I’m using slicer and I can’t manage to get my tops to fill in. I’ve calibrated my e steps with a solid calibration cube, I think I’m even overextruding. This happens at both 100 and 200 micron printing. Here’s my settings of interest.
Perimeter 2
Top 2
Bottom 2
Infill .15 rectilinear
Solid infill threshold area. 30 (I was getting to heavy prints. Perhaps this needs to be lowered)
Extrusion width.
Default extrusion width. 0 (auto)
First layer 200%
Solid infill 102%
Top solid infill 105%
I’m at a loss. It seems that usually this is an under extrusion problem, but when I print solid infill, I sometimes get so much extruding that the nozzle is wiping away excess PLA, but other layers I have small spacing between lines. Maybe I just need to my extruder. It’s currently just a bearing pressed against the gear on my motor shaft. I’ve been procrastinating replacing it with a minimalist extruder.
So my question about top layers, on shapes that have a round gradual taper to flat, like the octopus, what does slicer consider a top layer? Is it any line that is exposed in the upward direction? Or is it any surface that is within a specific threshold angle to flat on top, and if so is there a setting?
I’ll give that a shot, the unfortunate part is that my printer is slow and getting to the top requires a couple hours. I don’t want to print too small either, as it doesn’t happen on tiny top surfaces… although the baby octopus is pretty small, but took a couple hours.
I’m also looking into trying kisslicer. Heard good reviews.
Do you have “generate extra perimeters” checked? If you only have X amount of perimeters, without that checked, steep overhangs will go beyond the previous layers perimeter and cause gaps like this. Make sure you’ve got the latest version of slic3r too, as this was broken a couple versions back.
Here is a small design of mine that has a curved top surface. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:100820 My first batches had a similar problem. Can’t remember how I fixed but might help shorten your troubleshooting time.
@ThantiK I do have generate extra perimeters checked. I have noticed it putting little islands of solid infill on internal overhangs. Seems to be right in the middle where it opens up. Going to try 20% infill and 4 top layers.
@Josh_Ajima Great sample part, this will help speed up my testing. Thanks
I don’want to start a slicing-software flame, but me and @Stefano_Pavanello experienced the same. Analyzing g code we moved to kisslicer. You’ll be scared of the interface but it works really good
@Christian_Filippi I just started fumbling with Kisslicer this morning. I’m having a hard time transitioning as all the settings are layed out completely differently. I’m beginning to understand what it means, as I tried printing the same baby octopus in kisslicer, but the first layer wasn’t thick enough. I finally found that bed roughness setting that I need to play with.
As for my “thinning hair” issue, I upped the infill to 20% and used 4 top layers. I used @Josh_Ajima advice and printed the 3D badge and it came out perfect, so I’ll try the octopus again.
As @ThantiK has pointed out to me in the past, I’m trying to get decent prints out of bad hardware. I really need to stabilize my bed, and fix my extruder, as I’ve been squeezing everything I can out of the slicing settings in an effort to procrastinate.
My (admittedly overkill) starting point is to set nr. top layers to >1mm (however many that is for your layer height). At .2mm layers, 5 top layers. Lower layer heights seem to need even more because that first bridging works so badly at low layer heights (for me) and all the subsequent layers just drop into nothingness. Keeping it excessive in solid layers does give really nice top surfaces for me, if your extrusion amount is very carefully calibrated.
