FDM 3D printer has the functions of easy operation and low costs for makers.

But there is a natural technical barrier to FDM printing, will appear a laminated striation on 3D models. Take a close look at how to disappear it.

Here are some types of laminated striation:

Cracking: Caused mostly by extrusion, about filaments, temperature, feed-in.

Water Ripple： The water ripple is caused by the vibration of the XY-axis of the machine, it mostly occurs in the corner of models.

It might be caused by printing speed too fast or mechanical vibration.

Twill Weaves:  When the nozzle wind guide is not installed correctly or the cooling fan does not work or fails, resulting in the printed layer is not cooled in time, the new layer will be printed and will be squeezed out of shape.

Caused by model shaking, untimely cooling, unstable machine motion components

How to Solve:

Wet grinding- Smoothing the surface with sandpaper (400 to 1,000 grit, depending on the roughness of the print) is recommended for wet sanding of printed objects for the following three reasons.

✦Sanding relies on friction, which generates heat and causes prints to warp and fade; a small amount of water or oil will stop this.

✦It's easy to scratch plastic, and wet sanding helps minimize the risk.

✦Sanding produces many particles that are a breathing hazard. When wet sanding, many particles bind to the liquid, keeping them out of the air.

Water Washable Resin

The water washable resin is evenly applied to the surface, the model's surface will become very smooth, and after curing by UV light, it can be washed directly, very conveniently.

When you want to make your 3D printed accessories look professional, painting is an excellent tool to make it work, but how we can do that?

You may find the answer here. Three methods to color 3D models.

Pen drawing

Mix the acrylic paint and alcohol in the ratio of 1:1.2 by a stirrer, and then filter it with 400 mesh cloth after stirring, to filter out the tiny impurities and avoid affecting the coloring, and use the cross-cross method when coloring, that is, when the first layer is almost dry, put on the second layer of fresh paint, and the brush direction of the second layer is perpendicular to the first layer.

Spray Method

As with the pen drawing method we still need to stir, filter, in order to avoid clogging the airbrush, we need to increase the proportion of alcohol to about 1.5, adjusting the spraying range of the airbrush when spraying, you can try spraying in the blank area, to the model spraying can be used multi-angle multiple spraying, so that after spraying the model color thickness will be more uniform.