CC3D Silk Silver Unstoppable stringing! Help!?

[xipetotec1973]

Hello everyone, pretty new to 3D printing in general. recently got the Ender 5 PRO and pretty much out of the box ( with bed levelling of course ) it worked like a dream with some blue Anet filament I had. Then I purchased this CC3D Silver Silk filament, and it's been nothing but a PITA. I've watched Dr Vax's video on stringing. tried his settings. I also through googling, found a few reddit posts. In fact, found one where Dr Vax responded to someone with a temp of 206,retraction of 6.5 at a speed of 25. That didn't really work. So started troubleshooting.

First off, it seems this filament NEEDS a higher temp to even benefit from the "silver" sheen, but even then, anything below 205 at the LOWEST has very poor adhesion. After a bunch of small pyramid tests and tweaking all sorts of settings from combing to coasting. I thought I had something good at 206 retraction of 4 speed 40 ( travel speed 240, printing speed 60 ), pyramids came out "fairly" clean, the "Tiny tester" building I had found on thingiverse came out clean with almost no strings... so I printed something "real" ... and that was a giant fail... all sorts on unsticky layers and reflected my earliest tests with this filament when I was getting poor adhesion... so back to the drawing board ... I've found the Retraction calibration site someone posted here so I'm running that at 210 and 215. and I'll see what that gives...

Just not sure if anyone hsa experience with specifically the SILVER CC3D ( seems lots of people have used the gold and copper ) and how finicky it can be...

[mochalatte]

I've printed with several of the CC3D silk filaments (2 spools of gold, and 1 spool each of green, red, blue, and purple), but I have not yet tried silver. I've been really happy with them on my mostly-stock Ender 3 V2.

I agree with your experience that they need a higher temperature for layer adhesion. I've been using 210 C for all colors of the CC3D silk filaments.

I only printed 2 temperature towers for looking at stringing for gold and green. Both looked pretty good from 185 to 215 C with regard to stringing. It's the layer adhesion issue that made me pick something on the higher end.

In general, I find that the CC3D silk filaments do display more slightly more stringing than my other PLA filaments (Hatchbox, Creality, and Geeetech), but much less stringing than I've had with PETG filaments. I have not bothered to play around with retraction settings because the CC3D silk stringing has not really been that bad for me.

I wonder if there are issues specific to silk silver. Have you tried other CC3D silk colors yourself?

[xipetotec1973]

I have not. I'm fairly new to 3D printing in general. so I've worked with the Anet blue I had, a little bit with the mat white that came with the Ender 5 Pro and that's about it. Those two worked fairly well. The white had a bit of stringing that messed up some finer details on a print that I haven't played around with, but nothing like what's going on with the silver.

Funny enough, I accidentally chose the wrong file on a print that is going on right now, I meant to retry the bigger print I had with some different settings, but instead selected a card model print I had with the settings that had worked marginally well, and that is actually printing beautifully with no stringing between sections... The problem is ... I didn't save the 3mf for that print... so I'm now not even 100% sure what the setup was. I mean I can see on the printer that it's at 206 and bed at 60... but I can't see the retraction distance/speed ... And i've tried so many variations ...(once it's done, I'll see what I can figure out from the gcode : ) ...

[Geit]

You cannot see the retract/speed while printing, because gcode does not provide that. All commands are basically "drive there with this speed". Retract is also just a movement and since it is a negative movment, it could be shown in theory. For the overall print speed this is not possible, cause there are print moves and travel moves, support moves and so on all calculated into move commands.

The only "speed" value is the FeedRate in %, where 100% is what you used in slicer. Changing this value modifies everything by that percentage.

Even for temperature the printer only shows the current temperature setting. Even so you can have a first layer temp and a second layer temp. While printing the printer does not know that until the new temp command is arriving over serial or serial file read from SD card.

[Ender5r]

The issue you have with not knowing all the settings is 1 reason why I'm still printing over USB from a computer, using Cura. I can see all the settings even while the print is ongoing. I do not know (because I don't yet have 1), but I suspect the same would be true with OctoPrint on a Raspberry Pi.

[xipetotec1973]

For sure, I'm in the process of setting up Octoprint. I'd like to be able to monitor even when I'm not sitting right next to it.

[Ender5r]

I'm using an older smartphone with DroidCamX to do that. It lets me use a browser to watch what's going on. I can't control the printer with it, but the monitoring is very good.

[Larry]

I have optoprint here is a screen shot of it.



if i scroll down it shows me a pic of what the completed print will look like



Getting ready to install Big Tree Tech's filament run out sensor on my Ender 3 V2 and need this mount for that.

[Ender5r]

Larry, I love your optimism: "what the completed print will look like" >>>>>>> you hope

[Larry]

Larry, I love your optimism: "what the completed print will look like" >>>>>>> you hope

Maybe i should have said should look like 😏

[Ender5r]

Hey, it's 3D printing:
😁😎

[Larry]

I'll let you know how close the pic looks like to the real print in about 45 min

[Larry]

this is a tricky print can't use normal support because you wouldn't be able to remove it without damaging the print. So using tree support which may or may not work.

[Larry]

Turned out better then expected. Tree support came off very easily.

[Ender5r]

As long as it gets the job done, it's a win.

[xipetotec1973]

So back to my original question, I've done a ton of tests with this cc3d silver. Did a heat tower, thing came out pretty clean with little stringing between 205-225 but stringing tests (posts or pyramids) seem to string at 215 no matter what. The best I've gotten is 206, print speed 60, retraction 4.75, retraction speed 40, with combing and coasting. I was able to print the tiny tester building pretty cleanly . But then I tried to print a squid ring with tree supports and it did not like the little tentacles too much. This stuff seems pretty brittle. Solid in big chunks, not so much at the thinner ends. I guess that's just gonna be what it is unless anyone has further advice. (Not sure if hotter temp would make it less brittle... Maybe better adhesion... Don't know).