Top layers messy - over extrusion?

Hi everyone. Id like some help to improve the printing quality of my top layers. As you can see from the attached image its pretty messy, and always has ridges in it. The corners of top layers (where the lengths decrease) always look messy and over extruded, but thats not always the case in the middle of top layers. Ive tried reducing the extrusion amount but it seems to go from this to extrusions that arent wide enough and so have gaps between them. Im using a E3D V6 Lite set at 0.5mm extrusion width. Ive calibrated my extruder settings spot on in regards to how much filament extruded.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated
Thanks

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/04/2016 10:55PM by ixlix.

Your gap fill is not defined, the lines on the perimeters look like they have gaps too.
I would do a total calibration of the extruder and stepping before anything.
After that check the extrusion with an object printed with solid infill at every layer - it that is not clean your settings or steps are off.

Is there still a bug in slic3r 1.2.9 regarding overextrusion on top layers?
I've read, people use an older version instead, but I didn't follow the story for a while.
-Olaf

Well, I am using volumetric extrusion with no problems....

My 1.2.9 has never done that, unless way over extruded. Or lots of excess heat on a very small part.

I don't think it's a slicer problem, I believe the over extrusion issue that's been reported was for gap fill. (v1.2.7 is an alternative to avoid that issue).

Quote
ixlix
Ive calibrated my extruder settings spot on in regards to how much filament extruded.

Have you printed a hollow (single perimeter) object and measured the wall thickness to calibrate the extruder's flow rate? Here is a good guide for this method. When using this method: when measuring the perimeter only measure the top layer, not the whole wall as they did, as any offset in the layers will make the measurement larger. This will give you a good basic calibration, then you can fine tune the extrusion multiplier by observing the overlap when printing solid infill (or just adjust infill overlap in Slic3r).

It's also quite difficult to diagnose this without knowing:
What is the nozzle orifice diameter?
What is the layer height?
What is the print speed?
What kind of filament?
What temperature?
Most of this can be answered if you post a link to the gcode.

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