I think most people don’t realise how much print speed affects PLA texture and translucency. This was printed at a constant 210C in spiral vase mode (0.5mm perimeter), but with the print speed switching between 15mm/s for the glossy translucent look and 35mm/s for the matte, less translucent look. It looks even better in the flesh as I can’t get the shine to come through fully in a photograph.
No I didn’t switch speed by hand (although you could if you were patient enough) – I wrote a crude perl scrip to post-process the GCODE.
I actually think - at least with PLA - it’s much more related to the temperature. Speeding up decreases time at temperature in the hot end, slowing down increases it. I’ve had the same effect simply by varying my extrusion temp.
That said, speed 100% does impact print surface finish, so varying speed may make the effect more noticeable.
@John_Driggers Interesting. If the effect is speed of printing then it should happen pretty instantly. If it’s time at temperature then it’ll respond more slowly and fade between the two surface properties. I’ll have a play.
@Mark_Wheadon Good point - If I get back home soon I’ll have a play as well. I have a couple of pla’s that print with very different colors at different temps, but I’ve honestly not done a lot of changing it in the same print - at least not to achieve the effect you have.
Effects like this based on temperature have been demonstrated in the past. I think this probably has more to do with the effective printing temperature than with speed. If you’re running that slow, you’re probably running at the low end of printing temperatures for the material, possibly under 190C. With a low temperature, particularly, hot block residency time (which is inversely proportional to speed) will have a significant effect on the temperature of the plastic leaving the nozzle. Since you’re more than doubling the speed, I would expect this effect to be significant enough to affect the glossiness of the surface.
