I broke down and purchased Simplify3d tonight and printed a Benchy boat. The far left one is from before I stabalized my Anet A8 frame. The second one is after the modifications and Cura 14.07 mostly stock settings at 50mm/s. The third is stock Simplify3d at 50 mm/s. All of them were made at 195 degrees.
I can see already that the Simplify3d one has too thin of top and bottom and may be under extruding. I will have to goof off with it more tonight or tomorrow. Unless someone has some insight for us Anet A8 users.
Oh yeah… Why did the stack come out that way in the third one?
Had same Problem when i tried Simplify3D first time. Be carefull! Because Standard Extrusion Multiplier in Simplify3D is lower then 100%. For me was 90%! … I Changed this to 100% and everything went good…
Just bear in mind that for me (on my Kossel Mini, and on my Original Prusa i3 MK2), an extrusion multiplier of 0.9 (Kossel) and 0.95 (Prusa) seems to be right with Simplify3D. I ran for ages with an extrusion multiplier of 1.0 because I thought the same “hey, that must be wrong, I’ll fix that” and almost none of the print-in-place prints worked for me with the Kossel – dropping back to the default of 0.9 fixed that and made my prints noticeably neater. So it’s there for a reason – couldn’t get Simplify3D to explain why; I did try.
Like @Karl_Schlacher saud, Set the multiplier to 100% and take a look at the top/bottom layer settings. Once you get done goofing you will love it.
Different firmware/slicer combos make different assumptions about how extrusion multiplier is calculated. For example, Sailfish printers typically set E-steps to the theoretical value based on hob diameter and then use extrusion multiplier to calibrate in the actual extrusion. With Marlin printers, people more often extrude 100mm of filament and measure how much traveled. So you end up with different E-steps for the same hardware, and the slicer has to make up for it. 0.9 is a pretty good, safe starting point for most printers.
The only explanation I’ve heard is that the filament hobb can cut deeper into some plastics than others, and that alters the grip radius on the hob. I don’t know if that makes any sense because they do that to PLA and that’s one of the stiffer of the normal plastics.
I’ve done many kinds of plastics, normal and exotic, and my extrusion rate is almost always best set 1.0.
Figure out what works, but if you’re consistently off 1.0 by that much, I’d look into recalibrating the steps/mm on the extruder.
@Jeff_DeMaagd a sampling of values I use:
R2x:
ABS 1.01
Ninjaflex: 1.4
Clone R1:
PLA: 1.04
645 nylon: 1.05
PLA/PHA: 1.06
PETG: 1.04
These printers have nearly-identical feeders, so you can see how they’re pretty well clustered around 1 except for Ninjaflex.
@Ryan_Carlyle Wow 1.4 for Ninjaflex? I’ve noticed I’m under-extruding a little with Ninjaflex at 1.0 but you’ve really found it necessary to extrude 40% more material?
@Mark_Wheadon It’s not extruding more material, the drive gear is just rotating more, and the difference is getting lost in elastic shear of the rubber. I print NF pretty fast (5.4mm^3/sec or 30mm/s with big strands and no perimeter slowdowns for this profile), and the soft material travels less than the drive gear surface due to elasticity when you have a lot of extrusion force. (It’s gripping fine, but the distance between tooth bites is compressed…) I use a lower extrusion multiplier when I print NF slow.
@Ryan_Carlyle That makes perfect sense. Thank you.
@Ryan_Carlyle , have a look at Marlin’s Lin Advanced function.
You can now override the Slicers extrusion width, or customise it as you need it.
Cura uses different extrusion widths in the same move.
Slic3r has a consistent extrusion width.
I have no idea about Simplify3d though…
@Panayiotis_Savva - S3D uses a constant width. I have used S3D pretty much since I started printing. It just feels a lot smoother in use to me over other slicing software. With regards to Extrusion Mulitplier, it’s something I hardly touch. It’s set to 1 in S3D and it gets left that way. If I need to tweak things, I do it on the fly with the Flow rate.
@Ax_Smith-Laffin Just getting a feel for how others do things: so do you, in practice, notice under-extrusion for example and tweak it mid print? I can’t see how that would work as you’d already have a compromised print at that point? Or are you tweaking flow rate on the fly for other reasons?
@Mark_Wheadon - it’s generally only done on the first layer and only generally done for Exotics like Woodfill or XT-CF20 which require a little more flow. PLA, HDGlass, ABS & PETG are generally fine.
S3D does have constant width per object type but you can have different widths for infill and support than perimeters…
Thanks for all the input. I found out that my bed was screwed down out of square. That’s why the stack looks kinda odd. And 1.02 for the extrusion multiplier works for now. I will definitely be creating profiles for different materials.