Getting more than a little annoyed that Sovol has created SV08 Max profiles for .6, .8 nozzles, but not the Zero.
There’s nothing magical in those Sovol profiles. Actually, comparing the Max profiles, there appears to be some mistakes or at least inconsistencies between the nozzle profiles.
Comparing Zero’s 0.4 mm nozzle profile to Max’s 0.4 mm profile shows those are pretty much identical except for the machine dimension and acceleration related parameters. Going forward with that information, you can create 0.6 mm and 0.8 mm nozzle profiles for Zero by duplicating the 0.4 mm nozzle profile and changing the following settings:
0.6 mm nozzle
nozzle_diameter: 0.6
min_layer_height: 0.12
max_layer_height: 0.42
retract_before_wipe: 0%
retraction_length: 1.8
retract_restart_extra: 0.1
0.8 mm nozzle
nozzle_diameter: 0.8
min_layer_height: 0.16
max_layer_height: 0.56
retract_before_wipe: 0%
retraction_length: 3.0
retract_restart_extra: 0.1
I saw a few more differences between the Max and Zero on the .4 profile
Excluding supports, speed and acceleration:
The line width ones interest me more, they really should not be different between the two machines, since they are using identical toolheads.
Value Zero MAX
reduce_crossing_wall: 1, 0
bridge_flow: 1.2, 1
internal_bridge_flow: 1.2, 1
bottom_solid_infill_flow_ratio: n/a, 1
outer_wall_line_width: 0.4, 0.42
initial_layer_line_width: 0.42, 0.5
infill_wall_overlap: 15%, 25%
inner_wall_line_width: 0.4, 0.45
thick_bridges: 1, 0
The differences in supports are kinda weird, IMO, The zero interface spacing is 0.2, which is fairly standard from what I have seen. The MAX is 0.5, which frankly, seems HUGE. The Zero, OTOH, has support_interface_top_layers: 5, which is very far away from the relatively standard 2, which is what the MAX uses.
I’ve had good luck making new profiles from old profiles. First go to OrcaSlicer’s Process - Global - Quality - Line Width and change the line widths expressed as mm to a percent of the nozzle diameter. For example, if the 0.4 mm nozzle profile had a line width of 0.4 mm, that would become the equivalent 100%. 0.5 mm line width would be expressed as 125%. 0.3 mm would become 75%. Save the 0.4 mm nozzle profile. Now, when it’s changed to a 0.6 mm nozzle profile, the line widths will all scale with the nozzle diameter so you won’t need to mess with that. Save the 0.4 mm nozzle profile as whatever nozzle diameter profile you want and then change the nozzle size accordingly in OrcaSlicer’s Printer - Printer Settings - Extruder 1. You can generally get by with increasing the maximum volumetric flow rate in OrcaSlicer’s Filament - Filament - Max Volumetric Speed by the same ratio, or probably a bit more as the volumetric flow scales closer to the square of the nozzle area. You may or may not want to change the Layer Height and/or First Layer Height in OrcaSlicer’s Process - Global - Quality - Layer Height depending on whether you want to speed up printing a little with a larger nozzle while keeping comparable layer resolution, or you want to speed up the printing a lot with thicker layers.
Even though it’s fairly easy to create new generic profiles from existing profiles that will get you pretty close, it is a bit frustrating that almost all 3D printer manufacturers don’t offer good slicer profile support on the first day that a new model of printer ships. This would be a great job for a new engineer or technician that would help hone their understanding of how 3D printers work, and it would vastly improve customer success and positive impression of a new printer. There is much I dislike about Bambu Lab, but they understand that most people don’t want to develop reasonably decent filament profiles. We want optimized profiles for ever nozzle and filament. Even customers who aren’t intimidated by that process would appreciate not needing to develop every profile we need. Sovol should ship every printer with highly optimized OrcaSlicer profiles for every nozzle size, all Sovol filaments, and generic filament profiles for PLA, PETG, ABS and TPU as a minimum. As of version 2.3.1, OrcaSlicer has made it much easier for printer manufacturers to do this, and it would greatly improve the user experience, for new 3D printer users and experienced users alike.
Overall, what I’m doing. But, after reviewing the OrcaSlicer Wiki docs, I adjusted some things.
In general, line width should not be less than 105% of the nominal nozzle width quality_settings_line_width · SoftFever/OrcaSlicer Wiki · GitHub
You can see why when you extrude a free-hanging extrusion from the nozzle and put it to calipers. Plastic expands slightly on exiting the nozzle (most things do this when extruded). I consistently see free extrusions measuring 105% of actual nozzle diameter. Extruding at nozzle diameter means the printer has to “stretch” the extrusion as it lays it down, which results in lower contact area and lower layer adhesion.
When I looked at line widths from other profiles, I did NOT use Sovol’s profiles, I did it from BL and Voron. I did use Sovol’s profiles for things like speed and acceleration. Note that BL’s .6 and .8 profiles aren’t exactly well-tuned either, but are not a bad place to start.
My examples may have been a bit extreme but were chosen to make the math easier to grok. However, I’ve had pretty good luck with under extruding the outer layer when printing with 6+ layers on solid objects. The other layers provide the layer adhesion strength and the under extruded outer layer serves as filler, squishing out less horizontally to make a flatter outer wall that makes the layer lines less visible as well as less tactile so the part looks and feels smoother.
Most of my profile experimentation lately has been with TPU-LW, the foaming TPU that forms a closed cell TPU foam when printed. At the highest foaming rates, it’s printed very hot with an extrusion multiplier of 50%. It expands in the melt zone and nozzle but also foams after it extrudes. It’s weird stuff but I’m getting some good results although it’s even worse for bridging and overhangs than regular 95A TPU. I recently bought some CC3D 72D durometer TPU for solid TPU parts where I don’t need it to be flexible but I still want the other great TPU traits of great layer adhesion, good chemical resistance and high impact strength. I haven’t tried it yet.