I was lucky to spend 4 beautiful years with a Creality Ender 3 v2 that I modded to the brim and never failed to deliver quality prints. I never had to adjust, calibrate or tweak anything regarding print quality.
I upgraded today to a Sovol SV-08 because despite its qualities, the Ender 3 is too small and slow for my current needs.
However, the print quality is definitely not there (yet). Overhang quality is bad but I think I may be able to tweak it with filament temp and/or cooling. There's a bit of ringing but I can live with it. My main issues are the large holes in the hull.
Filament: Overture black PETG, 240°C, 24min print.
What should I try?
Thanks
Edit: most issues were solved by doing the following adjustments:
- PETG temperature increased to 245
- volumetric flow reduced from 17mm^3/s to 10mm^3/s
- manually adjusting z-offset with the paper sheet method like on my old Ender3
There are still minor issues like overhang drooping and adhesion needs a bit more work but quality is now almost on par with my previous printer.
Thanks to everyone !
I ran the printer's pre-sliced 12-minute benchy with cheap Geeetech PLA filament, and it didn't come out great, but then realised that when I'd removed the nozzle clog that was there from the factory (apparently they test some nozzles during QA, so mine had some dregs of filament with a lump that needed a cold pull to shift it) I'd accidentally plugged one of the part cooling fans into the wrong header and it wasn't running. After fixing that, it came out much better than what you've got here, despite a pause part way through due to trying to do it with the tail end of a roll.
I've read that the throat cooling isn't great for PETG as the fan as it draws warm air from inside the toolhead shroud, and there's an alternative one on printables that avoids this problem (although a duct to isolate the fan and its cutout in the shroud from the rest of the shroud interior might be simpler), so that could be related as you're running PETG.
Thanks for the lead! That might be it, I saw a big blob of goop leaking from it the first time I heated it. I'll rebuild the hotend when I have time. There an extra nozzle in the kit.
Edit:
Here is a comparison between an old benchy done with my Ender-3 and three with the SV-08. The surface finish with the Ender 3 is much more consistent and the PETG is a lot shinier. Maybe speed is a factor too. Shoud I try and slow the SV08 down a notch?
I've definitely noticed less shininess than the same filament was getting at the same temperatures on my previous printer, except for the first layer. As the first layer prints without part cooling, my guess is that the extra part cooling versus the other printer means it's setting before it's had time to self-level. If that's right, then turning down the part cooling (and then also the speed so you can get away with the reduced part cooling) would make things shiny again. I've not bothered investigating that, as most of what I print is either functional, where I wouldn't care about shininess, or gets painted, where any shininess would come from paint or clearcoat.