40hr print with a spaghetti prime tower
Roller coaster of a print, my largest and longest print so far. Been wanting to try PETG support and testing how the Snapmaker U1 fares for long prints.
Coming from a Bambu A1, already impressed with the efficiency of multi-color prints (goodbye poop!). Trying out this stormtrooper helmet model though was tough - failed twice due to skipped layers and multiple toolhead errors (swapping, filament) that needed a tear down and reassembly of the heads. The Bambu matte black was stuck a few times, while the eSun cool white had a few tangles.
Third time’s the charm and progressed well until halfway when the prime tower collapsed. Tried to tape down (fell after 15 mins due to heat), then superglued an old prime tower after measuring the difference between the model and broken prime tower (3cm). Also torched off and flattened blobs that appeared on the right side due to the uneven level.
Left it to print and came back to a mess of spaghetti - surprisingly still printing away! You can see how the tool heads just kept priming on a virtual tower. Had to babysit it a bit to catch stray filaments that pulled over to the model, and manually trim protrusions on the layers. Turned out all right in the end though, and glad it didn’t stop or cancel the entire print.
Learning for future - wider brims, petg support only as infill, slow support tower print speed, z-hop retraction. Currently testing out smaller prints <4hrs, flushing/priming into object instead (doing away with the prime tower)
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TLDR: Very impressed with the U1. Not all is lost if your tower fails and spaghettis. Keep your old prime towers!