quality issues

Hi, I have some questions about the quality of the print outs. I am not sure if it ia because over/under heated extruder/hot bed. And I am also not sure whether it has the to do with the quality of the filament.On the holy.jpg, why are there holes in the supposedly solid area? And on gaps.jpg, what causes the gaps between layers? Also the smoothness, the side that sits on the hotbed comes out nice an smoth but the side on the top seems to be very rough. These printed out objects are the models I made from Blender, is there something I need to do which can improve the print outs? in the .stl Thinks.

What Slicer are you using?

Either case, I have found if you edit your nozzle diameter setting or default extrusion width depending on the software your using, can fix some issues. Really for me ends up being what I am printing and doing a little math. So lets say the wall width is 2mm and you have your perimeters extrusion width in the Gcode is says .4mm (this info is in the top section of Gcode before movement codes). Anyhow so what happens in that case is the wall is 3 lines thick leaving you with gaps in the the extrusion. The reason is the slicer has the lines a little thicker than the nozzle size of extrusion width. So in my case in the program Slic3r I set my .4mm nozzle to .39 and set my default extrusion width to .39 and then it always prints the walls as tight as possible.

Matter Control slicer I set nozzle to .39 and it sets the width to 100% automatically so .39.

So the math part is if your model has a number that you can not divide my your nozzle width you will get those gaps, so sometimes I will scale it a super small amount to make the wall thickness come out correctly after slicing. Making your own 3d projects, you can design them for your printer.

Quote
AquaticsLive
What Slicer are you using?

Either case, I have found if you edit your nozzle diameter setting or default extrusion width depending on the software your using, can fix some issues. Really for me ends up being what I am printing and doing a little math. So lets say the wall width is 2mm and you have your perimeters extrusion width in the Gcode is says .4mm (this info is in the top section of Gcode before movement codes). Anyhow so what happens in that case is the wall is 3 lines thick leaving you with gaps in the the extrusion. The reason is the slicer has the lines a little thicker than the nozzle size of extrusion width. So in my case in the program Slic3r I set my .4mm nozzle to .39 and set my default extrusion width to .39 and then it always prints the walls as tight as possible.

Matter Control slicer I set nozzle to .39 and it sets the width to 100% automatically so .39.

So the math part is if your model has a number that you can not divide my your nozzle width you will get those gaps, so sometimes I will scale it a super small amount to make the wall thickness come out correctly after slicing. Making your own 3d projects, you can design them for your printer.

Thank you very much for you advice. Between the great hurry to assemble the printer and a crash course in create models in Blender, I have completely overlooked the settings in Slic3r. Now that I looked into the settings in Slic3r, some of the defaults are just wrong for my printer. For instance, the nozzle size was set to 5mm while mine is 0.4mm and the filament was set to 3mm whnile mine uses 1.75mm.
As you can tell, I am completely noob to 3D printing, I suppose it takes time to play around to find the right settings. But in general what would you recommend if I just need a tidy but solid print out?
There are something in the Slic3r setting I don't understand how it really affect the print out even tho I read the manual. Here are a bunch of questions:
In Print Settings, Layer height, does it mean the winner the layer the more solid the print out? Perimeters (minimum) Does it mean the small the better? What about Pattern Spacing?
In Filament Settings, What is the purpose of Extrusion multiplier?
In Printer Settings, Retraction meaning?

Excuse me for these dumb questions, but I really appreciate any suggestions. Thanks again.

Hi, dumb questions do not exist, however, I would like to encourage you to search more for answers there is a lot to find about Slic3r settings, for example here:
[richrap.blogspot.nl]

Go through all the parts (1, 2 and 3) and you will be good to go a 100%.

I noticed you opened up a couple of new topics lately and I think most of these topics could easily be answered by searching a little bit. Of course, you should not be afraid to ask

Good luck!

---

http://www.marinusdebeer.nl/

So slicers, there are ton of them out there, and I don't want to cause a war in here lol. Anyhow so here is my opinion, choose the one dpending on the job. I started in Silc3r and Repetier. Pretty good for all around things. When you start printing objects that need support, then I moved to another slicer MatterControl, because the support it does has more settings to make it remove easier. Please don't be offended if you say something you already know.

So starting with Slic3r sounds good to me, pretty steep learning curve but has a ton of options. So the questions, I will go through my settings, since you sound like your using a similar setup.

In Print Settings, Layer height = (0.2) its the height of each layer of platics, so when the printer is starting the next layer it moves up the Z axis the amount you choose here. It is also called the resulution of the print because a thinner layer height you see less imperfections in the print. So a good middle ground is .20, also this value can not exceed your nozzle size.

First Layer Height = (0.39) I set this here to make sure my first layer prints as tight as possible, the bigger you make this value it will space out the print.

Perimeters (minimum) = (4) This one means how many perimeters it will print before filling the object, the bigger this is the more solid the outside shell will be. I have mine set at 4, which is a little high, but compensates for having a lower fill percentage, meaning I can go lower in my fill because the shell is harder. The option right below is solid layers, I have this set to Top = 4 Bottom =4, same thing as the Perimiter value, but the top and bottom of filled pieces

Pattern Spacing = (2.5) I would stay with the defaults, this is for support material, essentially the bigger you make that value it will make it gaps between the strings of plastic bigger. So if you using a raft which is carpet of plastic it prints on top of to compensate for not leveled printbed or to make it stick better. The support it little scaffling that it print next to your print to hold up pices that overhang.

Extrusion multiplier = (1) okay this means 100% of how much plastic will be pushed through the nozzle based on what it calculates out. I use this to calibrate the extrusion, which helps explain this better. On the filament coming in the extruder make a measurement from a good refernce spot on your extruder 100mm and mark it. Then use your PC to tell it to extrude 100mm then look at your mark. You can play with this value to get that perfect. Also when your done if it is way far off you may want edit EEPROM. Check out this LINK

Retraction is when the printer is moving from one position to the next, it will reverse the extruder just a little bit to keep the plastic from oozing out all over. less strings. But if you make the value too high you will end up with weak spots in your print, little bubbles form. So I have mine set at 2mm, but if I am printing something I really want for solid I turn it off by setting to 0 and deal with a little of mess but super solid print.

Think I got all your questions covered, but there are a ton more settings. Experiment and have fun, I had allot of laughs when I would set something really wrong and just look at the crazy thing I printed.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/22/2014 11:48AM by AquaticsLive.

Quote
AquaticsLive
So slicers, there are ton of them out there, and I don't want to cause a war in here lol. Anyhow so here is my opinion, choose the one dpending on the job. I started in Silc3r and Repetier. Pretty good for all around things. When you start printing objects that need support, then I moved to another slicer MatterControl, because the support it does has more settings to make it remove easier. Please don't be offended if you say something you already know.

So starting with Slic3r sounds good to me, pretty steep learning curve but has a ton of options. So the questions, I will go through my settings, since you sound like your using a similar setup.

In Print Settings, Layer height = (0.2) its the height of each layer of platics, so when the printer is starting the next layer it moves up the Z axis the amount you choose here. It is also called the resulution of the print because a thinner layer height you see less imperfections in the print. So a good middle ground is .20, also this value can not exceed your nozzle size.

First Layer Height = (0.39) I set this here to make sure my first layer prints as tight as possible, the bigger you make this value it will space out the print.

Perimeters (minimum) = (4) This one means how many perimeters it will print before filling the object, the bigger this is the more solid the outside shell will be. I have mine set at 4, which is a little high, but compensates for having a lower fill percentage, meaning I can go lower in my fill because the shell is harder. The option right below is solid layers, I have this set to Top = 4 Bottom =4, same thing as the Perimiter value, but the top and bottom of filled pieces

Pattern Spacing = (2.5) I would stay with the defaults, this is for support material, essentially the bigger you make that value it will make it gaps between the strings of plastic bigger. So if you using a raft which is carpet of plastic it prints on top of to compensate for not leveled printbed or to make it stick better. The support it little scaffling that it print next to your print to hold up pices that overhang.

Extrusion multiplier = (1) okay this means 100% of how much plastic will be pushed through the nozzle based on what it calculates out. I use this to calibrate the extrusion, which helps explain this better. On the filament coming in the extruder make a measurement from a good refernce spot on your extruder 100mm and mark it. Then use your PC to tell it to extrude 100mm then look at your mark. You can play with this value to get that perfect. Also when your done if it is way far off you may want edit EEPROM. Check out this LINK

Retraction is when the printer is moving from one position to the next, it will reverse the extruder just a little bit to keep the plastic from oozing out all over. less strings. But if you make the value too high you will end up with weak spots in your print, little bubbles form. So I have mine set at 2mm, but if I am printing something I really want for solid I turn it off by setting to 0 and deal with a little of mess but super solid print.

Think I got all your questions covered, but there are a ton more settings. Experiment and have fun, I had allot of laughs when I would set something really wrong and just look at the crazy thing I printed.

Wow, AquaticsLive, thank you so very much for such an indepth explanation, this really helps me to jump start and continue to experiment! Please allow me to buy you a X'mas beer!

Quote
Ohmarinus
Hi, dumb questions do not exist, however, I would like to encourage you to search more for answers there is a lot to find about Slic3r settings, for example here:
[richrap.blogspot.nl]

Go through all the parts (1, 2 and 3) and you will be good to go a 100%.

I noticed you opened up a couple of new topics lately and I think most of these topics could easily be answered by searching a little bit. Of course, you should not be afraid to ask

Good luck!

Thanks Ohmarinus for pointing me to the right direction.