0.8 nozzle. How to get better top surface finish and detail?
Hello folks, I know few people use anything other than the 0.4 mm default nozzle. But I got tired of waiting for my prints to finish, so I am trying out the 0.8 mm nozzle. After a lot of tweaking of settings in the slicer, I have managed to get reasonable print using 0.8 and PETG. Take a look, this is probably the best I have printed yet. And see how fast it printed! 🙂
Is there anything I can do about the top surface finish?
I am concerned about those holes and small gaps.
Yeah I could do enable ironing, tried that but with PETG it seemed to me that it was creating more of a mess. It was kinda shaving off a little bit from the top layer and the shaved off material was globbing at one end.
What about getting a little bit more detail from it?
The teeth of the gears could use a little bit more "sharpness".
Any tips?
Thank you
-Raj
RE:
What brand 0.8 nozzle is it ? It looks almost as if the nozzle isnt squeezing the filament outwards enough. Thats often either a sign of the top layer under extruding but I've also seen the same on Non E3D nozzles too as they sometimes dont have the same shoulder size around the nozzle opening.
I dont think you are going to get the teeth themselves sharper, unless you play around with arachne settings, maybe.
RE: 0.8 nozzle. How to get better top surface finish and detail?
I agree with neophyl. I don't think you're going to get much better with the gears. But the top surface looks bad. I do a lot of 0.8 printing with PETG and get a much more homogeneous top layer. Did you calibrate the extrusion multiplier for this filament and nozzle (with a one wall thick empty cube) ?
Formerly known on this forum as @fuchsr -- until all hell broke loose with the forum software...
RE: 0.8 nozzle. How to get better top surface finish and detail?
Thanks for your response.
I am using a E3D V6 0.8 mm which I bought directly from Prusa, along with the printer. The layer height I am slicing at is 0.6 mm.
Should I squish the 1st layer more? I have the gap set to 0.4 mm, as tested using a feeler gauge. Maybe I print a test 1 layer rectangle to check again. The last time I checked it, it was working fine.
Under extrusion? (I had to look it up, newbie here for the most part)....could be. I can do some test print to check for that, checking for a test print on thingyverse...
Thanks!
What brand 0.8 nozzle is it ? It looks almost as if the nozzle isnt squeezing the filament outwards enough. Thats often either a sign of the top layer under extruding but I've also seen the same on Non E3D nozzles too as they sometimes dont have the same shoulder size around the nozzle opening.
I dont think you are going to get the teeth themselves sharper, unless you play around with arachne settings, maybe.
RE: 0.8 nozzle. How to get better top surface finish and detail?
Thanks for your reply. No I did not do that calibration with this printer.........but I think I know which test print you are talking about. A long time ago, I printed that on my Ender 3 V2
Let me find that stl again online.
I agree with neophyl. I don't think you're going to get much better with the gears. But the top surface looks bad. I do a lot of 0.8 printing with PETG and get a much more homogeneous top layer. Did you calibrate the extrusion multiplier for this filament and nozzle (with a one wall thick empty cube) ?
RE: 0.8 nozzle. How to get better top surface finish and detail?
Ah!
https://help.prusa3d.com/article/extrusion-multiplier-calibration_2257
RE: 0.8 nozzle. How to get better top surface finish and detail?
ok so I printed the test cube. Looks pretty good actually. No boogers or artifacts at all. This is a first for me 🙂
Although I do not have a super accurate micrometer, I do have a Mitutoyo digital caliper. Most measurements are 0.86 or 0.87 so average comes to 0.865. Slicer is set to 0.9 mm.
Hence extrusion multiplier should be 1.040
That is a very tiny increase, I wonder if that will make any difference. Now trying that and will report back. Thanks again
RE: 0.8 nozzle. How to get better top surface finish and detail?
Update: with the new multiplier, the walls are now exactly 0.9 mm. Now printing a top layer test.
Maybe I will do that test cube, but a simple short rectangular box should do, right?
RE: 0.8 nozzle. How to get better top surface finish and detail?
Here is a new top layer test print after I calibrated the extrusion multiplier. It is a simple, thin box with three layers. Since my slicer layer is at 0.6mm, I made the box exactly 0.6 x 3 = 1.8mm
The perimeter is measuring exactly 1.8 mm high 🙂 But if I measure the middle part, because of the extra height of the "scratches" or " tiny hills"... it measures 2.1 mm. I wish those artifacts would not be there on the top layer.
What do you think? Good enough or should I tweak something more?
PS: I deliberately tried to shine the flashlight in such a way so as to make the surface imperfections more visible in the first photo....shined from the right.
The second photo has the flashlight shining from the left and you can see what the camera captured.
I agree with neophyl. I don't think you're going to get much better with the gears. But the top surface looks bad. I do a lot of 0.8 printing with PETG and get a much more homogeneous top layer. Did you calibrate the extrusion multiplier for this filament and nozzle (with a one wall thick empty cube) ?