Slic3r vs. Cura

I tested out Cura with my new set-up and I'm positively surprised about the results.
Slic3r is working well but there are some parts of the Gcode generation which leave some ugly artefacts. Especially the change from perimeters to infill always leave a mark on the outside.

Slic3r, still having troubles generating clean perimeters

There is still an argument to be made about Cura missing a lot of the fine detail function. No acceleration settings, no manual control and the simplification of giving only a outer wall thickness and not a number of perimeters are a bit to simplistic for my taste.

But the results speak for themselves.
Except for the little blobs, degenerated layer and bigger gaps in the perimeters didn't happen in the Cura printed (golden) parts. I will give Cura more tries in the future.

Cura, overall much more consistent look

The holy grail of layerheight .1mm

With my new and improved setup I dared testing how .1mm layer height would look like.

Results are mixed, for some reason the model rips itself apart. I also get the feeling that I'm hitting the lower extrusion speed limit if something like it exists.

First I tried normal speeds (30-40mm/s) with otherwise normal settings and furthermore reducing the retraction to 1mm @ 40mm/s.

Then I tried to increase the output by raising the the layer width to 300%, that looked better.

Pushing this even higher to 400% width and 0 retraction made it almost perfect. This is a simple test piece and I haven't managed a complexer piece yet.

Stability mod part 1

I finally build Masos stability mod (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:171418).

I replaced the printed arm with 40x20mm rectangular aluminum profile and used a simple L bracket to connect it to the carriage (grey). The wobble is gone now, but the parts were not printed very precise and therefore the carriage doesn't slide very well on the straight rods. I'm waiting for normal linear bearings to arrive.

Same old, same old.

I had hoped once I bought a high-end hotend I'd get good prints, but the Eventorbot frame is still holding me back.
Although much has gotten better such as the solid infill and surfaces

Left .3 and right.2 mm layer height

However I'm still puzzled by the gaps in the walls.

It looks like parts of the wall just curl upwards. However if I see it during printing I cant really see a wobble it just curls up like it doesn't want to stick on the layer beneath. It also is connected to the layer width, which I had down to 120% for different reasons but it appears that 150% reduces the number of gaps visually.

One glimmer of hope is that the gaps appear to be only in places when it wobbles towards the inside, all outward wobble have not gaps.

I can't really imagine that the bed is jumping up and down when the general wobble is only in the x-y direction, but nothing is impossible.

I'm implementing a stability mod at the moment, so we'll see where this leaves us.

Fine thread Z axis - succes

I am carefully optimistic to have managed one of the main Z axis problems.

With the original 5/16" threaded rod I had one deteriorated layer for every rotation the rod did. Which resulted in a gap every 1.4mm. I still dont exactly how this happened but there must have been something in the thread which would cast the extruder to not lay down material well.

Before with 5/16" threaded rod

Here you can see how I not only get a gap and an upwards curled filament line but it also looks like the extruder stuttered.

After with M8 fine thread

Now this looks much better. Since the filament is half transparent they layers are much more visible and the main bed wobble is still visible but the whole wall look much more uninterrupted.
With better quality filament (I really don´t recommend buying "Jet PLA") and a solid color I might be able to actually print decent quality.


Coming up: Speed testing. I want to reach an accelerated 80 mm/s and the print parts to change the whole Z axis assemble, but the fine thread will definitely be a part of it.