Improve quality of complicated objects

[felipepac 1]

Dear Ultimaker forum,

I have an Ultimaker original and I always find it difficult to print objects which are made of multiple geometries or that have many holes. Maybe I never knew how to set up this complicated prints. This is why I came here. What am I doing wrong with these prints?

I started with quick print - low quality and went to quick print - normal quality.

There are many wires flying around and a lot of extra plastic coming out of the nozzle deforming the original shape.

Shall I boost the retraction settings or is there any other mesure I can take?

Thanks in advance,

Felipe

 

[Dim3nsioneer 357]

Hi Felipe

Welcome to the Ultimaker forum!

Small details are printed best at low temperature and speed. What you see is called stringing and happens at too high print temperature. If you see underextrusion, i.e. holes in the print, you have to slow down. When you lower the speed you will also see that the horizontal banding gets weaker.

 

[nallath 528]

If the 'standard' settings don't work; go into the expert settings. Cura itself gives pretty good advice in the tooltips on how a setting influences your print. Unfortunately 3D printing has a long way to go before it's as easy as printing with a 2D printer.

 

[gr5 897]

To get extra good quality with this print I recommend printing it slow and cool. Make sure retraction is turned on - some of the quick print settings turn off retraction. It's a checkbox. I don't use quick print. Pretty much no one does. I don't recommend it.

So try 210C and 30mm/sec with retraction on. Make sure shell thickness is a multiple of nozzle diameter. So .8mm is good. .2mm layers is good and .1mm layers is even better quality (but takes twice as long).

If you want even better quality try 20mm/sec and maybe 200C and .1mm layers. It will take a very long time to print but you will get exceptional quality.

Here is some information about stringing:

http://umforum.ultimaker.com/index.php?/topic/1872-some-calibration-photographs/