I've got everything dialed-in in S3D - line widths are exactly 0.48mm,

3D Printing
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1

I’ve got everything dialed-in in S3D - line widths are exactly 0.48mm, layer height is exactly 0.2mm, no blobs, no stringing, (almost) everything is overlapping perfectly, I couldn’t be happier…except for these internal circles and hexagons. Where I most want things tight and strong there’s a many-layer air gap. I’ve increased the Outline Overlap setting to 80%, it doesn’t help. This is a delta with 1.75mm PLA, 200C, 0.40 nozzle/0.48 line width, 0.2 layer height. I’ll dump all my settings in the next post.

Any ideas?

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c80d972b9d2a899c56209a011be95e4b.jpeg968×676 144 KB

2

; G-Code generated by Simplify3D® Version 3.1.1
; Mar 29, 2017 at 4:47:38 PM
; Settings Summary
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3

Sometimes I will see this result in a few places on an otherwise perfect print. Everything calibrates perfectly yet in a few spots I get a slight separation gap between shell layers. My solution was to increase the temp by 5 C. Gaps disappeared.

4

Did you try to decrease printing speed? According to this https://www.simplify3d.com/support/print-quality-troubleshooting/#gaps-between-infill-and-outline it could help.

5

Just increase the outline overlap in the infill settings. That will solve your problem. I run mine usually at 40%

6

@Michal_Prokes I read that, but I’m at 40mm/s already which is sorta slow for this printer, and everything else is printing beautifully. I’d hate to have to slow everything down further in order to guarantee my parts print right when my printer’s happy at 60mm/s.

I’m beginning to think the solution (at least for this print) is slic3r or cura…

7

@Jeff_Parish I’m giving that a shot, thanks…

8

@Maarten_Jacobs I’m already at 80%. I sorta think that’s not the right knob if I have to turn it up to 100% to get close. Might help treat the symptom but I want to find root cause. Though for some reason it’s not even helping the symptoms that much…

9

I saw that your extrusion multiplier is at 0.8. That is really low. My guess is that you are under extruding. Try raising that to .9 or .95. Normally if your extruder is well calibrated the extrusion multiplier should be 1 taking into consideration that the filament diameter is spot on, which isn’t always the case of course. I usually have it set at 0.95.

Also lowering the extrusion width to 0.44 (+10% of nozzle width) gives me better results than the auto width of S3D

Do a search for extrusion calibration on http://reprap.org. There are some really good step by step instructions on the subject.

In my honest opinion S3D is the best slicer out there and gives the best print quality compared to other slicers. But a well calibrated extruder is key to get a good print quality. http://reprap.org

10

@Maarten_Jacobs My extruder (pre-hot-end) is calibrated. The 0.8 multiplier is because the diameters of all my holes were smaller than they should be (3mm instead of 3.5mm) and the 0.8 got them closer without seeming to impact the overall quality. (I’m going to start a new post about that after a few more tests.)

So I can (barely) get infill to contact outlines with an extruder multiplier of 1.0 and overlap of 80%, but now my 3.5mm holes are coming out 3mm. Something’s still not right. Appreciate all the suggestions, though.

11

@Fred_Hamilton what kind of an extruder are you using? Bowden, direct? The tolerances aren’t just that precise on a 3D printer, especially not on very small features like a 3.5mm hole. If I need a precise hole, I add like .4 or .5 mm in my CAD software and if I can’t change the file I just drill them out with a drill bit. There’s a great article on 3Dhubs.com on designing for 3D printing and tolerances. This is the link https://www.3dhubs.com/material-group/prototyping-plastic

I think changing the extrusion multiplier to compensate for tolerances is not the right way as it also greatly affects print quality. It’s a bit the same as why printing a 2cm calibration cube to check for dimensional accuracy. If the cube turns out to be 2.2cm then it seems that your printer has a deviation of 10% but if you compensate for that and print a larger cube of 10cm then the changes are great that that cube turns out to be only 9cm.

I use Triffid Hunter’s Calibration Guide on http://reprap.org, especially paragraph 6 on extrusion width an layer height. Have a look at http://reprap.org/wiki/Triffid_Hunter’s_Calibration_Guide.

Also Tom Sanladerer’s tutorials on calibration are excellent. https://youtu.be/Mbn1ckR86Z8 and https://youtu.be/YUPfBJz3I6Y

To accurately calibrate my extrusion multiplier I print a 3cm cube with 2 perimeters, 0 infill and no top layers. You don’t need to print the entire cube. Just the first 5 or 6 mm are enough. Set your extrusion multiplier to 1. When the print is finished, measure the thickness of all 4 walls with a caliper and make an average of all 4 measurements. If my extrusion width in the slicer is set to 0.48mm for a 0.4 nozzle then ideally the thickness of the walls should be 0.96mm
If the measurement turns out to be 1.01mm it means I’m over extruding. So I devide the expected wall thickness by the measured thickness and that gives me the correct extrusion multiplier: 0.96/1.01=0.95. I print the cube again but this time with a 0.95 extrusion multiplier and measure the walls to verify the result and repeat the entire process. Usually after 2 or 3 attempts the wall thicknesses and extrusion multiplier is spot on.

I do this for every printing material I use and it helped me greatly to get dimensional accurate parts.

I hope this helps.

12

I run all my mechanical settings at the calculated values and my extrusion multiplier at 1 to match. I then use a clip system for calibrating my filament (Fits loose and I’m under extruding, tight and I’m over) and an accuracy block to gauge ratios of dimensional stability in the three axis directions for larger prints. The only thing I change on a spool of filament per its calibration is the nominal diameter and the temperature. I get interchangeable parts with tolerances at or tighter than 0.1mm coming off multiple printers with different calibrated filaments. With a .2mm clearance designed between parts I know I will be within the tolerance of the printer and get an accurate fit. For a small hole like 3.5 I would size it at 3.7 - 3.9 and it will print out really close to 3.5.

Here are the calibration files I use: