Reywas

It is my understanding that, in Cura, the center-to-center line spacing is equal to the Line Width setting. If so, for a calibrated extruder where printing two walls of 0.5mm gives a measured thickness of 1mm, is there any overlap between the two walls? I know there must be but I can't wrap my brain around how this works. In PrusaSlicer, the line width doesn't equal the line spacing, giving the needed overlap.

Edited. Question asked in separate topic.

I've noticed some strange behavior on curves as well. What version of Cura are you running?

I have some questions about Combing. Rather than start a new thread I thought I'd piggy-back on this one. For reference, I'm using smartavionics fork of Cura.master; there's some very cool stuff going on in there. I really like the Small Perimeters setting and this should definitely be merged into the main branch. I noticed that the Max Combing Distace default is now 30mm. I recall it being much lower than that in previous versions (but I could be wrong about that). Is 10-20mm still recommended? What factors go into choosing that distance? Does Cura compensate for the extrudite lost during the unretracted travel move?

Even worse, when you switch to x-ray view it puts the menu right on top of the model and you can't move it.

I do always (as in "since I got my first 3D printer two weeks ago") set my top/bottom layer thickness to some multiple of the layer height, which is always set to some multiple of my printers z-step "magic number". I have looked at the layer preview and can see the thicker first layer but it's hard to tell if any adjustments have been made to the remaining bottom layers. It would be nice if Cure would show the Z height when stepping through the layers. I will take geert_2 suggestion and print a test bottom. Not that any of this really matters to the final print quality, I just like to know how things work.

In Cura 3.6.0, the "Bottom Thickness" help dialog states: "The thickness of the bottom layers in the print. This value divided by the layer height defines the number of bottom layers". How does the "Initial layer height" setting, which is typically thicker than the Layer Height, figure into this. Looking at the sliced model, it looks to me like the thicker initial layer is followed by the remaining bottom layers of "layer height" thickness. Does this result in a "Bottom Thickness" that is actually thicker than what is defined in the setting or does Cura compensate for this by printing the subsequent bottom layers thinner than the "Layer Thickness" setting?

Ok, thanks. I think I'm starting to understand the relationships among the various factors now. Is there a relationship between the "Layer Height" and the "Initial Layer Height" in Cura? A guy on YouTube recommended the "Initial Layer Height" be set at 150% of the "Layer Height", but he didn't offer any explanation for that.

Thanks for your responses gents. Keep in mind that I have a no-frills Ender 3 which knows nothing about calibration card thicknesses or the location of the print bed. It only knows where the Z-stop is. I could manually tram the bed using the paper-drag method and then adjust the Z stop so that the nozzle is just touching the bed. Would it then be OK to adjust the "Initial Layer Height" to get the proper amount of squish? ahoeben- I will have a look at that. Thanks.

Thanks for your help mastory. So if I'm understanding you correctly, the first layer is printed with the nozzle at Z=0 (which is actually about a paper's thickness above the bed) ? And while I've got you on the line: Is it normal for the first layer to form a narrow brim around the object or would that be considered an "elephants foot"?

Hi, I'm just getting started in 3D printing and I'm having trouble understanding the relationship between the nozzle height at Z = 0 (against the Z end-stop) and the CURA setting "Initial Layer Height". The setup instructions for my Ender 3 printer tell me to home the printer (against the Z end-stop) and use the paper-drag method to tram the bed. So, hypothetically, if using that method I end up with a 0.25mm gap between the nozzle and the bed at Z = 0 and the "Initial Layer Height" is set at 0.3mm, how high is the nozzle above the bed? Intuitively I would say the answer is 0.55mm but it seems to me that, if that is correct, I would need to set my "Initial Layer Height" to 0.05mm to actually get the desired 0.3mm height. Thanks for your help, Paul