mechamecha

Thank you, @SuperbCookie! I'll definitely give that a shot!

The bottom of the heads don't look as nice as the top, but I did add a fillet where the neck meets the bottom of the head to make it a slightly less problematic printing transition. Also, Cura's supports did a very nice job. Most of the filaments I have are Fillamentum/FilamentOne. They've printed consistently great for me. The Polyalchemy stuff is very unique with an extremely shiny, almost metallic appearance.

For the trophy, I used Polyalchemy Elixir Merlot and Onyx (for the base). It's actually three parts: the base, the main cylindrical section, and the top cup section. The top cup section was printed upside-down and glued on. For the mini-figures, all parts are printed with Fillamentum filaments except for the magenta, which is Innofil.

Haha! Yes, they're prints! They're about 4.5 inches/114 mm tall.

I teach a 3D modeling/printing class to middle-schoolers. Final project was creating these in Onshape. Each of the three figures was done by a different student. Finished printing yesterday on an Ultimaker 2 using 0.2mm layers.

Student-modeled mini-figures (created in Onshape)

Stanley Cup rockin' the red!

I'm currently trying Slic3r's variable layers to see if it does a better job for me. It's not automated, but so far I like the way it allows you to "paint" on where you want the thinnest and thickest layers to be instead of forcing you to have variable layers for every single detail in your print.

Exactly right, that's why it would be really nice if they're able to fix this bug very soon.

I get the impression that you're not quite understanding what I'm asking for here, but OK.

I'll have to check out Slic3r's variable layers feature, because it looks like it works pretty much the way I suggested. It's great to have options.

Haha! OK.

There is definitely a visible difference between 0.05 mm layers vs. 0.25 mm, and banding is quite evident when very thin layers are unnecessarily added to fairly straight vertical surfaces. Also, I'd prefer not to waste valuable printing time adding very thin layers to details that are less important to me on a model. I'd be very surprised if I were the only person wishing that the adaptive layers feature had slightly more versatility. For example, if I were much more concerned about eliminating the visible banding on the exterior of this very simple object than having the arched opening printed as nicely as possible, it certainly would be nice to tell Cura to ignore the arched opening when calculating adaptive layers. It would reduce the print time as well. Obviously the problem is exacerbated on more complex models.

Thank you for replying, @ctbeke!