I’m printing a case on a Form 4 in White V5. It’s flat on the build plate for a clean surface and to eschew supports, but the first few layers bulge out like a brim. This should be a clean 90 degrees with no curve in or out.
I’ve set the lower layer adjustment in Early Layer Exposure and Offset to zero, but it made no difference. I’ve pushed the Z Offset up to 700um and it did not change - any further and the print doesn’t stick.
It doesn’t feel like just first layer adjustment would help because the bulge continues for almost 1mm and I’m printing with 0.1mm layers.
Any suggestions? Happy to print a calibration model if it will simplify the investigation.
1 Like
We run up to around 400um of positive early layer offset on the general purpose V5 resins on layer 1, reducing to 0um at 0.6mm height, and can achieve perfect square edge corners with no adhesion issues. We leave Z offset alone and compensate for Z compression in the model directly most commonly.
2 Likes
Quick question for you - have you run the z-axis print calibration? I was noticing some holes were not dimensionally accurate with one of the resins I was using and setting the calibration correctly for that specific resin was a great help. Running it in tandem with your initial layer exposure might get you going in the right direction.
From looking at your print, it does appear you’re getting light bleed - you can look into the Z bleed compensation. I have not played with it myself, but it might be worth investigating
Are you using the flexi release plate or a standard build plate?
Elephant’s foot usually gets a lot worse with long bottom exposure times. I had decent results reducing the first layer exposure slightly and adding a tiny chamfer to the model edges instead of relying too much on the brim.
I haven’t run the z-axis calibration - I will give that a go and see what difference it makes.
My build plate flexes to help release prints so I guess it’s a flexi plate.
Interesting. This seems to be more like what I am seeing; any “brim” changes (in the calibration or the model) do have a precise effect on the overall dimensions on that layer, but the bulge on the lower layer varies linearly with depth. I know the exposure values are interpolated so that would make sense if it was “bloom”.
Do you mean in order to compensate, you design the footprint of the part to be slightly smaller for the first few layers?
If you were printing a cube at 100um layer height, would you make all five of the first layers the same dimensions, or would you chamfer them? i.e. Would your design look like A, or B?
