help fine tuning our printer please

the red print was soon before changing the spool.

the black print is after we changed the spool.

we don't think changing the spool is the issue. as you can see we are getting decent prints (our opinion). there appear to be issues that could use some adjusting.

comments and suggestions to help fine tune our printer is requested.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/02/2012 02:26PM by rthuey.

Have you measured the diameter of the filaments and adjusted that in your slicer?
How about adjusting the extruder temperature?

I have a black ABS filament that is 1.75 with a melting point at 235C and a green one that is 1.68mm/228C. If I print in green using the same configuration used in the green one, I get similar results.

Cheers,
Franklin

I would say you are printing too hot/fast and extruding too much material in both colors. Your prints can be MUCH better. No offense but those are reject quality prints to me.

Rarely do the print setting for on color work exaclty right for another color, even if they are from the same supplier. I use Skeinforge and have seperate profiles for each color and layer thickness I print. Slightly different temperature ranges and different filament diameters definetly affect printing.

Temperature settings? Print speeds? Slicing software? Are you running a cooling fan?

185 heater 65 bed

Slic3r 0.9.7 from help. oddly though when i go to slic3r settings in the upper right settings by where it says check for updates it says Version 0.7.1

added a pic that shows printer and filament settings

no cooler fan


is there a method and should we be establishing melting point of the different filaments when we start using them? getting our stock from ultimachine.

printing calibration cube currently - [www.thingiverse.com]

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/03/2012 01:28AM by rthuey.

so here are the pictures from the calibration cube

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printer specs: prusa mendel - ramps 1.4 - sprinter - j-head - wades extruder - slic3r 0.9.7

It seems to me that it is too hot for your filament.
I like to use the .5 thin layer from [www.thingiverse.com] to calibrate the extruder temperature. It is fast to slice and as it is thin, you can clearly see if the layers are bonding properly.

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Cheers,
Franklin Dattein

A cooling fan would help too, you are not getting enough cooling time between layers.

yeah you are printing way to hot go down 10- 15 degree and try again....

start with a temp were your filament start to ooze out a little from the nozzle (not alway the best method but its a start)


if you start printing dots or when your extruders starts to mis steps then you are too low and raise the temp by 5 degree and your in the ball park.
I have some filament on which i can print on 170.... or even lower