If I could get some advice. I’ve completed assembling a Printrbot Simple. I am getting some artifacts on the prints. I’ve lowered the temp, tightened the belts/strings but these artifacts remain. I was having warts on the prints and increased the retraction which took care of the warts.
If you’re talking about the top layers, that’s from the hot nozzle being in contact for too long without the chance for the plastic to cool.
An additional fan (I use a small desktop fan), and/or printing more than one at the same time will help immensely.
The tops, its trying to print too fast and its not got enough time to cool. I think you can make it take a break between small layers to provide cooling time.
Can you adjust the rate of the head? I suspect that may help. I haven’t had very good luck printing with ABS on our #3DSystems #Cube printer but I suspect it would be better at a slower rate. I switched to PLA and most of my prints are pretty good. Which material are you using?
ps the warts just snap off usually with a finger tip.
Next I would verify the current setting on the stepper drivers. Usually printers have a pot on the drivers to adjust it. Just google how to adjust it on your printer there should be all the info you need. It was this for me.
Does your printrbot simple have a fan? Seems like the new models do.
Temperature could still be high, greater retraction will hide that factor a bit but if you have a lot of oozing you can get threads. Last time I had that amount of threads I had to drop 5 degrees C.
wow, that was a lot of response quickly, awesome, thanks!!
I’ve only been playing with this a couple of days. I’m still on the bit of PLA that came with the printer.
The printer does have a fan which I had to increase to 75% minimum or it would just moan and not start. I dropped to 193deg, which seemed to help with the stringing. I tried 190 but the hobbed bolt started to chew the filament, but that might have been unrelated.
I am using repetier-host like in the documentation which uses slic3r.
I think the printrbot has current pots, I’ll look into that too
Michael , this group rocks. The guys that run it are who I ask for help too when I get stuck. Welcome bud. btw those really are not bad for first prints. It looks really good at the shoulder level. Dont be discouraged.
ok, I had a chance to print another robot. I dropped the temp another 2C and slowed everything except the infill and printed it with octoprint. the two octoprint robots look identical, all the artifacts are in exactly the same place but they appear to be more pronounced in the last print. I can’t find a setting in slic3r to slow just small layers and cura is giving me a hard time on 64bit linux but I’m going to keep working on that
On some slicers there is a minimum layer time setting, try to play with that. Another option is to manually slow down the print when it gets to the end. I’ve gone as far to drop the speed to 20% just to prevent artifacts.
So, cura solved the problem. I didn’t have to drop the temp, the speed or anything. I copied all the settings that I could to cura and the prints are night and day different. there are zero artifacts in the cura print
time to print your self a shot glass 
(theres a showing off section)
@Michael_Schmid So the issue was the slicer and not the print settings?
There are still some artifacts in the front where the M is , but its considerably better. Hard to notice even.
@Ralph_Apgar absolutely, I went back to all the settings that I started with in slic3r that made an awful print and it came out great in cura
@Addidis_no I just wish I could attach a picture to show the result. I guess I need to make a new post
I’ve also experienced better prints through Cura