Marvin, Help required

[Jason_80]

Can anyone give me some suggestions to help improve my marvin prints ?

Both of these were printed with the same speed settings in slic3r

Perimeter 20

Small Perimeters 10

Ext Perimeter 50%

Infill 35

Solid Infill 60%

Top Solid 20

200 micron print temp 175 reduced to 170 at top loop

100 micron print temp 170 reduced to 165 at top loop

I don’t think I can print any colder or much slower

[Nebbian]

Try printing in a different colour, if only so that your images will show up properly! I find that grey is the best to photograph if you have it available. Black, white and fluorescent colours are very difficult to show detail with.

Apart from that, go a bit hotter on your nozzle, and bump up your fan cooling. If you don’t have a fan on your hotend, use a desktop fan blowing across the build plate.

I can’t see much detail from the images, so can’t help much more until you try printing in a different colour.

[Jason_80]

Thanks for the reply Nebblan. I do have a print cooling fan and I started hotter, 185 degrees. The print quality has been improving as I dropped it.

Here is a new print in blue, probably the best yet. This one hasn’t been submitted so I don’t know if it would pass.

100 micron layer height with all settings the same as earlier

Nozzle size 0.4mm, don’t think I can print small things like this much better without getting a smaller nozzle.

[Nebbian]

That’s not bad. You’re 80% of the way towards a perfect print (imho). It does appears as if you have either some slop in your system, or your extruder gear isn’t centred perfectly. Basically the outer walls aren’t lining up with each other. When you get it right, you should be able to see the facets in the model. You can just make them out in this pic, you can see the bands on marvin’s face. In my opinion I’m 93% there, still some way to go.

Try:

1) Wiggling the extruder by hand to see if there is any slop, clicking, or movement.

2) Watch the extruder gear as it turns to see if it is centred.

Good luck, and let me know if you find a use for the dozens of marvins I have lying around.

[Jason_80]

Hi Nebblan, thanks again.

When I print in 50 micron layer height the perimeters do line up.

So I thought slop was not the problem, but I’ll look into it anyway.

I was thinking of making a chess set with all the marvins, put some crowns on, make some horses, castles etc.

[Jason_80]

Found some movement in the hotend to extruder body connection, fixed with washers to space the hotend down so that the groovemount tightens it up.

Printed again in 100 micron and 50 micron and I can’t see much of a difference.

[Nebbian]

I can’t see much difference there either. Have you checked your extruder gear to ensure that it’s not off-centre?