@John_Car Your profile setting are preference, and your shell thickness is ridiculously low, I’m assuming there’s a typo since you can’t extrude something thinner than 0.4mm (with stock nozzle). Aquanet is what I use. I just use standard rubbing alcohol to clean my bed; it’s much easier to use, cheaper, and less hazardous.
Those are stock profile settings and I print both ABS and PLA with those settings and the parts come out perfect. What can I say. I think the company knows what they are doing. Make sure you use Cura with their profiles. Alcohol leaves a film. Again just doing what they are telling me in the prep video.
@Cornelius_Wiens kapton tape is great but PEI is even better if you are printing both ABS and PLA. No additional adhesive required. Looking at your setting it seems that you are running a really high temp for PLA. My printerbot works best at 195. More than that and I get too much oozing which can make the tops layers ugly. Also I enabled z height retraction of 0.3mm. This prevents any dragging through top layers that got over extruded. Finally I reduced the infill width from default (100%) to 90%. Now my prints come out great. I am using repetier host though so I’m not sure everything can be translated between it and cura.
@Guy_Bailey 195 is kinda low but probably not unacceptable, what brand filament do you use? Z height retraction and reducing infill width should be unnecessary if you have your E steps calibrated properly.
I currently use Zen toolworks and Hatchbox for PLA and ABS. My steps are calibrated property but I have had a difficult time getting my top layers to look good. None of my issues were as pronounced as the issues in the pictures but making those two changes solved the issue for me.
@Guy_Bailey it may also be Z offset
Yes. Z offset can play a part in it as well. If the hot end is too low you can get a lot of build up by the end of the print. But his doesn’t look like it’s too low from the bottom pic. Not too much smoosh any way.
You definitely need to confirm your e steps are good first. Once that is done you can start tweaking other settings.
@Kristijan_kolak So I’ve finally been able to get back to my printer, my extruder turned out to be already calibrated. I extruded 100mm, then 70 and 30 and each time it extruded exactly that amount to the teeth.
The only thing I did was take multiple measurements of my filament and updated Cura with the average which was 1.764
I’ve been printing test pieces all day and the results are different from part type to part type. The Superman shield always comes out with a somewhat rough and dragged final finish, but a round part with a round peg in the middle always comes out much better on it’s top layer, and that’s with the same settings for both parts, I even printed them together and the results were the same.
And both parts have a straight top with no curves.
@Cornelius_Wiens Might be the slicer. Try KISSlicer or Slic3r with the correct profiles and see if you get the same results.
@Adam_Steinmark Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind. My plan is to try other slicers once I’m a little more familiar with the printer and slicing in general, I like Cura for my starter slicer, it seems fairly straight forward.
@Cornelius_Wiens Cura is my go-to slicer but once I upgrade my desktop to Win 10 I’m purchasing Simplify3D.