How To Get A Smooth Top Layer | No Sanding | 3D Printing Tips & Tricks 

The only thing I would do different is, to print small test pieces, instead of waisting time and material of full prints.

gaps between extrusions on the first layer is something to rectify. Either your z offset is not right, or your extrusion rate is not right. With a perfect first layer, the bottom will pretty much always look better than the top, even with all the settings you used.

Such thing always upside down. But needs perfect first layer. Love smooth pei for this

Good video, i like your style, no nonsense, you get straight to it and show us your full process with clear and concise explanation. Good work. First video I've watched on your channel, I'll be back for more 😊

Bambu slicer has several adjustable parameters for ironing, one of which is Ironing Flow. It's default is 10% but I find 11-12% gives me a nearly perfect top layer.

Textured bed sheet, upside down, lower z offset so the squish will blend, and same bottom layer advice you used and it’ll look 10x better no ironing needed

The correct answer was #2, upside down. What you saw were not layer lines, they were evidence that you need to calibrate your Z offset. There should NOT be space between lines on any layer, but most importantly the first layer.

Subbed because your video was no-nonsense and gave a really good layout of what I was going to see, and saw exactly that. Perfect!

I've just started filament printing, and this tip is exactly what I've been looking for 😃

Thanks for the tip! I’ve been using cura for 2 years and never knew about the monotonic settings. This solves a lot of problems I’ve had to deal with

I think you would benefit from using Orca slicer, an ABL decice to create a mesh before each print, and a PEY hologram sheet to print it upside down amd give the clock face a holographuc surface. Orca slicer has a lot of great calibration tools that are filamemt and machine specific. You can create a one layer print to perfect your Z offset value prior to running all the calibration prints

I bought an Infimech TX a couple of months ago. Guys, this thing is AWESOME. I'm getting rid of all my ender 3s. I'm no spokesman either. I'm FINALLY able to finish up on my 1:1 F-16 Cockpit for DCS and MSFS. SUPER Smooth prints. I literally slice and hit print. I walk away and it's done!!!!

honestly it looks like you have some under extrusion going on, especially on the bottom layer example.

I appreciate the time you put into this video, especially with the number of times you reprinted the clock. A tip I can pass along to you is to flip the flip upside down, like you did in the video, but print it on the reverse (smooth) side of a glass bed. It will come out insanely flat and smooth

Printing face down on glass with a light coating of hairspray does it for me, almost perfect surface quality! Also need just the right z offset to avoid gaps.

Monotonic simply means the head is traveling in the same direction for each extrusion move. It is interesting that Cura does this more orderly but that isn't a requirement for monotonic. Good video, I think I need this clock for my theater.

Great tips..

for smt like this print flipping the model and using a powdered bed is perfect, u dont see any print lines. For other models ironing is good but needs to be calibrated perfectly

You had it right when you flipped it upside down, but needed to dial in your settings for the first layer. Dialing in the top layer is good when you need a good top and bottom layer, but this could have been just a good 1st layer.

Thank you amazing

thank you

You need to print it upside down on a textured plate and use a .2mm first layer

I would use some of the fancy plates you can get with patterns in them one of the patterns is like carbon fibre which would look good, some of the less obvious plate patterns would also be good. They are generally smooth in texture so a good first layer would give a nice smooth surface with like a printed pattern visual not textured.

I suggest looking into patterned and mirror finish printing plates, and try the face down option (2) again with the plate designed to give a specific finish. (use slightly higher than normal heat to really let the pattern melt into that first layer( like an extra 5c))

In my experience if I see layer lines on the bottom layer it means I'm under extruding, first layer temp too low, or bed too cold. Mostly extrusion. My prints always come off with a perfectly consistent face, occasionally a tiny little knot where the plastic pulled up a quarter millimeter.

Although I appreciate the attempt, this could be just 1 or 2 steps: 1. Correct Z height 2. Adjust (first layer) flow/extrusion. A perfect first layer won’t have any layer lines and will always be better than an ironed top layer

Juat tune your first layer properly and print up side down. It will be perfect

1) Print upside down (and use a build plate with a nice texture) 2) Decrease first layer line width. 0.3 works just fine with stickier PLA, 0.35 works with most materials.You need to watch the first layer, if it rips or lifts, then either increase the width by a bit or use a lower first layer height (0.12mm instead of 0.2mm for example). 3) Increase first layer flow rate to 105-110% 4) Use a different first layer infill pattern that doesn't leave gaps (this depends on geometry, I don't change it for most models). Concentric sometimes works better Ironing sucks, leaves the surface too shiny, tends to clog the nozzle on some printers and can leave some nasty lines sometimes.

If you do upside down, over extrude the bottom layer. Ie kind of like elephants foot. Also, people have been using special surfaces to get holographic style reflections. P-flat sheets I believe they are called

Smooth PEI or garolite/g10/fr4 and printing it upside down is always the solution you should go for if you want a smooth or even mirror-like first layer since it saves time and significant amounts of effort versus ironing. Just gotta dial in Z-offset to not get those awkward gaps

Thats pretty cool. Though i would probably just prime the crap out of it and light sand. Im definitely going to try the trick for the more curvy prints. And gotta say, that clock would look pretty sweet with a backlight to bring out the detail.

i think, there are some improvements. try min. 4 top layers, because the infill is peaking through. put it upside down, like you did, lower the Z a half layerheigh, put a 0.3 bottom layer with 105 to 110 extrusion. is it possible, that you dont have a abl ? because of the big heigh differenzes. i use 4 bottom and 5 top layer to vanish the infill peak through and enough stability its a great idea

for a while i couldn't figure out why i wasn't getting perfect ironing anymore.. I installed a BL touch. this basically makes the whole print carry the wavy offset of the bed mesh level though-out the whole print. I put Fade_start: 0.2, Fade_end:1 into my Bed_mesh in my Klipper printer.cfg file to fix the problem. Beautiful top layers, even without ironing.. but of course ironing is better. I also have gone full OCD and trammed the printer like its a machining mill lol. So no matter the direction the nozzle is doing the top layer it looks exactly the same My bed mesh goes from -0.1350 to 0.2400, carborundum glass bed with thick aluminum heat plate. I print up to 115c bed temps, the glass doesn't take long to start warping and finding a "home" to where it settles

One time I need same things I want hide top layer....I have just flip the piece and start with first layer like 0.08 or 0.1 I don't rememb good but if you have good first layer try this flip the piece and put 0.08/0.1 in first layer

Simply print the file facedown on the print bed, the fact that your first layer is a bit crappy isn't a good reason to abandon this approach, I can fairly easily get glass smooth glossy prints using this approach.

OR you could get a PEY bed, print upside down and have a perfectly smooth (or texture of your choice PEY depending) front surface.

Some slicer you can change the top layer to 0.1 for finer finish if the adaptive layer height was not doing the job. For something like this I just have no bottom layer to speed things up.

flip it over, face down.... use a smooth heatbed

Almost all of this issues already fixed in various latest patches of orca slicer.

I use PLA+ and the down face is as smooth as a whistle when I use my smooth bed, or has a nice random pattern if I use my patterned bed. My guess is you need to set your extruder temperature slightly higher.

Try slicing it with Archimedean on the top layer. Way better for objects that are circular

Man, this is a simple upside down print. Use the same settings you would with a coaster. The mono top finish was a good insight. Avoid ironing where u can...adds way too much time.

Upside down its the way, but you need to adjust a perfect first layer, looking your prints i think you need to adjust max flow, a perfect calibrated bed and z-hop.

Did you use Z-hop for the top layer?

hey try setting the exposure of your camera down, looks like the video I'd clipping, reach out if you need help

I think you could have saved yourself a lot of time with a smaller project. 👍

Great video what printer are you using

Flip it upside-down, level your bed, lower your z offset just a little to make a squish and that's it. No need for such a waste of filament.

Next time do face down with a mirror finish build plate

hmm… why not use regular iron on metal sheet which cover entire object?

Eighteen _Fuckin' _*_Hours?!_* 😱 Had to slap this onto my Slicers Build Plate just for the shits and giggles and even with Ironing enabled ( adding another 2h20min ) it would still only take 4h40min!!! Toss whatever Joke of a 3D Printer you have and get yourself a real Machine! This is outrageous even just hearing about yet alone experiencing it in this day and age of affordable _fast_ 3D Printers 💢

Upside down should be much better if only you will adjust flow rate, z-offset and Esteps. Your first layer looks a bit underextruded...

It's so utterly stupid that monotonic isn't default. Cura used to always do monotonic, but added "optimized" order a few years go, and only added the option to go back after enough people complained... 🤦

Where are you getting the clock pieces at a reasonable price? All the ones I have found are absurdly expensive.

Looks like too few top layers. We're seeing where the support walls are.

In your case all you need to do is print it upside down and actually tune your z offset. That looks too far.

to see if the bottom layer has printed better than the top you could ve just flipped the thing lol

Your face down print looks like your extrusion is too low or your z-offset is too far from the plate. My face down prints are much more even with a proper tuned first layer. But ultimately, for 2d silhouettes like this, I feel a laser cutter and acrylic sheet is a far superior option. If this is for small business commercial production, an investment in a $500-900usd laser wouldn’t be unreasonable

17 hrs? Is bambu really that much faster lol.

I don't like adaptive layers. It's slow and does odd things.

Уважаемый, просто переверни деталь на сторону лицевой на стол и буквы смени направление. И будет тебе счастье!!!! Сейчас есть красивые столы с офигенным покрытием и не нужен этот геморрой😊 удачи в печати

It's waaay more practical to simply print it upside down, with a thicker first layer, than sand it after printing. There is no point in the "no sanding" part of the title. Sanding takes only a few minutes, while printing with "advanced options" makes printing much longer, much more prone to error and to wasting material. This is the kind of "tutorial" that makes me think about that joke of leting the stove always on fire just to avoid using matches to light it up.

I dont know man, you were just underextruding

Step 1: throw away Cura and use orca slicer.

What I would fix the biggest issue first, trash the Ender and buy a better printer, then you wouldn't have any of these issues and it would print about twice as fast

Such a waste of time.

Man, you wasted my time for nithing. That all old information and already writed in slicer settings.

Lol spends all that time showing us the poor finish layers but then when he gets to step 5 I blinked and missed the view to be able to compare ha ha. So still crap then