Vertical walls are not solid

I don't know if I have to post this in Ormerod or Slic3r since I don't know if this problem is hardware dependent. My apologies if I made the wrong choice

I recently upgraded from Slic3r 1.0.0 to Slic3r 1.1.5 and since then some of my models have no solid walls anymore. Before I did not have this problem.
My Ormerod nozzle is .5mm
My model has vertical walls of 1.5mm exactly. However at some places the printer prints only 2 walls of approx .5 mm leaving a .5mm space, at some places it prints a wall of apparently 1.5mm, but both sides are not bonded. At most places it prints a solid 1.5mm wall as intended.
It seems completely random, but it's reproducable in the sense that printing the same .g file twice gives a consistent result, but I cannot find a reason why there is a difference. In the .stl all walls are 1.5mm.

Kind regards,
Leon

I had a similar problem printing a tube. I think it may be a rounding error is slic3r. I solved it by changing the model to make the thickness slightly more than 1.5mm.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

Thanks.

I've solved it that way before when I got a 0.5mm wall instead of a 1mm wall at random. I increased thewall to 1.05mm and then is ended up around 1mm.
But now I've got a wall that is drawn 1.6mm and is printed by 2 separate walls of 0.5mm as well.
Every time I change something in the model, something else unexpected happens in the final result and everytime I have to print 12meters of filament before I know.
I analysed the .stl with other software and it looks just fine. The dimensions seem to be accurate.

I think I have to go back to Slic3r 1.0.0. Probably have to replace the bearings then every 6 months because of the shaking of the machine, but at least I get a print that is solid.

Kind regards,
Leon

Maybe you should try slic3r 1.1.6 first, or at least look at the documentation to see what has been changed in that version.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

Using a gcode viewer gcode will normally give a reliable view of what is going to happen to walls before committing to a real print. I often do that when walls are thin and make any adjustments to the design to get it looking good in the gcode.

Yes, this appears to be a bug in Slic3r. It is not only 1.5mm walls, I get the same issue with 3mm thick walls. In one case 3 walls of an open rectangular box were filled, but the 4th wall was not, so it seems to depend on the position of the wall (all walls were the same 3mm thickness). I have aborted the print and re-sliced with Cura when I get that problem, but perhaps rotating the part by 45 degrees might be a workaround, I've not tried that.

I recently updated to the latest version of Slic3r and it did not exhibit the problem when printing a part that previously did, so maybe the bug is fixed.

Dave
(#106)

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/28/2014 01:19PM by dmould.

Hello Dave,

Indeed. The problem is not just with 1.5mm walls. I checked with the Gcode viewer as bobtidey suggested, and the walls are not filled (thus hollow) to a large extend. I also tested with a simple rectangular box with walls of various thicknesss and that one prints fine. So it is not the design or the printer and the problem is not consistent. I tested 1.1.5 and 1.1.6. 1.0.1 had other problems, but this worked well. Apparently Slic3r is broken since "linear fill" was introduced. I cannot find any "known bug" describing this issue, so I have little hope it is being fixed. At te same time I cannot understand how so many can use this software with these bugs. So my thought is I must be doing something wrong.

I don't have much time to spend the coming weeks, so I think I just quit getting even more frustrated and see if there is a solution after that. If I can contribute to that in any way I'm happy to do so. Otherwise I have to switch to Cura, but I read it's quite troublesome with plugins etc that are needed to get it to work with RepRap.

Thanks for your support and replies.

Kind regards,
Leon

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/30/2014 04:12PM by lvperlo.

Leon, I have a github fork of slic3r which means I get to see all the emails associated with bugs and feature requests (18 just tonight), for a free open source project it is better supported than the software written where I work.
If you submit an issue, with all the details requested by the guidelines I would be surprised if you didn't get a response of some sort very quickly, Alessandro appears to be very 'on the ball' with his software and working on it continuously.
If there is on,e he may even be able to suggest which version has a fix already.