Silk PLA surface finish is bad over supports - any suggestions?  

RE: Silk PLA surface finish is bad over supports - any suggestions?

I'm not sure about the orientation in which this was printed. Shouldn't this print fine as shown, in which case you wouldn't need supports?  If it was printed the other way round, I don't think there's a whole lot you can do. I might try raise the top z distance a bit and add a few more interface layers.  But silk PLA will always be a challenge as it really magnifies all blemishes. 

RE: Silk PLA surface finish is bad over supports - any suggestions?

Here's the file I printed it upside down from the orientation in the picture...I wanted to test the supports and some fits to another part. So that section of handle had supports under it.

I tried ironing on the top too, which is bumpier than a typical top layer...

Thanks for the help!

RE: Silk PLA surface finish is bad over supports - any suggestions?

I don't understand why attach file doesn't attach files in this interface...

RE:

You'll need to zip compress the file using your OS compress tool before upload. Why? God knows. We've asked a bazillion time to expand the range of allowed file types... it's frustrating. Probably just a couple of minutes in a config file...

RE: Silk PLA surface finish is bad over supports - any suggestions?

Thanks for the explanation...the interface should at least tell us!

RE:

There were some shapes outside the print area.  I deleted those and reoriented the print.  You may be able to print this with supports.  Here it is.

RE: Silk PLA surface finish is bad over supports - any suggestions?

The parts outside the print area are irrelevant but I agree, I would print this upside down in the orientation shown by altruego, you may not even need supports. Otherwise, your support settings looked okay, and while endless fiddling with settings may yield minor improvements, I wouldn't hold my breath. If it's really necessary to print in the original orientation, I would resort to post-processing with sanding and polishing

RE: Silk PLA surface finish is bad over supports - any suggestions?

Thank you both!

The full part design has overhangs which need support. I set this print up to test overhanging settings, and to test fit to another part, and avoid using a lot of material. It's a fairly large part.

You've given me inspiration to try to keep tweaking this file design to minimize the needed supports. I'll work on that next.

The results of this test print were educational for me in the test fit as well. I originally tuned the file using prusa galaxy black PLA. Then I switched and printed in my final design filament, a dual color from PrintedSolid. That part ended up being smaller, and I changed my design file to be bigger.

Next, I printed this test fit part in the SILK PLA from Ziro. The part size grew considerably from the previous filaments used!

Then I discovered extrusion multiplier, ran that test, and found a big difference for this filament. Then when I printed it out again using that multiplier, it became too big! I suspect my growing of the part for the printedSolid filament was a mistake. I should run the extrusion multiplier on each filament, and THEN tune the fit of the design.

RE: Silk PLA surface finish is bad over supports - any suggestions?

I'm a bit surprised that you're seeing what sounds like quite significant material differences but maybe you're working with very tight clearances in your design. Yes, in general you want to optimize the extrusion factor for your specific filament to make sure you're getting the dimensions you need.