3rd print on my Simple Metal

[carlos]

Hello ladies and gents, I'm new to the 3d printing world and I've been reading through the forum to get some insight on my new printrbot SM. I've followed the getting started and z-calibration guides on PB site, but I still think I need more information on how to get it to print better.

This is the third print I did, a filament holder. As you can see in the picture, there are small tendrils of plastic sticking out from the print. I was thinking that maybe the temp was set to high. I'm using Cura as my slicer and black PLA filament from inland. Originally I started at 200 degrees, but dropped it down to 195.

IMG_3471.JPG

The second issue are the side walls are actually showing the ridges of the infill. Is there a setting that I should be using, is there another method of calibration that I need to do?

Thanks ahead for any information, so far I'm liking the printer and looking forward to seeing what else I can do and learn.

[lairdb]

I'm not far ahead of you, but: what are your retraction settings, print speed, and travel speed? In re. the infill ridges, what is your outer wall thickness?

[carlos]

Hey @lairdb, thanks for the help. I never changed any stock settings. To be honest not really sure what to change, but this is what's listed.

retraction:
speed: 30mm/s
distance: 1

Print speed: 40mm/s

Speed:
travel speed: 70mm/s
bottom layer speed 35mm/s

shell thickness 0.8mm

[cacb]

I believe the tendrils are resulting from oozing plastic during moves between the legs of the filament holder. Not uncommon. It is possible to reduce the effect using retraction (pull in filament a little before moving) and the opposite (prime) at the end of the move. I can see you have it at 1mm, perhaps try 2mm. As always, also check the filament diameter.

[carlos]

Thanks @cacb I'll have to give that a try on my next print.

Also I am just using the getting started printer profile for Cura, is there a recommended one? Or a general printer settings that is a good baseline to jump off from?

Thanks again!

[cacb]

I have not used Cura in a while, but I found it easy to begin with the Printrbot Simple Metal profile it offered. I found it was a user friendly way to start out. I think Cura is very good, the reason I am not using it is I am adventurous and want to try out lots of different things. At the moment I find KISSlicer to be working well for slicing, it has lots of options. I control the printer using a wireless Raspberry PI running OctoPrint, and I could not be happier.

Perhaps you could also try increasing the print speed to e.g. 60 mm/s and see how that works. I would recommend changing only one setting at a time though, otherwise you don't know which setting is critical.

[carlos]

I hope to eventually get it running wirelessly. But, at this point I want to make sure I get it dialed in so I can get consistent prints. I'll try to search around and see if I can find out any more information for calibrating it a bit more from it's defaults.