While I acknowledge the expectations Ellis tries to set, all the youtubers out there have me chasing a dragon looking for better and better layer aliment on my z-axis. I suspect (at least) one of you will come out of the woodwork and say your printer has better aligned layers than mine too 😭 I'm certainly not alone, but even in that thread you can find some people claiming that not everyone experiences the issue
So far, I've been through three iterations on my CW2:
- BMG gears with a grub screw
- BMG Integrated Drive Gear Assembly (IDGA). Press fit gear = no more grub screw
- FYSETC CNC Pom w/ Helical gears, since evidently the BMG gears can still be somewhat offset
Results below with me hand holding my cellphone and moving a Pixar style desk lamp to be at a progressively steeper angle to the face of the cubes. Left = FYSTEC Pom (I also used Orcaslicer), middle = BMG IDGA, right = 'normal' BMGs. Note that the cubes are upside down.
Vanity shot with very soft and indirect light
Direct light, 90 degrees to the face of the cubes (basically perpendicular)
Direct light, ~45 degrees to the face of the cubes
Direct light, ~5 degrees to the face of the cubes (basically parallel)
At this point, I am going to shrug, give up, and print with fuzz (or avoid harsh light).
You sure this isn't some sort of flow issue? The z-axis should be judged based on measurements of the cube if I'm not mistaken (20mm cube = 20mm) while the look of the print is dependent on speed/flow/layer height/plastic quality. The extrusion looks pretty inconsistent, and I see a ton of ringing even without anything immediately nearby to cause it (you can see it across the entire width below the little slashes from corner to corner).
I dunno what firmware you're using, but with klipper, resonance compensation and input shaping can help eliminate things like this.
It might be a flow issue. I recently discovered that my hot end was coming apart, which was leading to some print inconsistencies. This is my first print after fixing that, and swapping extruder gears while I was in there. I'll have to check my belts and take another pass through Ellis's tuning guide.
I am running klipper, and even have an accelerometer mounted to my tool head, but haven't taken the time to put some temporary wiring in place to test/tune it. I'll also have to do that. I do see some fine/faint ringing in the parts.
As for these prints, they were printed fairly quickly on a 0.4mm nozzle with 0.2mm layer height in Polymaker ASA.