I’ve been trying to tweak my Printbot Simple Metal settings and I get okay results but I feel like they should be better. The layers don’t seem as bound together (or at least as smooth) as they should be. Also the top didn’t flatten properly like the bottom did.
Would this be a simple thing like increasing my the flowrate of the filament? Temperature was set to 200C.
I’ve only had the printer for a couple weeks and am still trying to figure out all the settings.
Thank you for any help!
You could try to set the temprature up to 210 °C. (in Cura this is the default setting for printing PLA)
I had originally had it set to 210C but I was seeing some odd behavior there. I have changed other settings since then though so perhaps it was something else causing it. I’ll give that a shot. I’m using Slic3r if that matters. Thanks!
Does the companion cube still love you, that’s the real question…
I have had my printrbot simple metal for a few weeks too and my print quality is much better than this. I think it is just some fine tuning to be done.
Since your print has a lot of ringing, my guess is you are printing too quickly and the motor overshoots. Also, I have had bad ringing like this previously when my filament spool was not mounted optimally on bearings.
@david_e_sutz Until I have to destroy it…
@Dat_Chu I only have “natural” (colorless) filament. I did assemble it myself. I don’t know the exact speed but I have it turned down. I was going for quality over speed (I’m not sure how true that is or not).Since the cube was a bit bigger with larger perimeters I didn’t use the fan either.
I don’t have a holder for the spool yet. Need to work on that next. I had just been pulling enough loose on the spool for it to print a project. Works for the most part.
I’m sure it’s a setting somewhere because I had printed a Linux Tux penguin awhile ago and it came out perfect. Not sure what I had changed…
Also I notice that sometimes there is some residue on the gear (?) that pushes the filament through. I’m wondering if I over-tightened a screw.
How much residue. The gear chips the filament a bit so some residue is fine. I use a air compressor can and one quick burst should blow those out.
Not a ton. I just wanted to make sure it was normal and that I hadn’t made something too tight. Thanks for all the info everyone! I’ll try a higher temp and maybe kick the speed up a bit. I found a couple Cura configs online that I may try out too.
I can only suggest this (a good post about getting the Metal tweaked to run best) :
https://plus.google.com/+shanselman/posts/3mzYtiboVDD
I tried another cube using Cura instead of Slic3r and it came out worse. I tried extruding more filament to make the layers stick better and be thinner as a co-worker suggested but that didn’t work at all. In fact I can pull the whole thing apart.
@james_wolf I’ll go through this article and give it a shot. I’m wondering if it’s a temperature issue. While printing my second cube here I noticed some clicking coming from the extruder. There was still plenty of filament coming out, but I’m wondering if that had some effect. I had the flowrate set to 120 as per some people’s suggested I saw in a forum. I’m wondering if that was too high…
Again, thanks for the input. It really helps!
