Scarf seams
The issue of prominent seams has come up here a few times before. It is particularly an issue on objects such as cylinders where there are no sharp corners in which you can hide the seam. I heard of work with scarf seams, and they have been implemented in OrcaSlicer. There is a video on the subject here: The basic idea is to make the seam less visible by joining filament at an angle: imagine the start and end of the filament path being a wedge.
I did a quick and basic experiment to see how well it works. OrcaSlicer has many parameters for controlling scarf seams, and I didn't want to spend a lot time twiddling knobs to see what happens. it's why I switched to Prusa from a home-brew printer in the first place.
Here are 5 prints of the same STL:
The top two prints are both using PrusaSlicer 2.7.4, 0.2mm speed. The third uses PrusaSlicer 2.8.0 alpha. This version contains several changes regarding seams, but mostly to do with their positioning rather than appearance. The fourth print is OctaSlicer 2.0.0 using the default MK4IS profile. Although it's not very clear on the photo, the seam is less prominent, but has a second ridge maybe due to ringing. The OctaSlicer profile is not exactly the same as the PrusaSlicer one, so it's not an apples-to-apples comparison with the previous prints. It is a baseline for the fifth print, which is OctaSlicer with the scarf joint seam setting Contour and hole. You can see the seam is much less visible.
I hope Prusa can incorporate the code into a future release, with some well-tuned default parameters. If you have experiences and parameter recommendations, please add them to this thread.
RE: Scarf seams
One extra note which I forgot to include. Using scarf seams gives you two seams, one at the start of the overlap region and one at the end. The picture before shows the one at the end. The one at the start has similar visibility.
RE: Scarf seams
Prusa slicer has a check box where you can make the seam random. I think it is in the perimeters tab. Not quite the same but gets rid of the solid seam.
RE: Scarf seams
That's a different thing and it gives you zits on the model surface. This isn't to do with where the seam is, it's to do with how smooth the boundary is.
RE: Scarf seams
Scarf seams were first publicly described here: https://forum.prusa3d.com/forum/prusaslicer/better-seams/#post-683168 and have been submitted as a feature request for PrusaSlicer here: https://github.com/prusa3d/PrusaSlicer/issues/11621
People report getting the best results from the scarf seams in OrcaSlicer with the perimeter printing order set to inner/outer/inner, so that would be worth trying for even better results.
(Presumably you mean OrcaSlicer where you write "OctaSlicer".)
RE: Scarf seams
> Presumably you mean OrcaSlicer where you write "OctaSlicer"
Ha, yes I did.
RE:
Ok i will upvote the feature request, hope it comes soon!!!
Engeneering pieces cannot fit with seams... cogs are very difficult to get the seam out, and my 1 kilo planetary gear with 8 cogs has 140cm of seams to cut and sand out of the 1.5mm teeth.
It would really help my project to have scarf seams and I will have to change to orca slicer for precision gears for robots because even with good tools the tooth cogs seams are a major trouble.
RE: Scarf seams
You may have noticed, but scarf seams were implemented in PS290. Check it out!
RE: Scarf seams
I was quite excited when it was introduced and tried it a handful of times. Wasn't impressed at all. Yeah, it kind of "disappears", but not really. As someone else pointed out, now you actually have two (albeit less visible) seams. I'm back to just sanding the model if I really need to make the seam disappear. And yes, my expectations were probably too high
Formerly known on this forum as @fuchsr -- https://foxrun3d.com/
RE: Scarf seams
Actually it's awesome!!! Especially if you print precise gears. My planetary gear was about 90% better fit and regularity with scarf seams...
You have to carefully set the parameters... Inner-Outer-Inner... That's so that the blobs from travel extrusion are not just wiped onto the outside edge of your print...
Then the blobs from travel are hidden inside the print, because they are put on the inner seam, then the scarf seam starts from 0.2 mm travel away and there aren't blobs.
Ok it's not perfect but the inner-outer-inner plus scarf does make very very good mechanical fitting pieces compared to what I used originally.
RE: Scarf seams
I followed this topic nearly since start and tried the feature in several prints now. The theory sounds great but in reality (on my Mini+) I always and up with worse outcomes than a single bulky seam. I tried shorter scarf seams, longer scarf seams, other perimeters and retraction rates, but it always ends up with a larger area that looks off and not as good as the rest AND a minor seam bulge anyway.
From what I see in all the videos that show the advantages of this seam technique, I can't relate to any of them. And I'm quite happy with the rest of my printer and the quality it is producing. So if there is any Mini+ user that successfully set up this feature, I'm happy to read about your measures taken to get there.
RE: Scarf seams
I guess it's one of those things you can probably get to work with a lot of try and error but for none of the things I print I found it warranted the time and effort.
Formerly known on this forum as @fuchsr -- https://foxrun3d.com/
RE: Scarf seams
Trial & error. Can’t live with it. Can’t live without it! Especially the error part, in my case.
For round things that need to roll, seams can be a problem. For these, I enable scarf seams AND random alignment. This works for internal or external surfaces.
MK4S/MMU3