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SoliForum - 3D Printing Community → Software & Firmware → Help with rafts
I've turned on "rafts" in Skeinforge", but it seems as if my printer bed is slightly too low for rafts and the first layer of the actual model. After that it seems perfect. I'm assuming I need to slice it with Skeinforge rather than Slic3r... what is the difference?
Just got the printer yesterday. Maybe somebody would help out with adding rafts?
Thanks!
Skeinforge and Slic3r are types of the software that generates g-code (the paths which the printer follows). Slic3r is significantly faster than Skeinforge since they were developed separately, and if you change a skeinforge setting it will only work if you slice with skeinforge. I believe that Slic3r has a raft option too under the "support material" part of the Slic3r settings. I would highly recommend using slic3r if at all possible for its difference in speed.
Ah, thanks you very much. Seeing some raft action now.
Still getting the same sort of thing, where the bed is too far away from the extruder and the raft looks awful, but the actual model looks good.
Make sure you have leveled your bed if you haven't yet. Use a hex key and the three screws below the kapton of the bed.
Balanced it, and in fact raised it a bit more than tutorials recommend. Currently printing a beautiful piece, certainly on track to be my best one yet. Thanks for the help. I'll be around with more questions in due time, I'm sure!
Glad I could help!
Here's a question: before I started messing things up in Slic3er the printer would cross-hatch to fill empty space (like the first layer). By cross-hatch I mean the diagonal filling it. So to fill in a 1-layer-thick square, it would make the outline and fill it in diagonally from corner to corner, at a 45 degree angle.
It's no longer doing that. I've tried all the top and bottom fill options (rectilinear, concentric, etc.), and I've been unable to restore the cross-hatch. Any ideas?
What is it doing instead with rectilinear infill now?
Currently has fill patter to honeycomb, but "Top/bottom fill patter" is rectilinear. Rather than the diagonal filling It's doing horizontal lines.
I'm frustrated out of my mind right now with this thing. I messed with the settings so much that I've reverted back to presets. My prints look less than great. I've played with just about every temp and nothing seems right. Layers aren't settling atop other layers smoothly, making awful wrinkles and a generally weak piece. The first layer stick fine, but it seems incomplete in that there are areas where there just isn't enough filament. Even with a very slow "small perimeters" holes look like ovals. I know it's supposed to take work to get it dialed in properly, but I've literally made no progress, and it's frustrating and discouraging.
Oh, and it's been shifting about 1cm in the z direction with long prints about 1/2 into them...
There have been many times I've felt that way about it too. I believe slic3r has a fill angle option somewhere. Unfortunately I'm away from the printer and on my phone for now. As for the too thin walls, try increasing your extrusion multiplier by .05 and see if it helps. If you have one of the newer solidoodle machines with a .4mm nozzle, I understand that the extrusion width needs to be set to .48 as well. If you were getting good prints before, neither of these fixes may work too well. You might want to look into KISSlicer as well. I use it for 90% of my prints and rarely experience issues with it. There are many threads on these forums describing setting it up. I haven't managed to get great circles yet either, so all I can reccomend is to try the official solidoodle perfect circle calibration video.
Wow, I had no idea that the extrusion width needed to be at .48. That certainly helped slightly. Solidoodle probably should have mentioned that.
I'm pretty much back to where I was when I opened the box, if not slightly better. I found the cross-hatch angle adjustment, but it was already at 45 degrees, and adjustments to that didn't seem to alter anything.
I haven't yet made a single piece that's good enough to sell (I sell RC car parts and have been having them printed for me). Every print has at least one major issue, be it oval circles, poor line stacking, etc. I'm printing pretty slow, so I would imagine it to be an issue with temp, flowrate, feedrate, or extruder speed. Do flowrate and feedrate need to be adjusted in Repetier under "Manual Control", or should they stay at 100?
I would reccomend not changing the feedrate and flowrate within repetier host in case you decide to use another piece of software to run your gcode. I stopped using repetier host a few months ago and have used octoprint ever since. It does not have feedrate and flowrate options, and since I never changed them in repetier,iswitching was as simple as dragging and dropping gcode files. The .48 is only for the newer .4mm nozzles. I have the .35mm version (arrived may 2013) so for my printer .42 is the correct width. I have no idea what slic3r is doing to not have the 45 degree infill... Maybe try downloading slic3r 1.0.
If you will be selling printed items, the slop nuts are an amazing quality improving upgrade. They're at the top of the hacks and mods section.
Figured out the skipping issue. Oddly one of the belts (suddenly?) became too taught. Most recent print came out well at .2mm.
I really appreciate all of your help. I'll look into Octoprint for sure.
Still frustrated, but have perhaps made some steps forward. With the exact same settings, sans temp, my ABS prints turn out noticeably better than PLA prints. Besides the horrible warping, artifacts and banding is nearly eliminated. Perhaps most importantly circles seem to be true to size. Any ideas why?
I would reccomend not changing the feedrate and flowrate within repetier host in case you decide to use another piece of software to run your gcode. I stopped using repetier host a few months ago and have used octoprint ever since. It does not have feedrate and flowrate options, and since I never changed them in repetier,iswitching was as simple as dragging and dropping gcode files. The .48 is only for the newer .4mm nozzles. I have the .35mm version (arrived may 2013) so for my printer .42 is the correct width. I have no idea what slic3r is doing to not have the 45 degree infill... Maybe try downloading slic3r 1.0.
If you will be selling printed items, the slop nuts are an amazing quality improving upgrade. They're at the top of the hacks and mods section.
Do you just set .48 width for everything in advanced? There's like 7 width settings
I set Default extrusion width to .48, first layer to 150%, support material to .25 (since I want this to be thin and easy to break away), and the others to 0 for default. Come to think of it, the three infill widths should probably also be set to .48. I'll test it.
I would be careful extruding with a width of less than your nozzle diameter. I extrude support at .35mm with the .35mm nozzle and cannot go much thinner without the support failing to stick to itself.
My experiences with PLA have not been great. It seems almost impossible to get good prints from it without a fan. It's much harder to find the temperature for good viscosity when using PLA as well. Since then, I print in ABS almost exclusively. If you want better prints with PLA, I would highly recommend printing a fan shroud for your nozzle.
I used this one on my acrylic extruder: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:39462
My 40mm fan just arrived today in fact.
In regards to #5 of the instructions (here: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:30828/#instructions), how does the adjusting make the fan mount parallel to the bed? Does the mount just slide on without glue/screws? Is it magnetic?
I believe there is a screw hole which rests on the acrylic. Using a screw with it allows you to tilt the whole duct assembly. It has been a while since I used the duct, however I never felt like the screw was needed. I never read the instructions either... oops.
I printed fan mount and zip tied to on since I couldn't figure out how it was supposed to mount. Regardless, I found little quality differentiation and removed it. That said, my prints are starting to look really great and I seem to have found a sweet spot with the Slic3r settings and .10 - .20 resolution. For the time being I'll probably stick to lower res prints since speed isn't a large factor, and the quality is superb. I appreciate all the help!
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