained machine which maintenance outline can vary from machine to machine.
General recommendations:
- Clean you bed - clean bed prior to print to remove any dirt and grime. Using dish soap helps remove residue oils from skin and is readily available. Follow with drying and wiping with IPA.
- Clean your extruder - Use a heavily bristol tooth or brass brush to throughly clean extruder, removing any built up material.
- Clean your hotend - Use a brass brush to clean hotend, making sure to clean off excess plastic residue
- Tram your Z-Axis - This is often over looked and can complicate your troubleshooting in later steps. If it applies to your printer, tramining is the action of measuring the X-carriage height on dual Z axis stepper configurations and making sure it is accurate side to side from the stepper base. Leveling a bed to a carriage that is not true can be an extremely discouraging and impossible task, and often seen in printers with a side carriage mounted Boden extruder - such as the CR10S Pro and similar models.
- Know your melting temperature - filament temperature ranges vary from brand to brand and extrude differently from machine to machine. Determining issues that come from too high or too low extrusion temeperatures can be challenging, but can generally be observed on the first layer - where you can often identify whether a plastic is too hot or too cold with blobbing.
Printing orientation
War Magnetics tabletop terrain system was design to print on the most commonly available printer at 220x220mm, and is in our experience that the walls and floor pieces positioned parallel with your carriage or X axis provides the best results.
Print Speed
Do not attempt to run your printer at print speeds outside of manufacturer specifications. Increasing print speeds reduces print quality and exceeding recommended specifications can cause layer shifting and inaccuracies.
All products specify at which rate they were printed to estimate printing time prior to purchase.
We hope you have found this information useful and look forward to seeing your success!
