trying to print a thin hemispherical shell on my Rostock Max v3

[mark.gesing]

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to print a hemisphere with fingers extending from 5 degrees above the equator to 5 degrees below the equator to mesh with a second hemisphere once two are printed.

I've been a bit ambitious with this one, and I'm trying to use only a single layer of extrusion to print the whole shell.

My first attempt at this print had a few problems (see the attached pictures)

0) Matter-slice doesn't handle thin sections very well, I had to use slic3r, and then subtract 100 from all X and Y coordinates to center the print on my bed.

1) in the first layer, the actual printed width of the "fingers" was too wide, and became almost a solid ring

2) the rest of the layers in the "fingers" had fingers which were too narrow (the extruder wasn't extruding for the full width it should?

3) Once the top of the fingers got bridged, the next 25 layers or so showed a wierd diagonal pattern

4) there's some stringy buisness in the bottom of the top few layers.

Any help would be appreciated on which settings I should tweak to solve my various problems..

for 4) I think I can solve it by reducing the "top solid layers" to 1, but I don't really know where to start for my other problems.

Thanks.

Mark.