Category: Horizontal lines

You can get “bands,” or horizontal lines across your print for many reasons. Typically, it means that something is loose. It’s not always obvious where to start looking, though. I usually look at the roller bearings first. Then I make sure all the nuts and bolts are tight. Then I check the belt tension. Just keep going through your machine until you find something that wiggles more than it should and tighten it. It’s not a glamorous process, but you should be going through your machine periodically anyway. 

Clunk.

Clunk, clunk, clunk.

My printer is in the next room from where I work, and that’s what I heard one day. I watched it for a few minutes, but it didn’t take long for me to realize what was causing the noise. Every time the printer would move in Z it would clunk.

I’ve spent so many hours dialing in my settings, making sure that my table is level, etc but I forgot something important. Lube the Z axis lead screws. Make sure that they are tight in the motors and don’t spin unless the motor is spinning.

Someday, I plan on putting together a maintenance checklist. This will definitely be on it.

Someone on a forum had a question about why horizontal lines might be showing up on their 3d prints. Someone else suggested that maybe their infill was showing through and that increasing the number of walls from 2 to 3 thicknesses might fix it. That’s a good place to start and I thought that was the solution to the problem.

Well, it didn’t fix it. It turns out that they had to go through their whole 3d printer. Their z rod had just a little bit of play in it. Once they adjusted that, the horizontal lines went away.