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Flow calibration advice

Posted by cobrageek 
Flow calibration advice
July 01, 2014 10:59AM
I just got my printer up and running and it's great fun. I tuned the extrusion amount based on pulling through 100mm of filament, but then when I printed calibration parts with holes the holes were way small (X and Y are perfect BTW). I then found a thin wall calibration item and reduced the extrusion amount to get the wall thickness correct, but then it seems like the prints are a bit "thin". I've bumped it back up quite a ways (probably half way between the original and the setting that worked for the thin wall test) assuming that I could adjust in the slicer and play with "perimeter" settings and such based on the part but it still seems a little "thin". I'm also wondering if it's a running a little cool because it looks like the extrusion thickness isn't consistent. The edges look fine, but the top surface is where it looks thin and lumpy. BTW, this is PLA and I was running at 185 for the first layer and 180 for all others (and using slic3r. 0.4mm J-head tip with 0.3mm layer height).

Here are a couple of pics and I'm hoping for a few suggestions for getting things to look a bit better. They seem functional and reasonably strong, but look a little "sketchy". Thanks for helping a newbie. -Bret
Attachments:
open | download - arm.JPG (96.9 KB)
open | download - calib.jpg (85.7 KB)
Re: Flow calibration advice
July 01, 2014 06:18PM
BTW I did try doing some searches, but it was difficult to find anything that matched because description words can vary significantly. After posting I was able to find this great piece on the wiki [reprap.org], but it really doesn't have this exactly condition on the top. There are a couple that are similar, but not quite like this. I'll keep going with a couple other calibration guides too, but I was hoping someone could recognize the problem quickly from the picture.
Re: Flow calibration advice
July 03, 2014 11:10AM
BTW, just in case anyone else runs into this problem I think it turned out to be a speed issue. When I turned down the "Top solid infill" and "Solid Infill" speeds it seemed to improve significantly. I'll see if I can actually fill in the "Speed" section on the pictorial troubleshooting wiki page with this picture example.
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