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.