Does this look good to you or am I just way off here

[Rotary 1]

This was printed with UM2 with the following specs

Filament: Colorfabb Basic Black PLA

Temp: 210

Table: 55 celcius

Layer: 0.15mm

Fist Layer: 0.3mm

Wall Thickness: 0.8mm

Top/bottom thickness: 1.0mm

Top Bottom: Lines

Retraction speed: 35mm/S

Retraction acceleration: 40mm/s

Retraction distance: 4.5mm

Speed and Fill Speed both at 60mm/s

Movement(?) speed: 140mm/s

Fill: 20%

Fill: Grid

I can see that the bottom is like mirror straight, but i can still see those lines. I would have to see a phone case for example that has lines like that showing up.

the top is "ok" but ain't that a bit rough?

The sides look, ok, even tho there are some wavy lines

Tell me what you think?

I havent done anything to the printers settings really

The fans kick in after the first layer

[Dim3nsioneer 558]

Most settings look quite reasonable to me. Maybe you're printing a bit fast; you might especially try to reduce shell speed and top/bottom speed in order to increase the quality.

You may also try to increase the gap between the nozzle and the bed a tiny little bit to get the bottom lines even a bit better; but be careful, it's just a question of a few microns!

@valcrow gave some nice speed recommendations here.

[ultiarjan 1,223]

And make you top bottom thickness a multiple of your layer hight. So in this case f.e. 6x0.15 = 0.9

[gr5 2,269]

It's hard to tell but that looks like reasonale quality to me. Although when I want high quality I never go over 35mm/sec, because of the shape of this model you won't get much improvement at lower speed - basically the tip of the tail fins will be more sharp and less weird/blobby. The walls/top and bottom won't be affected much.

To get the bottom layer a little better you have to mess with the leveling - DO NOT run the leveling procedure as your are very close already and that will just make it worse - you need to instead adjust the 3 wheels 1/4 turn at a time at the most. But in which direction? I don't know - it looks pretty good already. If you make glass closer to nozzle it squeezes out and bottom layer has a brim even without selecting it. If you make it too far you get gaps in the lines like in this photo.

[gr5 2,269]

Try another color - one half way to white such as gray or light blue or red. Also try white. You get very different results with different colors as the reflections may or may not show up details.

Also you have flat faces that tend to show off errors. If you printed for example a 3d shark instead of this 2d shark you might like the results better - but what you see is probably typical. You could also consider getting a smaller nozzle - such as a .25mm nozzle but your prints will take 4X longer so I don't recommend that.

[tommyph1208 55]

I would also call this a decent print

210 degrees celsius  seems high for PLA... I regularly print at 190.

Concerning the lines on the side, 0.15 mm. layers is what I would consider a "medium quality setting", you can go half of that (and even lower) on the UM2, no problems...

Also; Measure the exact diameter of your filament with a digital caliper and punch this into Cura... Hitting the exact right amount of extruded filament is key for a flat smooth top surface (well, actually just outer shell in general).

Edited August 9, 2015 by Guest

[danilius 118]

If you want high quality, you have to print much slower, around 30mm/s. At that speed you are probably best off printing at roughly 190C, maybe a little higher, you will have to experiment with that.

Having said that, you are probably not going to get dramatically higher quality even if you drop down to 0.1mm layer height, when printing with PLA.

Once you have printed around 100 objects and you are comfortable with the machine and 3D printing in general, switch to an opaque ABS with a matte surface finish (I know, tricky to find) and you will get significantly superior results.