Awful Eiffel

I am having a bit of a problem printing out a model of the Eiffel Tower. The thinest struts come out as little more than a string of blobs, but only slightly thicker struts and girders come out quite acceptably

[forums.reprap.org]

Apologies for the picture - which is the lowest boxed part on one orf the legs and shows the bad struts closest, inner struts just behind are quite good and bridging at the top looks fine.

The source I am using is [www.thingiverse.com] - Eiffel Tower , Split into 4 parts by beardface. I am pronting at 320% of original size - about 160mm across the base. Sliced by Slic3r 0.9.10b. I do know that I am getting a problem with strings and need to set more retraction on my bowden type extruder, and possibly a bit of Z lift, but this seems to be a different problem.

So far I played around with feed rated, extruder feed rates and temperature, but to no effect.

Any thoughts or critique on this will be welcomed.

Mike

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 06/19/2013 07:06AM by leadinglights.

To be honest, it doesn't look 'that' bad...

Not 'that' bad compared to what? I would be happier if the foreground strut had even a bit of structure.

Mike

You are focussing just on that strut, but judging by the quality in the other struts, I think it's just an error that happens once. Try to print it again! It doesn't look like you have any wrong settings.

Anyway, did you try playing with retraction settings? This will also minimize the strings between each pillar.

I agree that doesn't look that bad. I wouldn't mess with feedrates once they've been properly calibrated. My two suggestions would be using the Z-lift setting or some support material.

There is a high likelihood of the slicer not making code for all of it. I would look through the code in a viewer and then try using a narrower extrusion width to see if it creates more code. I sliced it much smaller with Kisslicer and gave the info on the required extrusions etc in this thread [forums.reprap.org]

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Spot on. Thanks Sublime.

I looked at the view on Repetier in the G Code Editor and it showed what was printed out to an almost sureal level of detail - like the first 4 layers of one of the struts being O.K., followed by unfilled bits.

Mike.

No problem your print was almost perfect and I did not think it was possible that the problem was mechanical with the results of the other struts and the fact you said it printed a little larger without problem.

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FFF Settings Calculator	Gcode post processors	Geometric Object Deposition Tool Blog
Tantillus.org	Mini Printable Lathe	How NOT to install a Pololu driver