How to reduce stringing
My prints turn out usable, but there's always been a good bit of stringing. What the best way to go about testing and calibrating the printer to reduce this?
RE: How to reduce stringing
For one thing, try a different slicer. Each slicer handles things just a bit differently and it can make a big difference. Maker's Muse did a good video on this topic. Also, different things are called "stringing" by different people. Some are referring to big branches and chunks of filament between parts, others to very fine wisps of filament.
You can try:
- Increase retraction, but no more than 2mm with the E3D V6 hotend (lest you pull molten filament into the cold end).
- Decrease/disable z-hop.
- Play around with hardware acceleration rates and speeds.
- Make sure filament is dry as moisture may contribute.
- Some filaments simply string more than others. Try a good quality material for testing.
The unfortunate thing is that settings that work well for one filament and nozzle size my not work at all with others.
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RE: How to reduce stringing
Thanks for the reply. The specific issue I'm looking at now is the fine wisps of filament. Right now I'm using Prusa's filament and the PrusaSlic3r. I guess I'll start by playing with the retraction and see how that goes.
RE: How to reduce stringing
Temp is another issue. Grab a temp tower model off Thingverse (specifically one that tests stringing) and play with adjusting your temps to see which temp works best for your filament/printer.
When setting up your temp tower it seems that many just insert the gcode to change temp and keep right on printing. I found moving the extruder away from the tower and then waiting for the target temp to be achieved more consistent results.
Here is an example of the gcode I use (changing to 225 degrees) in the "BEFORE_LAYER_CHANGE" for the layer where I want to start the new temp:
G0 X200.000 Y200.00 M104 S225 ; set temp == 225 M109 S225 ; wait for temp
As I recall it was our own most wonderful Joan that helped me with that (or it was something similar she helped with, either way she is still awesome 😉).