1 Topic by Jason (edited by Jason 2012-11-02 16:11:46)

  • Jason
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Topic: Increasing print quality - Settings and/or calibration?

What I am starting to realize is that printing is almost an art where each print will have specific challenges that must be over come by changing settings in your slicer.  This also seems to be the largest hurdle as I am having difficulty associating any specific setting with the problems I see in my prints.

Below is a yoda I printed from http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:10650 and I believe my first mistake was printing this Yoda instead of one of the "Lite" versions. 


What settings or calibration should I change to clean up the gaps?

http://www.soliforum.com/misc.php?action=pun_attachment&item=268&download=1
http://www.soliforum.com/misc.php?action=pun_attachment&item=270&download=1

Are there any tutorials available that show pictures of  bad prints and talk about what settings or calibration could help fix the specific issue?


I am using standard firmware and Skeinforge (I can't upgrade my firmware... waiting on a new ATMega chip).

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2 Reply by jooshs

  • jooshs
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Re: Increasing print quality - Settings and/or calibration?

Ian has a great reference for your settings when slicing at...

http://solidoodletips.wordpress.com/

Over here, I have posted my settings in Slic3r for Yoda and I did not use the lite version...

http://www.soliforum.com/topic/437/yodas/

It definitely looks as though you could use more perimeters.  Additionally you can slow down your printing speed around the perimeters.  Take a look through some of this stuff to get more of an understanding of how slicing works.  You are definitely correct in saying that different pieces are different prints and it turns into a bit of an art form... I have about 10 different slicing profiles saved now to address the different needs of different prints.

3 Reply by Jason

  • Jason
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Re: Increasing print quality - Settings and/or calibration?

Thanks, I'm going to try your settings now...  All my attempts at using Slic3r have failed so far with various problems.

4 Reply by jooshs

  • jooshs
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Re: Increasing print quality - Settings and/or calibration?

Jason wrote:

Thanks, I'm going to try your settings now...  All my attempts at using Slic3r have failed so far with various problems.

The things that would be different are your filament diameter and your flow rate... You can check these without updating firmware and adjust for your printer...  It might print significantly differently depending on your abs and default calibrations

5 Reply by solijohn

  • solijohn
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Re: Increasing print quality - Settings and/or calibration?

Printing is indeed an art. We have seen some significant variation in actual versus advertised filament diameter from many manufacturers. You have to be ready to move with these kinds of challenges.

Former Solidoodle employee, no longer associated with the company.