Solved Change of Direction Artifact?

I'm not sure if it is a change in direction of the print head causing this or not, but I am getting some weird artifacts in a series of prints. I printed four business card holders in one print (~18 Hrs) to get a sense for part to part variation across the print space. They came out okay, but they all seem to have some weirdness in different locations.

They all have some overflow on either the left or right side of the thin back and two have a bump in the middle. For those layers the left and right sides came out smooth.

Should I try a different print orientation, slicer, or change some higher level setting like acceleration or something.

 

What I have setup to print now is just the back wall of the holder with three different radii (original 0.5mm, 1mm, and 1.4mm). And this array is duplicated so I will end up with two of each. All other settings are the same. There is a slight chance that this is done printing by the time I get home from soccer tonight, but doubtful.

 

I've had some crazy print errors due to design flaws relative to the slicer. Skewed parts, strange corners. Run em through netfabb and it fixes it 90% of the time.

my favorite was a dog model that the legs would print out normal height, but the rest of the model skewed about 50% taller in the z axis leaving the legs barely attached.

 

So just adjusting the radius was not enough. I kind of figured that would be the case, but wanted to make sure I could re-create the artifacts before I keep troubleshooting.

I opened the models up in netfabb and everything showed as being okay. For what its worth I ran the repair anyways and exported new STL files. Not sure if I will set them up to print or not though.

I am going to try changing the orientation next to try and figure out if it is a mechanical issue related to the x or y axis. Print one as a control, one at a 45°, and another 90° off the control.

I think I might quickly draw the part myself in CREO and SW instead of going off the IGS file I had downloaded.

 

So far I've printed one CREO model at a 45 angle and that came out a lot better.

I've printed controls at 45 and 90. Both of those have the weird over extrusion on the ends. Right now I have the CREO and SW models printing in the original orientation and a "repaired" model from netfabb at a 45.

I'm going to chalk this one up to a solid model issue. Now it is just a matter of determining if netfabb basic can repair the ugliness.

 

No worries. I can simply model the part myself.

I suppose that's what I get from downloading an IGS file.

 

Oh and the "repaired" model made no change.