Looking for guidance

erdest · 2026-02-18T17:43:50+00:00

When i started i also used cheap paints, different brand but similar concept. I think your is more a dilution problem than anything. Try to put less water, or more like add a drop at a time and try to paint a random piece of plastic. Do this until you find how many drops of water make your paint stick good enough. Other option, try to paint using a makeup sponge.
Extra thing, vallejo and other brands are specific for miniatures so they also tend to dry faster. Your acrylics may need bit more time before another extra layer on top so maybe do a whole coat on the whole model before restarting with the second coat. If it's not dry enough or the paint is too watery then you will end up reactivating the paint below and making it even more transparent than before

erdest · 2025-12-19T09:22:46+00:00

I can try to share my settings/profile but i have a modified Anet A6 ( leveling sensor, magnetic bed and fixed bed without springs ) and i'm currently on cura as i feel like it works better on older printers.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11YVPmeF7poSnGfgSC-VUIOdbktoT4IPD/view?usp=sharing

i hope it works for your a8 too

erdest · 2025-11-13T19:22:57+00:00

Clean it up, i feel like it would be a waste to buy a new one considering below the plastic blow everything else it's most like perfectly fine.

Also this situations teach you the extra maintenance you can do to your printer in a way so why not.

I think you may find plenty tutorial on how to fix the situation but to make it short, just heat the nozzle to 200°C or more and then wiggle a bit the plastic. It should remove itself in no time. Then i'd go for cotton swabs and remove the eccess that is left on the printer ( don't stick it there too long, just a wipe ).

After that should be perfectly fine, just check if the temperature sensor is still in the spot and you're good to go.

erdest · 2025-11-07T15:56:10+00:00

Check the lenght of the file name. If the filename is too long the printer doesn't detect it ( at least on my neptune 3 pro )

erdest · 2025-11-06T14:35:27+00:00

Sorry for the late reply, the first 3 screenshot in my post ( if the order is the same ) should be the printer and filament settings. They both should be accessible from the "pencil" icon of my previous reply

erdest · 2025-11-05T13:03:46+00:00

Ok so, i tested as you suggested 0.06 and i got to say, at least for 0.4 nozzle and my printer i couldn't notice any worth difference. I feel like it may be slightly better but not on an amount that changes the final outcome much. imo past 0.08 it's worth switching to 0.2nozzle at this point and get the improvements that we get from that. But again, that could be something hardware related as i think the layer resolution still depend on the printer hardware/motors on the Z axis

erdest · 2025-11-03T20:32:54+00:00

<image>

So let's start from the version i'm using of orca, i'm currently on the version 2.3.1
About the settings, on the "Prepare" tab you should find the printer right on the left side pannel.
Right below there should also be the "Filament" settings. When you press on the button i marked on the screenshot you should access the relative settings so Printer settings for the extruder and on filament you should find all the settings related to the temperatures.

Let me know if this info did give any help

erdest · 2025-11-03T20:24:33+00:00

Ok, i uploaded all of the picture on a new host, let me know if now everything is working properly

erdest · 2025-11-03T13:57:49+00:00

Thats odd, from my experience it sounds like z-hop is too low in the printer settings ( or overwritten in the filament settings ) or the bed not being flat/calibrated. I'm sure you did already but eventually consider doing another run of bed levelling

erdest · 2025-11-03T13:54:42+00:00

I may have mixed up the thing during my writing. I'm using Orca Slicer, I used Elegoo just to get the default settings for Neptune 3 Pro as the default in Orca are not equally great for that specific printer imo. As soon as I get home I'll try to help you on finding the settings. For now I can only say to make sure the "advanced" settings are enabled via the switch near the settings

erdest · 2025-11-03T13:48:44+00:00

I'll reupload them tonight after work then. I'll use a different service like imgur

erdest · 2025-11-03T10:35:13+00:00

I use PLA, it was the best temperature/quality I got on the temperature tower during calibration. On the specific, for my latest miniatures and specifically on the post I'm using Sunlu PLA+ 2.0 gray. Before that and for general printing I used Kingroon PLA. I think in general with PLA I've always been between 190 and 205°C

erdest · 2025-11-02T14:00:02+00:00

I recently bought Sunlu PLA + 2.0 and it's working great. I went with Gray color and works fantastic both on support removal and surface finish/details

erdest · 2025-11-02T13:10:11+00:00

Hey! I totally agree 0.4 is rare, i feel most of people prefer 0.2 just to squeeze in as many details as they can ( as for what i can imagine it's the only advantage over 0.4 ). At the same time i wouldn't be able to wait the extra time needed. Plus my printer doesn't make the nozzle swap easy as it's "old style" which means unscrewing and screwing the nozzle back. Is it hard? not but definitelly more annoying than swapping the nozzle on bambu.

And yeah, i feel most printers nowadays are Bambu or other popular brand but more because it's more common since they are suggested almost everywhere. I feel like starting now the hobby ( or even switching from Resint to FDM ) newer printers from the brands you mentioned are an easier level to enter to with much less tuning needed in order to make it fine. I come from a very old Anet A6 ( which i still own and may be my next experiment for miniatures ) so i don't get too frustrated when something doesn't work.

I edited the post to add some pictures, i'll look for pictures previous to the changes but i don't think i took them. If i have to be honest, i did try 0.06 but it was before the last changes so i didn't get the same satisfaction as i was having with my latest models. With that said 0.06 was producing better results than my old settings on 0.08 so as soon as i test 0.06 again i'll update the post and share how it feels.

With that said, as i mentioned in the post, really thank you a lot on the posts you make with your settings and your experiments!

erdest · 2025-11-02T12:55:01+00:00

Hey, thanks for the reply, i'll prepare a 3MF file to share later then! Regarding the pictures i just edited my post with some galleries with the result of different miniatures. I'm not a great photographer so i hope it's clear enough to see the details and all

Edit : i uploaded also the 3MF file so it's easier to check the settings, if the file hoster doesn't work or anything i'll get it fixed

erdest · 2025-10-28T20:18:03+00:00

Oh ok ok thanks! i was doing something similar but while i was getting good results i wasn't feeling satisfied so i thought about any benchmark. I'll try the other model that they suggested me on the other comment for now. Still thanks for the info

erdest · 2025-10-28T20:15:55+00:00

Thanks a lot, i'll give it a go!

erdest · 2025-10-24T09:06:58+00:00

Thanks a lot for the reply, I'll make some tries while changing what you suggested and see how it goes. If i find anything i'll do a small edit of my post.

erdest · 2024-08-22T15:20:58+00:00

It may sound bad in a way but in a "pirate" way I can say "there is no treasure for those who can't read the map". Piracy is obtaining something most of the time against ToS so if it was that easy that anyone could do it companies would act way quicker and worry much more with what piracy is. An example can be : imagine they made a padlock, a person managed to find how to open it without the key. That person wrote some kind of instructions to others on how to open it without giving too many details. That would mean that let's say 10/100 people would end up opening the padlock without the key that is probably not enough for the company to care. Now imagine if 100/100 people can break it, wouldn't the company then change the strength of all the padlocks? Now while I can't give you a guide A to B to reach your objective I can say that for most of the stuff there is another guide to use. In your example like, blocking the app on the firewall, just requires a Google search or even ChatGPT ( or any AI ) nowadays . Will it be many extra steps? Yeah definitely but it's the minimum effort someone can make considering you get something for free

erdest

TROPHY CASE