Flashprint sliced text looks horrible and doesnt print well

[Jason_128]

Hi,

I am brand new to 3d printing. I am using a creator pro and slicing with FlashPrint. I have been using TinkerCAD and have been export and then loading stl files. Everything looks clean until I see the slice preview of text. It also doesn’t print nicely. The text is 10mm high. Screenshot below:

I thought it was a fill setting, but when I make changes to fill it doesnt have any effect.

Any ideas how I can print text cleaner? All other shapes have been great so far!

Thanks

Jason

[legreatmagnet]

This might be because of the model itself. If your nozzle is .4mm and you have the width of the text at say 1mm, its not going to be able to make a “full diameter” pass in the code. Try making the text width divisible by your nozzle diameter.

[frankkeller]

I am not using Tinkercad, but maybe you could try some other 3D-Software like 123D Design from Autocad and see if it exports nicely from there into Flashprint and than slices it better. TinkerCAD has limitations i assume. It could also be an issue that is related to the size of the 3D Model (maybe too small?) or the settings in Flashprint (try higher resolution - layer height). Have you tried using a different font? Does the problem still occur with different fonts? Besides this i have no clue what could have gone wrong. Anybody else have any ideas?

[CreativeTools]

TinkerCAD usually creates low-res STL files. What you see in the FlashPrint preview is a representation of each sliced polygon as a straight segment. Could you supply us with the original STL files?

[bawvu97]

I use fusion 360 and when I have a similar issue I create and svg and then extrude in fusionnthen export to flash print

that’s the work around I’ve used successfully

[Jason_128]

Thanks everyone for your help. I have tried different fonts. Today I tried 123D Design and it has the same issue, it changes a bit when I choose Coarse, Medium or Fine, but the issue is still present. Attached is the stl from Tinkercad. I made a test file out of 123Designs, but cant figure out how to multi attach, so i’ll post another post with that file.
maddyrandy.stl (309 KB)

[Jason_128]

Here is a test I made out of 123D Design. I exported 3 stl files out of 123D Design, then loaded it into flashprint to combine the different quality of text into one file. I am not trying to print this way, it was just an easy way to see how those 123D Design settings effect the slicing and perhaps that is a clue to what is going on?
aaatexttestall.stl (377 KB)

[CreativeTools]

Thanks for the STL files. See these images to compare the jaggedness of the STL compared to the sliced paths. If you print them the result will look better than the path preview.

[Jason_128]

I have found though that text is not printing as a solid fill, but if you look carefully it looks a little like the preview, messy.

[Jason_128]

Ah. So if the printer has .4mm i should look at doing .8mm width or 1.2 and so on. Ugh. My lettering in the attached is about 8mm, seems like I am close, its printing and working, and my wife likes it…so I guess I should stop there. It just seems like it could be a setting or something, it can print other objects in such impressive small detail, im only having problems with this text, but perhaps we have a trained eye to be more picky on lettering. I can’t make it bigger, so we will just deal with it, no one else has noticed.

I am also adjusting my top layer # so the honey comb will be reduced…I think that should do the trick.

Thanks for everyone’s help!

Jason

[3DFlying]

Text is way too small, it should be made at least twice as big before you can get anything usable. A 3d printer with a .4mm nozzle only has the equivalent resolution of about 160DPI, so text has to big to be legible.

Edit: forgot to move a decimal place

[Jason_128]

So I think I found what the problem is called. I *think* my issue with text is “Gaps in thin Walls.” This is problem is described exactly as legreatmagnet below said, it is written up here Print Quality Guide | Simplify3D Software I think Simplify3D has a setting for thin wall behavior, I can’t find anything that sounds similar in FlashPrint. I sooo don’t want to spend $150, but if I do, and it is an improvement I’ll update this post for future generation noobs.

Thanks everyone for their input.

[legreatmagnet]

You can “trick” the slicer either way. All you need to do is adjust the nozzle size smaller. So say even though the nozzle is .4mm, you tell the slicer the nozzle is .35mm, this way it WILL make toolpath in those small areas, but to compensate, you have to also tweak the flow rate. I use simplify 3d, and gap fill works ok in some instances but I usually just change the nozzle diameter and then increase the extrusion multiplier. When you preview the toolpath, look to make sure it is making a pass to completely fill in your lettering, if its not keep tweaking the nozzle diameter until it does.When you go to print it if it comes out not good, you have to tweak the flow rate more.

[legreatmagnet]

So here is what I’m talking about. The one that only made two passes is a nozzle diameter of .4, then by telling it the nozzle was .38, it made 3 passes. I actually want to write something that makes 3d printer friendly text.

[Jason_128]

Thanks legreatmagnet. Very helpful!

[Jason_128]

So I bought Simplify3D, and by default the text looked the same as FlashPrint (other areas of the print improved…i think because it defaulted my pla temp to 230…i thought it was fine at 200…but it made a huge improvement in a tricky area of my particular model.)

But after reading their helpful tips, I increased the Infill / Outline Overlap to 40% (i kept increasing it until the preview looked reasonable). That worked enough, still not perfect, but a big improvement. You can compare the attached to the previous attempt.

I think this setting is a brute force way of dealing with the nozzle diameter issue with fill. Not as elegant as legreatmagnet’s solution, but got me there without math, but now I have the stringy issues.

[legreatmagnet]

I really like simplify 3d, and I tried alot of slicers, there is a few quirks about it, but they do update it often. Just looking at the text it seems like that’s a retraction issue. I’ve never played with PLA yet, so I can’t really say much. I’d set the retraction to pull a little more filament up and see if that helps. Also, I’m not sure how thick the base of the star is, but you could experiment by just putting the star below the bed in simplify 3d, that way you can just try printing the text alone.