Adaptive Layers

[XYZDesignPro 70]

Thanks for your response.  I can appreciate the complexity of adding this functionality.  Good to know that it's at least in consideration . . .

[catohagen 41]

After a few days of experimenting and printing with adaptive layers, I can say that this really shines its usefulness with big objects printed with bigger nozzles.

I'm printing with a 0.6mm nozzle, I can get the slicer to use 0.4mm layers where walls are near vertical and adjust the layers down to 0.2 on slopes.

So you get the faster print times with using a big nozzle and big layerheights, but keeping more of the details with adaptive layering generating 0.1mm layers on details.

 

When printing gcode that have layerheight of 0.1 or less, I get a difference in surface texture most likely due to 0.05 layers need a different speed and temperature than 0.15mm layers

Also if your Z leadscrews have just a tiny bit of slack and/or the resolution of the Z axis is reliably max 0.1, you might end up printing a 0.05mm layer ontop of the previous layer as the Z axis might not move at all

 

But just throwing it out here, I'm thinking maybe adjusting the feedrate and temperature could be added to the adaptive layers section?

or if it automaticly reduces the feed according to cubic mass per second from the base settings (printing 0.3mm layers with 40mm/s and printing 0.1mm layers with 40mm/s is alot of difference in plastic) 

 

[XYZDesignPro 70]

Nice to see another positive review on this feature.  Like you, I print fairly large (tall 7" to 10") objects.  I also use primarily 0.6 nozzle (3D Solex) with typically a 0.2 or 0.25 layer height.  This leads to shorter print times and better overall quality.

Hopefully positive reviews will facilitate further development, adding and refining the functionality and moving it out of the Experimental category.

[Tony3d 0]

Thankd all. Lots of great info here. Will have to experiment with this feature more.

[AbeFM 35]

On 2/28/2018 at 1:58 AM, ctbeke said:

Ah, it's a thin wall. I thought it was support material

In that case it seems like a bug indeed, maybe some rounding issues. I'll create an internal ticket, but maybe it's easier to report this on GitHub where we keep track of more issues and all Cura developers can update a ticket.

Where is the best place to do that? I've helped on other software projects and kinda used GitHub a bit, but not sure how to make suggestions. Can you point me to a link where it's obvious how to make a suggestion where someone can read it who might do it or work with the community to define a goal?

 

 

On 2/28/2018 at 7:34 AM, LePaul said:

I like the premise of this option but like others, a bit unsure how to utilize it correctly.  With the default settings, it added 12 hours to my 2 hour print.  Ahhhh!  Abort! Abort!

 

Be wary - when you use adaptive printing on something without large areas of nearly verticle walls, you are just effectively setting the line thickness very small.

 

Definitely preview your object with layer thickness displayed/

You can see this Benchy here is printed almost exclusively at 50 um even though it's nominally over 3x that. The bottle displayed above is a great place to use this feature, but as many objects end up printing with only a few NOT smallest layers, there's more to be gained by leaving it constant (avoiding Z microsteps) than by using it.

 

EDIT: This is coming up in another thread, and you can still get gains by playing with the settings. See my post over here with side-by-side benchies. 

 

 

Edited March 4, 2018 by AbeFM

[AbeFM 35]

Am I correct that you basically pick the thickness of the fist layer, then the software varies the line heights up and down based on the curvature there at the point?

 

Might I suggest that this leads to parts with the line width basically down at the minimum/maximum.

 

Would it make sense to require that the *average* line width is the one specified (which gives good control over time)... Or to just specify the Max & Min desired line thicknesses since that's all you're really controlling anyway (aside from step size, etc). It seems a more intuitive way to use the feature?

[ctbeke 133]

You select the middle (that's your profile's layer height). The variation goes both up and down. The first layer is just static from the profile's first layer height because we need good bed adhesion. Please play around with the feature to get a feeling for it, it's hard to understand from a few comments and screenshots.

[AbeFM 35]

I believe I get it, I think we are describing the same thing.

 

I feel that the current description in the software isn't super useful, and I feel that starting with the thickness you specified as "average" doesn't make particular sense.

 

Great feature, but I'd appreciate a direct response to the earlier post: What makes a more intuitive way to use the feature from the user's perspective?

[AbeFM 35]

Still finding myself in the position of playing back-and-forth with the settings for Adaptive Layers.

 

It *really* would be nice to see "average layer thickness" and "range", or min/max would be even better:

 

Average Layer Thickness (0.15 mm)

Layer Thickness Range (+/- 0.08 mm)

  Maximum Layer Thickness (0.23 mm)

  Maximum Layer Thickness (0.07 mm)

 

 

In other news:

 

 

If you have two objects of different height it won't print the overage of the taller one.

 

Edited March 20, 2018 by AbeFM

[klaus_kraemer 3]

Adaptive layer thickness seems out of bounds:

 

As a base thickness I had chosen 0.1mm. Ok, so maximum thickness should be 0.25mm, according to "Adaptive Layers Maximum Variation", isn't it? But why 0.53 mm for the brim then?

 

Minimum thickness seems to shrink below the Ultimakers' specification of 0.06mm - 0.01mm is to small. Why isn't minimum thickness set accordingly to the minimum layer thickness of the Ultimaker? Yesterday I ran into the same problem with another part. As a result the nozzle began bathing in filament. Luckily that happened at the 6 top layers, so I could save the job with a box cutter....