Hi everyone,

First post here, but I've been building my 3D printer for the past 6 months in my spare time. Now that I have it built and printing, I want to get it working perfectly

I purchased this kit, the Mendelcraft Prusa XL 12x12:
[mendelcraft.com]

It uses a hotend that takes 3mm filament. I can print using 0.1mm layer height, but the prints don't come out that much finer compared to 0.2mm, which is what I was using before. I've leveled the bed, and continually level it after each print just to make sure everything is okay.

I was thinking of upgrading from an extruder that uses 3mm filament to one that uses 1.75mm filament. I mainly print in PLA. I've seen recommendations for the J-Head extruder, as well as the Budaschnozzle. I was also thinking of upgrading my extruder as well. I also want to look into other ways I can keep my bed leveled more often than not, but now I'm digressing

Do any of you have any recommendations on an extruder and hot end that will allow me to achieve high quality prints? Also, if you have any recommendations on my settings for Slic3r, I'd be eternally grateful. I understand that it's trial and error, but I'd like to make sure I'm on the right track.

Layer Height: 0.1mm
Perimeters: 3
Solid Layers: Top 3 Bottom 3

Fill density 0.4 (I'm going to do a test print with 0.5 tonight to see the difference)
Fill pattern: honeycomb (I was using rectilinear up until this afternoon, and am testing HC now due to recommendations by others)

Perimeters: 30mm/s
Infill: 60mm/s
Travel: 130mm/s

Filament Diameter: 3mm
Extrusion multiplier: 1

Extruder Temp 1st Layer 200 Other layers 195
Bed Temp 1st Layer 70 Other Layers 70

One other thing to note is that I have placed a thin glass panel on top of the metal bed that the heating beds are attached to so I can use the hairspray method while printing. I don't know whether or not that will have a huge effect, if any, on the Bed Temp settings and how they are working.

Please let me know if I can provide more information. Thanks so much for reading this long winded post

I am puzzled by you're having to level your bed so often. Once leveled, mine is fine for weeks. I used to have a problem with gravity slowly pulling the couplers downward on the stepper motors smooth shaft, but I solved that with this:
[www.thingiverse.com]

I also use lock nuts and springs on my bed screws, so that vibration doesn't loosen them.

I'm a little surprised you can print so hot for PLA. I found that much above 190 made the extrusion too low in viscosity, 'runny', and print quality suffered.

Hairspray shouldn't be needed. If you're printing PLA onto glass, and the glass surface is heated to 65-68C, adhesion should be quite good. Curling up will only happen if you have too much cooling air across the print during the first 4 or so layers. I set my ducted cooling fan to only 10% for the first 4 layers, and then up to 20% for the rest. Prints stick solidly to the glass, and pop off on their own when it cools back to room temp after the print is done.

I currently use a J-head nozzle of .5mm, but have thought about going to a .4 to achieve better detail. The smaller diameter comes with the trade off of longer print times though. I've had decent quality with .2mm layers.

Kevin