Cute Octopus

[SpyderDance]

Hi All,
this is my print of the iconic "Hello world" Cute Octopus that.... 'the big company who bought out open sourcing 3D products to make a buck' *Cough Makerbot Cough* use to demonstrate their colour selections.
I like it cause its cute and a symbol of the 3D world; the beginning of a collection i feel.
But as cute and sweet as it is, there is a problem, and not just with this print either, so i was hoping for some assistance:
When my ROSTOCK MAX v2 using Repertier and Slic3r (0.5mm nozzle, black ABS, bed temp 90-100 degrees C, hotend 220 degrees C) gets to the near end of printers where the nozzle is circling itself closer and closer, the material it is depositing doesn't stay where it was laid and doesn't 'set'; it becomes this soft hot blob that moves about causing misprint paths and in more extreme cases, complete failure of a part (i can send more pictures if requested).
I've played with the printer settings on the fly when i notice it happening with limited results: I turn down the speed and the flow and on some occations where things began to get really bad i dropped the temp of the hotend.
And suggestions of what i might be able to tweak in the settings or printing style to solve/remove this problem?
Thank you

[jmpreuss]

Need more info, layer height, number of shells, and infill percentage, print speed would be helpful.

[guanu]

for top slopes like that, higher infill and more perimeters will fix that right up.. you can also go lower layer height and it will also help.. that looks to be about .3 layers, you can go .2 to make it look a lot smoother (I use .2 for things I want to look good, and .3 for things I want printed quicker)
beyond that, print looks great!

Guanu

[SpyderDance]

sorry for lack of detail, its printed on my now 'default' print settings of:
10% infill
0.2mm layer height
90-100 degree bed temp
220-225 degree nozzle temp
60mm/s speeds
3 vertical shells and 5 top and bottom solid layers

the issue is not exclusive to this print, other prints such as coke bottles (small scale) have issues where the small layers begin to turn to gloop and not hold their freshly printed shape. I think its from too much heat being concentrated on the part, but without printing double of things i was hoping that there would be another setting within slic3r that might do the trick

[geneb]

You need to slow down on smaller parts - increase the minimum layer time setting in Slic3r. The ABS isn't getting enough time to dump accumulated heat and that's why you get the glooping.

g.

[Max]

It would be nice to have some kind of option to turn the fan on when you're printing area for a layer gets below a certain mm2.

I had a part with and offset cam, and shaft that globbed up on the shaft. Everything else was perfect. So I created a set of 10mm diameter tubes of different heights that I add to the print job . It helps main part to let it cool between layers when I don't have the layer fan on. I kept them thin to not waste very much, and placed them far enough away to give it more time to cool there. It's a waste, but less of a waste when the part is just a big glob.

I've turned on the fan manually, but I've seen the gcode turn off the fan between layers... I guess I should figure out if that's a slicer option I can change....

[SpyderDance]

Thank you Geneb!
and Max i have read about the technique you speak of, but didnt want to waste excessive filament - especially when you dont know if its going to glop up until its already happen! In slic3r there are options for fan control for layers that take less time than the rest

[geneb]

You don't want to use a fan with ABS - it really doesn't care for it.

g.