I'm a bit stumped, and am looking for advice. I have an extremely old (Circa 2015) Craftbot Plus. It's hardly any parts of the original unit, kept alive with custom parts out of just spite. I use cura as my slicer, and it works fine for my needs. Recently, my kids have wanted to print custom keycaps. This is a difficult FDM print to begin with, and my old hardware isn't doing me any favors; it might be impossible. That being said, my prints turn out good, except for the tiny details in the actual stem. The picture is attached of various settings; I've tried a ton of stuff. I can share a cura profile, but the gist is I'm printing in PLA and have experimented with 195-210 degrees, .1mm layer height, line widths between .175-.2mm, various speeds, minimum speed and minimum layer duration, I've disabled ironing, and I've played with retraction. I'm kind of stumped, and am wondering if anyone has things I should try.
It's a bit hard to see in the photos what is actually going on, photographing glossy black plastic isn't easy.. Looks like large part of the print has some kind of patterning to it, kind of as if the nozzle is vibrating a lot. Maybe not relevant to the problem you're having, just thought it looked strange.
Have you calibrated filament flow rate? I can't say for sure from the photo, but I think there are some things that look like they could be over-extruded
Can you share a screen cap of the mesh so we can see what it supposed to look like? It is difficult to see what the center is supposed to be.
One thing I can see in your print, it is looks like your hardware struggles with arcs or you've configured cura weirdly to not use arcs.
If the center bit is supposed to hold a T-shape (like a philips head screw driver), you probably need to play with the number of walls vs fill (i'd probably make that all walls).
I'm sure you can do it on that old hardware; I have an old #RigidBot from the year prior to yours which is almost completely original parts, and it can (prolly even with a 0.4) print that level detail. You might want to look into keeping it alive with more than just parts though. I loaded #klipper on that RigidBot ~2018 and it made a huge difference in both performance and capabilities. Bang-on calibration is key to getting high detail; as 'ffhein' said, they all three look a bit over-extruded, in the corners mostly. Try using other slicers too, #SuperSlicer or #PrusaSlicer have all the switches and dials for ye te play with.
You might wanna look into how the model is getting sliced before you fire it off. From the patterning on the tops of the outer rings, I'm guessing yer trying to print em with infill, a wall that thin will print far cleaner a
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I'm sure you can do it on that old hardware; I have an old #RigidBot from the year prior to yours which is almost completely original parts, and it can (prolly even with a 0.4) print that level detail. You might want to look into keeping it alive with more than just parts though. I loaded #klipper on that RigidBot ~2018 and it made a huge difference in both performance and capabilities. Bang-on calibration is key to getting high detail; as 'ffhein' said, they all three look a bit over-extruded, in the corners mostly. Try using other slicers too, #SuperSlicer or #PrusaSlicer have all the switches and dials for ye te play with.
You might wanna look into how the model is getting sliced before you fire it off. From the patterning on the tops of the outer rings, I'm guessing yer trying to print em with infill, a wall that thin will print far cleaner as just shells. You could use the same/similar method to clean up that center post as well. Maybe give both a test with only shells and/or concentric infill to see which might work better. There's so many different combinations of settings you could use to get this working, I have no doubt you'll stumble on the one that works for your printer.
ffhein
in reply to surfrock66 • • •It's a bit hard to see in the photos what is actually going on, photographing glossy black plastic isn't easy.. Looks like large part of the print has some kind of patterning to it, kind of as if the nozzle is vibrating a lot. Maybe not relevant to the problem you're having, just thought it looked strange.
Have you calibrated filament flow rate? I can't say for sure from the photo, but I think there are some things that look like they could be over-extruded
okwhateverdude
in reply to surfrock66 • • •Can you share a screen cap of the mesh so we can see what it supposed to look like? It is difficult to see what the center is supposed to be.
One thing I can see in your print, it is looks like your hardware struggles with arcs or you've configured cura weirdly to not use arcs.
If the center bit is supposed to hold a T-shape (like a philips head screw driver), you probably need to play with the number of walls vs fill (i'd probably make that all walls).
eshep
in reply to surfrock66 • •I'm sure you can do it on that old hardware; I have an old #RigidBot from the year prior to yours which is almost completely original parts, and it can (prolly even with a 0.4) print that level detail. You might want to look into keeping it alive with more than just parts though. I loaded #klipper on that RigidBot ~2018 and it made a huge difference in both performance and capabilities. Bang-on calibration is key to getting high detail; as 'ffhein' said, they all three look a bit over-extruded, in the corners mostly. Try using other slicers too, #SuperSlicer or #PrusaSlicer have all the switches and dials for ye te play with.
You might wanna look into how the model is getting sliced before you fire it off. From the patterning on the tops of the outer rings, I'm guessing yer trying to print em with infill, a wall that thin will print far cleaner a
... Show more...I'm sure you can do it on that old hardware; I have an old #RigidBot from the year prior to yours which is almost completely original parts, and it can (prolly even with a 0.4) print that level detail. You might want to look into keeping it alive with more than just parts though. I loaded #klipper on that RigidBot ~2018 and it made a huge difference in both performance and capabilities. Bang-on calibration is key to getting high detail; as 'ffhein' said, they all three look a bit over-extruded, in the corners mostly. Try using other slicers too, #SuperSlicer or #PrusaSlicer have all the switches and dials for ye te play with.
You might wanna look into how the model is getting sliced before you fire it off. From the patterning on the tops of the outer rings, I'm guessing yer trying to print em with infill, a wall that thin will print far cleaner as just shells. You could use the same/similar method to clean up that center post as well. Maybe give both a test with only shells and/or concentric infill to see which might work better. There's so many different combinations of settings you could use to get this working, I have no doubt you'll stumble on the one that works for your printer.
SaveTheTuaHawk
in reply to surfrock66 • • •