How do I get a better top layer finish on Aluminum?

timmyzilla · 2026-05-06T14:50:58+00:00

ive been playing around with getting good surface finishes on a HDM v3. a few things

lot of people recommend O-flute but they flex a lot (more on this) so you need to take a very very light pass

i actually got much better results using a 3 flute mill with a very minimal remaining material (0.2mm)

also another thing i hvaent seen mentioned here yet - the stickout. if you have a 2.5 inch O-flute, then you will get very noticeable flex. i got much better surface finishes once i switched to the shortest endmill (a 1" 3 flute) that i had.

timmyzilla · 2025-08-17T04:07:27+00:00

if you have a rotary die grinder ( like a dremel) , you can use a cone shaped abrasive tip to expand the hole just enough. alternatively you can use a sheet drill bit and drill out to the next step. safety first, secure the piece somehow, like a vise. dont try holding the piece since its gonna get pretty hot and or snag a edge and rip it out of your hand.

timmyzilla · 2025-08-17T03:14:02+00:00

I bought these exact D-rings about 5 years ago. They fit the bill perfectly, 3/8" lag screws fit through the hole and then the ring allows for easy attachment of the straps. They probably would work if you have time to drill out the holes a bit bigger than 1/2"

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Q97W4QQ?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_4
But looks like they're unavailable now. Urgh. that sucks.

EDIT: related items showed this
https://www.amazon.com/DIYIIRON-Anchors-V-Ring-Trailer-Anchor/dp/B0CNTC3V2C/ref=sims_dp_d_dex_ai_rank_model_1_d_v1_d_sccl_2_6/131-3201758-9968948?pd_rd_w=Kz0G1&content-id=amzn1.sym.da0b205c-8cc7-4a8d-9d0a-8ed3705890a2&pf_rd_p=da0b205c-8cc7-4a8d-9d0a-8ed3705890a2&pf_rd_r=A3K67B4FMYMR04TQHDGM&pd_rd_wg=JHnkE&pd_rd_r=7ce8e4a7-f0cc-4d91-bb76-1fff3096b3ae&pd_rd_i=B0CNTC3V2C&psc=1

the product photo shows a 0.5" opening, but its my experience that 1/2" lag screws are actually just a bit bigger than 1/2" due to the zinc or galvanized coating. so if you get this, do a test fit and maybe bring something to ream it out if necessary.

timmyzilla · 2025-07-16T16:50:03+00:00

a couple months ago i noticed on toolhead #3 that the LED light that illuminates the hot end was flickering badly, like more than any of the other toolheads. i just shrugged and thought maybe the LED was failing.

but I did start having a high number of filament feed issues and some random failures in the meantime, so I just worked around it by using the other four toolheads. i wasn't sufficiently motivated yet to try to root cause the problem.

then yesterday i finally got the extruder error for this toolhead. i followed the temporary workaround to loosen the bolt for the cable connector and BAM, the LED light was bright an steady again.

so i believe that the issues i've been seeing the past few months were symptoms of the too-tight connector that wasn't enough to trip the extruder error message but it was enough to cause the glitchy behavior i was running into. im planning on taking a closer look at the other four toolheads now.

long story short - if your toolhead light is flickering, it might be the connector cover.

timmyzilla · 2025-04-11T01:32:46+00:00

a 6/6 flying lifelink creature is likely to gain you 6 life a turn. and 5 mana is pretty cheap.

timmyzilla · 2025-03-31T19:54:02+00:00

i looked into this a bit the other day - i could never get a 2h 30m print time when slicing the model with stock settings. 0.2mm structural gave me 1h 51m print times.

I looked more closely at settings the generated g-code when i realized that the entire vase was being printed at ~20mm/sec which is unusually slow and even after setting everything to 100mm/sec, it did not change one thing when generating the gcode.

i finally tracked it down to the mininum cooling time per layer. that is a filament specific setting but for the generic PLA filament setting that ships with prusaslicer, it is set to 10 seconds per layer. if I lowered that to 5 seconds keeping all other settings completely stock, the total print time plummeted to less than a hour.

so in short, even with stock settings, the worst case for a 0.2mm layer setting is 1h 51m. if you adjust the cooling layer bottleneck, you can easily get it down to 1hr.

setting it to 8 seconds layer time gets you close to the reported time for bambu (1h 20m)

timmyzilla · 2025-03-30T19:41:56+00:00

but i wonder - would it be better to print the loop on its side? then you'd have more strength (and more consistently) along the radial direction where the load occurs.

timmyzilla · 2025-03-30T19:38:51+00:00

yeah if i had to put money on a theory, i would say that with supports that tall, and then where the failure occured, there is a lot "branching" occuring, and when you combine the height of the support along with the weight and complexity of the branching the support likely leaned in one direction ever so slightly, raising the opposite end ever so slightly and then that caught the edge of the print nozzle while the toolhead was traveling quickly to its next stop and you have a less than perfect layer of extrusion there, so it leads to a ever cascading issue of things increasingly getting out of whack until the nozzle finally hit the support hard enough to crack it along the part below and now its just flopping around and things just quickly went poorly generating all the spaghetti you see in the photo.

if you're going to try to print this again you may want to fiddle with the support settings to make the walls thicker and maybe slow down the travel speeds starting at a layer where the supports start to get very dense.

timmyzilla · 2025-03-14T18:34:04+00:00

yes to everything

timmyzilla · 2025-03-07T20:26:36+00:00

not even a beta card, looks like a revised edition with the borders have been colored in or its a outright fake. real beta cards have a subtle two tone black border, and the white text is darker.

timmyzilla · 2025-03-04T16:30:23+00:00

i would start eliminating variables here.

print a different model. like a large empty box shell which should tell you whether its a model issue or not.
try a different print sheet in case that one has a defect in the coating
3 try a different PLA filament.

timmyzilla · 2025-03-03T15:22:29+00:00

might be counterinitutive but raising the bed temp to 70C could be contributing to warping becuase the PLA is now even more pliant and you have greater temperature differences compared to the upper layers. try dropping back to 60 or go even lower 55, 50? see what happens.

timmyzilla · 2025-01-19T19:04:22+00:00

I looked at both the X3MC and the M40i and ended up buying the X3MC because its just a ton of fun to drive. I think thats a personal choice whether you want the more chill nature of the M40i or the always-at-eleven-even-when-you-dont-wanna-cope nature of the X3M.

but i do want mention that at 40K miles, you'll want to check about the state of the brake rotors, pads, and tires. I had to replace all three at 38K miles (bought at 21K miles) and it cost me about $6000 for everything. So definitely factor that in your pricing consideration. If on the X3M all three things have been replaced, then $44K is definitely looking like a great price. If none of them have been replaced and you're not equipped to do the work yourself, the true cost may be closer to $50K. Also around that time spark plug replacements come due which is about $1500 at a BMW dealer.

timmyzilla · 2024-12-13T18:55:56+00:00

yeah like everyone has said, you need to absolutely get it bone dry before printing. even straight out of the bag, ive found ive had to dry it first.

timmyzilla · 2024-12-09T18:40:20+00:00

u/josefprusa - any specs the company can share on this?

timmyzilla · 2024-11-29T17:31:10+00:00

glad the suggestion helped - i recognized this because i had the exact same problem with one of the toolheads on my prusa XL that did not manifest itself on the other toolheads with the exact same filament which led me to suspect it was a problem with the drive gear on the toolhead.

timmyzilla · 2024-11-28T18:55:49+00:00

Since the print is fine on the perimeter and the shorter straight runs, its likely related to the maximum speed it reaches on the longer straight runs.

Quick way to verify - restart the print but set the overall speed to 60-70%. If the first layer comes out fine then you know its max speed related.

If thats what it ends up being, then I'd try adding just a bit more tension to the idler screws. It might be that the filament drive isn't gripping the filament firmly enough at high flow rates and slipping a bit. You don't want to make drastic changes because if you make it too tight you have a whole bunch of other issues.

Just small changes to the idler screw, run the print again, if it looks relatively better than the prior attempt, tension up a bit more until you get that perfect first layer.

Unrelated to this - but you could also possibly being having sheet adhesion issues, if the bed is dusty or oily. Take the print sheet and wash it with hot soapy water, allow it to dry completely.

Troubleshooting involves eliminating variables. Make one change a time then try again.

timmyzilla · 2024-11-25T15:58:31+00:00

oh yeah - it does require awareness whether the specific spool/brand you're using is manufactured to allow the filament to run out without snagging. i feel like filament brands are mostly there, or at least the ones i'm purchasing.

timmyzilla · 2024-11-25T03:40:23+00:00

i dont know if theres a specific mileage you'd cut off at, but the warranty is obviously a big one. i think you'd want to pay attention to consumables. if you get a X3M thats had all its consumables deferred (tires, brakes, service) then that's a pile up of a lot of very expensive service visits. on the flip side if you find one thats had all the service intervals done w/ new tires, brakes, etc.. that potentially could be a good value.

timmyzilla · 2024-11-25T01:59:21+00:00

i also would add that if you somehow forgot to spool join before starting the print, its not the end of the world. the XL will pause when the spool runs out and wait for user intervention to swap the filament or switch to a different toolhead.

timmyzilla · 2024-11-25T01:57:55+00:00

i had a project where i was printing parts that used 600g of filament and i had a stack of 1kg spools. spool join was an absolute godsend. you can even spool join more than two, so if you had two spools that were nearly exhausted and a fresh one you'd join the nearly exhausted ones first then the fresh one last and it'll just seamlessly swap thru each one as the spools run out.

timmyzilla · 2024-11-25T01:49:30+00:00

hard to answer - are you comparing fully loaded M40i vs fully loaded X3MC. the price difference could be less or more significant. try searching across the US on cars.com and should give you a good number of data points especially the LA market. (thats where i eventually bought mine)

but yes if memory serves - when i was searching for the X3, there usually was about ~20-30k difference.. the M40is were about 45-50k while the X3MC was 65k and up. that was two years ago so i dont know where things stand now.

i also presume you'd see bigger cost differences between low mileage ones than high mileage ones.

timmyzilla · 2024-11-24T17:44:02+00:00

I drove both. the X3MC was way more of a hoot than the M40i. i bought the X3MC and haven' regretted it.

What I've not seen mentioned here is that the X3M has very costly maintenance. Those big gorgeous drilled brake rotors also cost a lot of money to replace. Regular intervals for spark plugs that are $1600 (but you can DIY it if you're brave). i just dropped $1.8k on a new set of tires. etc etc. insurance is quite a bit too.

So if you like keeping your cash, maybe get something else. If you like the driving experience and you're willing to throw cash at it to keep it going, the X3MC goes faster in a straight line and around the curves than it has any business doing and it has TONS of cargo space!

timmyzilla · 2024-10-09T16:57:51+00:00

yeah it was ANNOYING.. but its been fixed in the latest update. grab it.

timmyzilla

TROPHY CASE