How to make beautiful prints

[Audin]

I find Cura a poor slicer for 'round' objects such as that funnel. It seems to still be generating too many small line segments for the AVR processor on the Rambo to handle smoothly. While it is printing observe the motion of the print I head. Is it smooth or does it stutter? On a smooth round object like this there should only be one bump per round, when it either changes height or wall.

[teoman]

Funnel was done on repetier.

Wonder why I got the "drag" marks facing the 2 funnels.

[Polygonhell]

Funnel was done on repetier.

Wonder why I got the "drag" marks facing the 2 funnels.

It's where the extruder transitioned between the funnels, so filment oozed out during the transition and it wipes itself on the funnel being moved to. You could probably fix it with better retraction settings, or printing at a lower temp since both of these affect ooze. My favorite retraction settings test print is two cylinders, which is pretty much what you have there.

A lot of learning what's causing issues is watching the printer print, to see why something is happening. It's another reason to pick quick test prints for identifying and correcting print quality issues. For example if you have a cooling fan on one side of the Hotend, often you will see a difference between the side with the fan and the one without.

[teoman]

Its a bit difficult to see the print. I am looking at installing LEDs on the towers.

[RegB]

I too have some "more or less OK" results.
Better than I could have done with a hot glue gun, but nothing that would fit together as if it had come off a Bridgeport mill.
Yoda and Buddha heads don't interest me, though I might make a chess set at some point.
I want things to FIT TOGETHER and I would like to reduce the log cabin finish to a minimum.

Thanks to GeneB I have been reading this page;
http://reprap.org/wiki/Triffid_Hunter%2 ... tion_Guide
What I like a LOT about it is that there are several places where he suggests what I term "coming in from outside the envelope" and "finding the edges of it".
By deliberately going outside the envelope I hope to gain the experience to recognize effects of causes - at least some of the simple ones.

I just got my E3D-V6 and I'll be running through Triffid_Hunter's guide a LOT over the next few days.
Who knows, I might even keep an engineering log book (-:

I expect this to require the investment of a considerable amount of time, effort and patience.

A Bridgeport mill doesn't just turn out parts either, there is a learning curve to it (-:

[teoman]

Its a hobby that I will get to use for work.

I enjoy investing time in it.

[elwooddbeauchamp]

A lot of learning what's causing issues is watching the printer print, to see why something is happening. It's another reason to pick quick test prints for identifying and correcting print quality issues. For example if you have a cooling fan on one side of the Hotend, often you will see a difference between the side with the fan and the one without.

I see this issue with smaller prints...especially when printing the 20 mm Test Cube in PLA. I slowed print speed down some with better results, but outside of printing 2 or 3 at a time, would adding another Layer Fan help or hinder? It seems the faster I print, the more heat builds up and the part gets "Ugly".

[Polygonhell]

A lot of learning what's causing issues is watching the printer print, to see why something is happening. It's another reason to pick quick test prints for identifying and correcting print quality issues. For example if you have a cooling fan on one side of the Hotend, often you will see a difference between the side with the fan and the one without.

I see this issue with smaller prints...especially when printing the 20 mm Test Cube in PLA. I slowed print speed down some with better results, but outside of printing 2 or 3 at a time, would adding another Layer Fan help or hinder? It seems the faster I print, the more heat builds up and the part gets "Ugly".

With PLA as long as your hotend still reaches temperature with PLA you can never have too much cooling.
I use a single 50mm squirrel cage fan, which moves a huge amount of air compared to a conventional fan or the smaller squirrel cage fans.
At some point though you need to slow down when printing smaller objects.

[teoman]

How do you do bridging? How do you turn on the fan and what is the best procedure for creating support.

I am using mattercontrol and was not able to find a means of turning on the layer fan.

And the option for creating support seems very limited.

[Captain Starfish]

MatterControl, as you're aware, consists of the host framework, a UI around the slicer settings and a choice of Cura, Slic3r and MatterSlice.

MatterSlice is my preferred slicer at the moment - it's neat and clean and has none of the spider-on-LSD dancing about insanity in its gcode like Slic3r.

- but -

MatterSlice is fairly infantile in its ability to tweak. It's the best I've seen for simple parts including the inverted version of the container you sent me but, when you start needing to fine tune and get tricky, it still has a way to go.

Bridging is one of those things, they've just added separate speed and fan control for the bridging in 1.1.1 which is great, but the perimeters on a bridge are still treated as perimeters (not a bridge) which kinda lets it down - particularly considering it's usually perimeters printed first, then fill.

Support is another. You can build linear or grid support and specify the best separation for break-off at the end that I've seen yet. But it doesn't allow big linear infill with a few finer interface layers running crossways, a technique I've seen on the Up! and which looks like it can be done via Slic3r. One day. I can't remember which slicer program it was but I've also seen support built at (say) 45º from a wall so that, for parts like the one you sent me, you don't have to print support the whole way from the bed. However this comes at a price, the support gets a whole lot harder to remove.

Get version 1.1.1 if you don't already have it, grab a couple of bridge test parts from Thingiverse, and try out the bridging and support options until you find something that works for you.

[elwooddbeauchamp]

I am fairly satisfied with my prints so far, but, on the Bottom (first layer) there are always the ridges between the successive passes of the nozzle (like the groove in a vinyl LP recording).

How should I adjust which setting to merge these passes to create a smooth and shiny surface?

I don't want to start experimenting and create more problems.