Skeinforge Skin

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Skeinforge Contents

Skin is a plugin to smooth the surface skin of an object by replacing the edge surface with a surface printed at a fraction of the carve height. This gives the impression that the object was carved at a much thinner height giving a high-quality finish, but still prints in a relatively short time.

The latest process has some similarities with a description at:

http://adventuresin3-dprinting.blogspot.com/2011/05/skinning.html

Contents

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Operation

The default 'Activate Skin' checkbox is off. When it is on, the functions described below will work, when it is off, nothing will be done.

Settings

Division

Horizontal Infill Divisions

Default: 2

Defines the number of times the skinned infill is divided horizontally. This only affects the topmost layer.

Horizontal Perimeter Divisions

Default: 1

Defines the number of times the skinned edges are divided horizontally. Setting this value too high could produce lines that are too skinny for your hotend to reproduce.

Vertical Divisions

Default: 2

Defines the number of times the skinned infill (only for the topmost layer) and edges are divided vertically.

You can also combine the various settings:

Hop When Extruding Infill

Default: off

When selected, the extruder will hop before and after extruding the lower infill in order to avoid the regular thickness threads.

Layers From

Default: 1

Defines which layer of the print the skinning process starts from. It is not wise to set this to 0, skinning the bottom layer is likely to cause the bottom edge not to adhere well to the print surface.

Tips

Due to the very small Z axis moves skinning can generate as it prints the edge, it can cause the Z axis speed to be limited by the Limit plug-in, if you have it enabled. This can cause some printers to pause excessively during each layer change. To overcome this, ensure that the Z axis max speed in the Limit tool is set to an appropriate value for your printer, e.g. 10mm/s.

Since Skin prints a number of fractional-height edge layers for each layer, printing the edge last causes the print head to travel down from the current print height. Depending on the shape of your extruder nozzle, you may get higher quality prints if you print the edges first, so the print head always travels up. This is set via the Thread Sequence Choice setting in the Fill tool.

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