I am working on a Wanhao Duplicator 4 (a Makerbot clone, which uses only Makerware slicer) with a new material, and have been running some print quality tests on it. The machine’s current settings work fine with PLA, but with this material, I have to slow things down to about 60% normal speed, as a general rule, and to get the best print quality, I have to slow things down to about 10% normal. Here are the tests I ran. Any general tips or tricks would be very much appreciated. Thanks in advance.
not enough cooling, if you can set minimum print times you will see an improvement or try and print multiple copies at the same time
or you can have an extra tower on the other side of the print be to increase layer times
or you can add extra cooling
Thanks for the help. I can only use Makerware slicer for this printer, unless slic3r can save files as a .x3g. I do have slic3r, but have not messed with it much, as I manly use cura, Makerware, and Autodesk Print Studio. Also, would placing another item to print on the bed at the same time, help with the retraction test? (The one with the very skinny, tall cones.)
Thanks for the help. I’m new to forums.
The most important factor in effective retraction is temperature. You want just hot enough for the speed you are printing and no more.
You cannot expect to print the top layers of those prints at the same speed as the rest of the design unless you print the whole thing very slow. I’m assuming you are using cooling otherwise they wouldn’t look as good as they already do but even with cooling, as the layers get smaller they take less time. When you get to the pointy tips you are printing onto material that is till soft because the previous layer hasn’t cooled yet. I use slic3r which as options to slow the print down & adjust cooling when a layer print time is below a given threshold. The only other way would be to print more than one at a time and spread them out on the build plate so that the travel between the them gives the layers more time to cool.
-Jesse
