extruder thickness

As part of my calibration I printed the 0.5mm thin wall object from here: [www.thingiverse.com]

I tuned my esteps in Marlin such that when printed the wall was 0.51-0.53mm which I'm pleased with. It was 540 steps if that matters.

I then sliced some objects, herringbone gears so I can have replacements on hand for my extruder, but noticed that the three perimeter layers are actually three distinct layers. They have a very small gap between them. The gap is very consistant in size all the way around the gear. I then printed the cube again and measured the thickness, and it is right on what I had measured.

My sli3r settings are set for a 0.5mm nozzle, so why would this happen? Should I actually calibrate the esteps so the wall thickness is thicker?

thanks,
dave

you need to make sure the nozzle size is set correctly in your firmware.

Yes the nozzle size is set to 0.5mm, which is the correct size.

dave

that seems fine. you can calibrate till the cows come home. if you are happy with it then leave it alone. wall thickness will change on temp and speed of travel. the fact that it is 0.01-0.03mm off is negligible.

as for perimeter settings, it seems that flow rate is a little low, so you have an option. increase flow rate and increase strength,

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/23/2014 10:40AM by jamesdanielv.

I'm a little confused, maybe someone can enlighten me.

My nozzle is 0.5mm, and I have that set in slicer.
I calibrated my esteps by removing the hot end, marked the filament in 5mm segments and adjusted until I got 5mm when I said to extrude 5mm. Then printed this item: [www.thingiverse.com] It came out nicely.

I then printed the 0.5 thinwall cube, measured the wall thickness and further adjusted the esteps until I got close to 0.5mm. There was a big change here, I started at 850 and ended up at 550. The initial wall thickness wat 0.8mm.

Is there anything else I should be doing, or is there a setting in slicer that I have to set to adjust the extrusion speed to compensate for the travel speed? I was under the impression that this is what slicer does. Now slicer does print out speeds that are too fast for my z-axis when moving, but not printing, and these moves are limited by the firmware. I could never find a way to only slow down the z-axis for travel speed. It always impacted all axises.

Do I need to increase the esteps and just extrude more that 0.5mm thickness to ensure that the perimeter layers bond together making a stronger part, or is there a better way to accomplish this?

thanks again,
dave

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/23/2014 11:04AM by dpeart.

Your 0.5 thinwall cube isn't suppose to be 0.5mm

Your 0.5mm nozzle will have a default "extrude width" that will be bigger than 0.5mm

Slic3r automatically set's this, and it's based off your layer height.

So if you attempt to lower you E steps/mm to achieve 0.5mm when your width is suppose to be 0.8, you are now under-extruding and that's why your infill is all messed up.

What layer height are you using?

When you generate GCODE with slic3r it will say at the beginning what your extrude width is set for. This is what you want your wall thickness to be.

I think for my 0.5 nozzle for a 0.4 layer height I had something like 0.54 width?

When I went down to 0.2 layer, I think the width was close to 0.8mm


For example, my Greg Wades Extruder with 3mm filament. My Steps/mm are in the 800 to 820 range.

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 01/23/2014 12:07PM by ShadowRam.

OK, in that case I had it correct the first time and shouldn't have changed it. I guess I thought that the slicer would change the extrusion depending on speed to ensure the thickness specified by the nozzle. I did not know that it would change depending on slicing depth.

An easy fix.

thanks,
dave