It's all in the details. Or lack thereof I should say

So, I've been printing decently with larger pieces but looming over my head I know I have never been able to get the finer details to look anything better than melted crayons.

I figured I would try to play with it on a basic and simple business card type practice piece.
I've tried before with standard PLA, and Colorfabb and results are the same.

Using Repetier, And slic3r, in the retraction settings I have tried a number of variations.

retraction length from 1mm up to 4mm
Lift z from .5 up to 2mm
and speed from 30 to 33 mm/s

I have done the mark filament 10mm where it enters the extruder and measure the extrude/retract 10mm thing, to the eye it looks pretty much spot on so no major surprises there. Upgraded hobbed bolt as well.

Many of my print speeds are still at default, should I drop any of those way down? Or any other tips?
This is Proto-Pasta Carbon fiber and has been printing at 205 temp.

 

Retraction issues?

What temp did you print at?

 

This one was the 205 mentioned but I have tried a range of temperatures with 3 different materials and still get similar results. It's not just on this card either. Multiple parts or the stringing test prints leave undesirable results.

 

Heres a hint.. has nothing to do with retraction or else you'd see it in background also not just the letters...
here's a jig i printed a couple weeks ago for a project..



interested in knowing more?

 

Now THOSE are some damn fine letters!!!

 

Yes

 

Axis can I see the stl?

I printed this the other night. Nothing special with the print settings

 

This is the file Mike. Not much to it really, just a quick test I threw together to see if I could.

 

Yeah you definitely won't be able to do it at that resolution with a .4mm nozzle.

The issue is the separation in the letters, the scale of the small letters, and the min radius of the nozzle.

You could probably print that with a .25mm nozzle.

 

Awesome. Thanks. I'm switching to the hexagon soon, from what I saw they have kind of a wacky nozzle design, do they have the smaller nozzles that you know of?


Edit: Just checked reprapdiscount, looks like they only have .3 .4 and .5 for the hex. Oh well. Good reason to keep the stock end and some teeny nozzles. But thanks again for the heads up.

 

However, the Hex has a standard thread for the nozzle(s) so you can use a variety of other brands as well. I have used my e3d .6 in the hex with fine results.

 

In this post on the hexagon thread, it was stared stated that other nozzles were 1mm too short, is that not the case then? or was that just for his 'hexagon shaped' nozzle in particular?

http://forums.robo3dprinter.com/index.php?threads/hexagon-hot-end.1888/page-10#post-18891

 

I measure the E3D nozzles as being 7.5mm from flat to top and the hexagon as being 6mm.

So you can use E3D nozzles on the hexagon but not the other way around.