Z axis wobble (Page 1 of 3)

This is from a .1mm print?

That's a weird one, you'd think you would see it in the .3 if it was from the z screw.  That .3 looks perfect.

the speeds stayed the same for perimeters and infill (75 for perimeters, 150 for infill), infill every 3 instead of every layer, didn't make cooling changes because its a large part. Otherwise, I did it in slic3r so the flowrates and that should stay relatively the same.

I should mention that the rod visibly moves back and forth while rotating, however i can't tell if its simply a bent rod, the fact that the top is unsupported, etc. It easily moves a 1/32 of an inch, and the banding roughly matches a 18 pitch thread.

im going to try running some 1" calibration cubes to verify the effect, so ill report back later with those. This isn't a deal breaker for me at all, but it does annoy me enough to warrant fixing. I've had the printer less than a week too, and being the novice that i am it may in fact be in slic3r, but I can't see any way that slic3r would create banding like this.

If the amount of Z movement is inconsistent, that might show more in a .1mm print.  If there is a .05 variation in how much it moves, that is a much bigger percentage of a .1mm layer than a .3mm layer.

Cubes are done, with the bewildering results I hate.
.3mm cube came out perfect, as expected.
.1mm with cooling cutting the speed down pretty heavily, 3 of the 4 sides were pretty much perfect, with the 4th side having visible, but not "feelable" banding. It's the same frequency as the electronics cover, but nowhere near the same depth. the picture attached is of the one side.
.1mm without cooling, therefore the same speed as as the cover, no banding (though very blobby, as to be expected).

all of this done with these settings on slic3r:
fill density .5, line fill, every 3 layers.
perimeters at 75mm/s, with external perimeters at 50%
infill at 125 mm/s, with solid infill at 50%
350mm/s travel
100% extrusion width for every layer except first (250%), which is also at .3mm

All this begs the question: what caused the banding earlier?

I would try the same test with skeinforge. I can't tell you why but when I slice with slic3r (any version) I get horizontal banding in the print. This doesn't happen when I slice the same part with a different slicer (skeinforge is my go-to when slic3r isn't playing nice). Try it and see - I'd like to know if it's just me.

I have the same phenomenon with slic3r, skeinforge works fine.

I have one of the replacement z threaded rods (thank you, Solidoodle) and now have a very straight z-axis. I still see this discrepancy between slicer and skeinforge. I'll post some comparative prints and their gcode later today.

In Slic3r - Printer Settings > Extruder1, what is your Lift Z set to?

If it is not zero, please change it to zero.

Not retraction, Lift Z.

Retraction is for getting rid of blobs. 'Lift Z' makes the z axis work a lot more. If it were turned on in Slic3r, instead of just moving down for each layer, it will be moving up down up down in the middle of each layer. This movement coupled with z backlash might be what is making the mess of your prints.

I'm very interested to get to the bottom of this.

In theory, once the g-code is made, the printer doesn't know the difference as to where it came from, which means there is something in the actual code that is slightly different.