Why small prints can look better than large ones on Materium

To troubleshoot visible layer lines, see Layer Banding.

It can feel backwards that small, detailed prints often look very clean on Materium, while large prints show more visible layer lines.

This is actually normal behavior for pellet extrusion.

Layer lines are not the real problem

All FDM printers have layer lines.

Good printers are not the ones without layer lines — they are the ones where each layer looks the same as the one before it.

Filament printers achieve this because filament is already extremely consistent.
Every millimeter of filament is the same diameter, stiffness, and material.

That consistency hides many problems before extrusion even starts.

Pellets put the responsibility back on the extruder

Pellets are raw material.

They vary in:

• size and shape

• how tightly they pack

• moisture

• surface texture

With pellets, the extruder must do more work to keep extrusion even.

If the extruder is not designed for precision, this shows up immediately as poor large walls.

What Materium is already good at

Materium is designed to keep extrusion stable from moment to moment.

This matters most during:

• short moves

• frequent starts and stops

• curves and small features

That’s why:

• small figures

• detailed parts

• complex geometry

often print surprisingly clean — sometimes close to filament quality.

The extruder quickly “recovers” from small disturbances and keeps extrusion even.

Why large prints look different

Large prints behave very differently.

They involve:

• long, continuous extrusions

• flat walls

• repeating layers

• little variation in motion

In this situation, the printer is no longer hiding small changes.

Instead, slow changes start to matter:

• the melt temperature settles slightly differently

• pellet feeding becomes more regular (or less)

• pressure inside the extruder finds a steady pattern

Nothing is broken — but small differences now last long enough to become visible as layer banding.

In conclusion, this is a material issue.
What we can do is change the ratio of the extruder to the material by using larger nozzles, so that in comparison, the print is ‘small’.
Some examples :