Sloppy print (printer takes shortcuts)

[marjolein 0]

Hi everyone,

I'm designing a new necklace in the shape of a dragonfly but I'm having trouble in making a good print, the printer makes shortcuts in the path as you can see in the image below:

When I add my STL file to Cura I can already see this is going to happen when I look at the path the printer head will take:

Does anyone have any ideas how to improve this?

Thanks,

Marjolein

[vince805 4]

What filament are you using?

[gr5 2,004]

I call that "stringing". You can get rid of all stringing without too much trouble although as I think vince is implying some filaments string almost no matter what you do.

You want to make sure your bowden is tight on each end (doesn't move up and down) and make sure your retraction is about 4.5mm (more retraction if the bowden tube moves). This is the default but still worth checking - it's in the material settings somewhere. Or the TUNE menu when printing but it's on the printer, not cura.

Also make sure you have retractions enabled. You might want to go into the advanced retractions menus and make sure retractions ALWAYS occur for this particular part. By default there are a few cases (see the minimum settings) where it might not retract before doing a blue move.

And finally - (possibly the only thing you have to do) - slow it down and cool it down. Hotter filament is more liquidy (like syrup) and cooler is better behaved (like toothpaste). And printing fast leads to high pressures in the nozzle which also drives leaking. So try 200C and 25mm/sec but keep your travel moves fast - 200mm/sec is good. Your part is tiny so it should only take a few minutes at 25mm/sec.

[marjolein 0]

Thanks for the tips, i'm going to try it! I'm using regular black PLA from Colorfab with the default Cura profiles.

[Jan_B 1]

In case you want to actually prevent the shortcuts you can try "combing". It will keep the nozzle "inside" already printed parts.

Beware: Last time I tried this option, the effect on the final result was not big but the noise due to the difficult paths sounded like the printer was trying to kill itself. Maybe combine with a lower the travel speed.