Fine tuning Slicers Advanced settings.

Hello Im a relatively new user in the 3D printing community.

For the last year ive been working with a Airwolf3d v5.5 printer.
(I don't care for it that much the micro-controller isnt able to be expanded for a second extruder or even a fan for the original)

I've managed to get the settings to the point of doing some pretty good prints. But now im at the point of wanting to try and perfect my settings.

right now i have an XY print tolerance of .15mm but i want to try and drive that down to their advertised .04mm

Ive come across slicer tutorials for getting your initial settings started but havent seen any for perfecting all of the advanced settings.

like how to tell if to adjust extrusion width or how to find the best cooling settings.

Does anybody know of a guide for perfecting slicer settings?

XY quality depends mostly on the model and speed. Z can be set in slic3r.

I have an Airwolf original myself and I get pretty good results, better than some printers out there. When I want really fine results I make sure my model has enough geometry first, then I use my .35mm nozzle (smaller nozzle = better quality), then I set the speed slow like 40mm sec. Layer height (Z axis) I cannot get good prints below .15mm though Airwolf claims .10mm. But .15mm does a pretty darn good job.

Make sure your belts are tight or you get slop. Make sure your bed is very level. Make sure you have retraction set and cooling on (cooling can slow down print where a layer takes less than 15 seconds to print, if you don't do this it can all become a melted mushy mess).

I added an external controller for my heated bed as I found 110c causes edge shrinkage (curved inward on straight walls near the bottom), I run mine at 95c and it works great now. I also made a heated chamber for my AirwWolf using PVC pipe and some heavy plastic film used by painters to protect carpets. I then added a small heater to my heated chamber (Lasko personal desktop heater) as tall thin parts always cracked but now they don't when the hearer and chamber are on. You need to keep the part very warm evenly or parts will shrink while the bottom and top are hot and middle is cold and this will cause layer separation (cracking).

So yea, I made quite a few modifications to mine (also a ring of LED lights around the nozzle). But now I am pretty happy with it but I do want a larger build platform.

If you want to see some of the things I've made and my quality go here [www.thingiverse.com]

Yeah i did much the same. Added a voltage regulator to the heater bed cause it was over heating the part. Added a polycarbonate box over the printer to keep it warm.

mind sharing your .35mm settings mine keeps turning out as a jumbled mess.

Here is the prefs file I start with then modify as needed depending on what I am printing (figuring settings is an art form). Note that my temp in this is 245c a bit high but I think mine reads a bit low so be sure to adjust before using. This init is fairly slow (80mms) because most items I print I want good quality and speed is less important that surface quality.

80 mm slow? My .5mm nozzle runs at 60 perhaps im running it to slow myself?


That is one thing ive found on the printer it is possible to go to slow lol.

anyways. Back to the topic of the thread. Does anybody know of a guide to fine tune all of the advanced settings or could help in making such a guide?

Yea you can easily run 100 to 125 with .5

You'll have to play around with the settings depending on what printer and filament you're using but here is a fairly comprehensive guide on advanced settings: [blog.pinshape.com]

For cooling, in general you do not want to enable the fan or cooling for the first few layers as you want them to be hot to stick to the print bed. Especially with ABS which has a tendency to warp, you'll want to enable cooling for higher layers to avoid warping or overheating. Hope this helps!