Feature Suggestion: Alternate Solution for "Gap fill"

Prior to updating to 0.9.8, I was struggling with Slic3r trying to infill small gaps. It would cause huge amounts of vibration, and lots of excess material was building up in those areas. When I discovered the Gap fill setting in the speed menu, I rejoiced, thinking I had found my salvation. While reducing that speed value did indeed reduce the vibrations slightly, it unfortunately did not reduce the material build up.

I've tried setting it to zero, but I'm not a fan of the big empty gaps in my parts. So I got to thinking: wouldn't it make more sense to have the infill setting switch automatically to concentric for small gaps? Alternately, the perimeter could be expanded to include these gaps, that way the infill would be in line with the perimeter, and not have to go back and forth to fill the gaps.

Does anyone know how hard this would be to implement? Also, if there is already a better solution to this problem, I'd love to hear it.

Thanks,

Kris

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/20/2013 01:41PM by Kris@USD.

I also see too much plastic deposited where it fills small gaps.

In my mind the simplest thing would be a manually adjustable parameter that lets the user select the target infill percentage in small gaps, similar to regular infill. Right now it looks like it aims for 100% fill, which ends up with way too much material after a few layers.

Just thought that I'd say I have the same issue with over filling smaller gaps or just ridiculous amounts of itty-bitty moves that probably would work better in a concentric move instead. The ability to take control of smaller features on a not necessarily small item a little better would be very beneficial on the overall quality of a part without sacrificing so much speed or strength.

On a couple occasions, I've had an entire print ruined by the overfill. The nozzle keeps colliding with the blobs that form over small gaps, and if the blob is big enough, the collisions will cause the printer to skip steps and offset the rest of the print job. I really hope this gets fixed in a future version. In fact, I edited the title to be similar to the other request topics, in the hopes that this gets seen.

Slic3r 0.9.8 is leaving gaps in my thin-wall part. It will complete the concentric perimieters and partially do concentric infill, but then jumps and leaves gaps. The discontinuous tool paths are also troubling.

Eugene

Eugene, you don't have "gap fill" under the speed settings set to zero, do you? It's hard to tell from the picture you posted.

Also, you might want to create a separate topic in the forum. It might get your issue addressed sooner.

No, the infill speed is set to 100 mm/s, the default recommended for the Aluminatus Trinity 1.

I'll start a new topic.

Just thought I'd post a little update: I've been playing with these settings, trying to get a print that isn't completely ruined by the overfill in small gaps, and I realized that my overall print quality is getting worse. I've seen this before, so I knew to check my belts. Both the X and Y belts are losing tension. So either the vibrations from the small gap infill or the collisions with the small gap overfill is causing my belts to loosen. The more I play with this the more I realize how big of problem it really is. I'm surprised this hasn't been brought up more. Does anyone know if there's some sort of magical fix for this issue?