Newb, Printed some tests - Can you help me interpret them?  

Re: Newb, Printed some tests - Can you help me interpret them?

Its % of the overall print speed, not % reduction. You can always double check using the gcode preview.

Ahhh, that's more reasonable so that makes the speeds:

Perimeters: 24mm/s
Solid infill: 90mm/s
[Support material: 90mm/s

That's more or less the same speeds I sliced the cali mouse. So I guess the "secret" recipe then is on the acceleration and jerk speeds you mentioned , maybe the retraction settings and/or simply S3D doing a better job atm 🙄

this one won't affect you too much for now but if you're printing a lot of tiny parts in a row then its best to get the nozzle from point A to point B as quickly as possible without oozing. The printer knows how fast it can move, so setting to 9000% won't really do anything. If I'm printing something overnight I'll slow it way down because the travels are by far the loudest movement in stealth mode.

Noted. I'm printing single objects for now but that's good to know

Re: Newb, Printed some tests - Can you help me interpret them?

So, I've been doing a lot of tests (yeah, I'm that stubborn) and, in the process I've understood some things I had mixed up before.

I decided to post them here because a couple days ago someone thanked me for this post because they were about to post a similar question, so maybe this would be of help to someone, and maybe I get some clarifications where I'm mistaken.

I started where I left last post, I started thinking I was on the right track and that I understood what I had to do. I wanted to get rid of the zits, seams and ringing to get a "flawless" print. Since curtis gcode was near perfect on my printer I opened it on notepad++ and tried to replicate the settings on slic3r the best I could (that's no easy task, S3D seems to have less speed parameters and much more of others to configure). and I went about to print some more cubes (so I could compare with his).

Due to how Slic3r settings are organized I divided the tests in three sections so I could mix and match and keep track of the changes:

TEST A (settings) : Changes on retraction (printer settings) + Lower Jerk and Acceleration
TEST B (settings): Changes on speed and print settings
TEST C (settings): While using Slic3r 1.4 Beta (speed and crossing settings + No Wipe)

And here you have some images with the results to compare: Results

I soon realized I knew nothing and that I was a bit all over the place. I thought all the "problems" were linked and I could resolve them changing the same settings. Boy was I wrong. Kinda. I mean, some settings affect more than one problem, but I didn't have the knowledge (still don't) to try to correct more than one thing at a time.

Through those results I learned a few things:

Trying to get on Slic3r PE the same results I got with the S3D gcode provided by curtis has been impossible. Out of sheer frustration I got a "demo" version of Simplify 3D to better understand the settings there, since I was reading a gcode file on Notepad++, remember? (of course, there's no demo, you can buy it and then return it for a refund, I just can't afford to keep it).

At last, I finally learned that the problem was not really on my settings (of course my settings are "bad" and can be much more optimized, just not the root of the problem), but simply on the slicing algorythm each of those programs use (that's what I think, anyway). Simplify seems to manage the seams better (or it's better at hiding them, at least on the cube). As an example here's the cube preview sliced on Simplify 3D. You can just see a green "blob" (meaning a retraction point) at the top, the rest of the retraction points on the rest of the layers are really small and pretty well aligned on one corner.

Here you have the same cube sliced on Slic3r Prusa Edition 1.40 beta. As you can see there are more visible retraction points and, instead of aligned on just one corner it "aligns" some of them here, some of them there.

Finally, you can see that same gcode generated with Slic3r but opened for inspection on Simplify3D. You can see that there's really a lot more retraction points (in reality they are more separated, they're still there on the Slic3r preview) since Slic3r creates bigger seams.

I've come to the conclusion that, on a well assembled (I got the kit) and calibrated machine, Prusa's default settings on Slic3r are pretty good (here I just reduced to 60mm/s both infill speeds on the default 0.15mm OPTIMAL MK3 profile). I've done the extruder calibration and it was spot on as it was, the linear advance calibration and I think the default K30 is good (for Prusa's PLA anyway), the flow seems ok at the default, I have no underextrusion....

The slicer settings can be improved, although now I understand there's no such thing as "perfect prints", errors happen, settings are not set and forget for each and every print and that seams won't go totally away and that is an advance for me 🙂

Sorry for the big wall of text 🙄

Re: Newb, Printed some tests - Can you help me interpret them?

It was a long way. Now you can finally start to print 😆

Re: Newb, Printed some tests - Can you help me interpret them?

It was a long way. Now you can finally start to print 😆

Indeed, mandatory lithophanes, vases, yadda yadda 😀

I would better say that now I can start to truly learn

And... of course, just as I posted this here, someone pointed me on another post to Chris' Slic3r settings on the facebook group as a perfect start point to tweak my own settings in.

I guess that chain of events and realizations is something all newcomers to this world have to go through. I guess I'm just too stubborn so I pushed through them in a few days instead of a few weeks 😳

Re: Newb, Printed some tests - Can you help me interpret them?

Others: Have Crash detection turned off since I was receiving A LOT of false Y axis crashes[/size]
[/quote]

what are the values for belt tension in
support
belt status

i believe y crashes can be due to too much tension on the belt.

Re: Newb, Printed some tests - Can you help me interpret them?

I had 2 crashes on Y with a belt tension of 270 and I then had like 4 more when I went to tension 239.

Re: Newb, Printed some tests - Can you help me interpret them?

The slicer settings can be improved, although now I understand there's no such thing as "perfect prints", errors happen, settings are not set and forget for each and every print and that seams won't go totally away and that is an advance for me 🙂

Someone should make a neon sign with these words 😆

Re: Newb, Printed some tests - Can you help me interpret them?

what are the values for belt tension in
support
belt status

i believe y crashes can be due to too much tension on the belt.

Since there are a lot of reports of people having the same problems I'm pretty sure is a "bug" with the crash detection, At first I had the Y axis pulley come loose due to vibrations (and me not tightening it enough and thought that was the problem but I retensioned it and now they're at
X: 278 and Y:274, so in the "safe" range noted in the assembly manual and having the same problems.

Someone should make a neon sign with these words 😆

😀
I think the more difficult part is not learning the seetings and dialing them in for the first time, but learning to recognize what "problems" you have to address for every print and that you'll have to tweak those settings for a lot of prints. Even though I knew 3D printing wasn't just "plug and play" (even if ultimaker, etc want you to believe so) I guess I didn't fully reallize the amount of variables at play and that there's no best settings that work for everybody.