Top layer finishing quality
Hi, I'm all new to this and I'd like to ask about a quality of top layer finishing. I noticed carving artifacts on the gear finishing and wonder whether this is normal or it can be eliminated. It looks fine on the 8-shaped part above the gear where the finishing lines are also short.
Any ideas? I must admit it looks worse on the picture than in real, but still...
Thank you.
Re: Top layer finishing quality
Hard to say what the exact problem is but you can check a few things, such as the extruder and print settings.
Check to make sure the extruder is not jamming or skipping and make sure you have the correct printer and settings for Silc3r or what ever slicer you are using.
Also if you can post the model that would help.
Re: Top layer finishing quality
What size is the gear?
I downloaded a project with gears that look very similar to those. The nozzle makes one pass around the perimeter of each tooth and there is barely enough room for a second pass down the center. The infill looks a bit lumpy on the left side, but the top and bottom portions look similar to the 8-shaped part. I wonder if the nozzle needs to be cleaned. Is there a small glob of filament stuck to one side that causes an issue when it is doing small jogs in one direction, but is fine in other directions?
On an unrelated note, I found that gear teeth that small are barely within the limits of the standard size nozzle. My project had gears at around 38 dot pitch, meaning that a 38 tooth gear would be 1 inch in diameter. I experimented with different pitches and found 20 dot pitch to be my favorite. This would increase the size of your gear to almost double in size or keep it the same size but reduce the number of teeth from 15 to 8. The larger 20DP size prints much cleaner and the teeth are much less likely to skip or jam.
Steve