Slic3r Top Infill Not Solid

[Th3rd Dimension]

Hey Guys,

Wondering if someone could help me out here. I've got my prints fairly tuned in to my liking however my last issue i'm having is the top of my prints not being completely solid (they look neat).

I have turned up my extrusion multiplier to 1.3 which has made it a fair bit better, i've also increased my extrusion width top solid infill to 150% which has also improved things. i am currently printing the top layer at a speed of 20.

abs filament
extrusion temp 240
heat bed temp 80

have a look at the picture to see so more detail.

[RobH2]

What if you turn your top solid infill up to 300%? I know the numbers begin to sound counter-intuitive when they get larger than seems logical but sometimes it helps to over do it so you can then find the center. If you can get it to over extrude then that gives you data to ponder. If you can't get it to over extrude no matter how high you push that top solid infill, then it makes me think that the fault is somewhere else.

Have you measured the diameter of the filament accurately and put that in? Just asking obvious questions for now.

So with the extrusion multiplier at 1.3 are all of your other layers are nice and is your gap good so that the filament is getting smashed down just a bit when extruded? You want the extruded filament to be slightly elliptical when it goes down. That will force the sides out a bit and close up those gaps. If it's just getting laid down without any flattening, the width of each layer will be just the diameter of the extruder's orifice. I'm just guessing but what you want is that resulting layer to have an extruded filament width of about 10-15% wider so the sides smush into each other.

[Th3rd Dimension]

Hi Robh2!

Thank you for your response greatly appreciate the help. I will try to pump up the solid infill to 300 and see if i can notice a difference.

Also you're description about layers smushing together seams to be a little different as to what i am seeing from my printer. I believe my printer is more layering the layers upon each other rather than smushing together. Would this be a result of a to low print bed?

[RobH2]

Yes, that could be part of it. You want that first layer to get "pushed" into the bed. So if your head oriface is .4mm and the gap between the head and bed is .5mm, then the filament is just falling .1mm to the bed as a perfect cylinder. It's not getting pushed down. So if the oriface is .4mm you want the gap to be at least .3mm and better yet about .25mm so that it's getting pushed into the bed. That helps adhesion and as a result, the bead laid down is obling. It makes it .25mm tall and maybe .45mm wide because it's smushed. These numbers are for illustration. I'm not sure exactly how wide it will be.

Having said all of that, once the first layer is down, and if you have your print job is set to print .2mm layers, then each pass of the head should be pushing the filament into the layer below. So after the first few layers, everything should be stacking up as it's supposed to. Where these upper layers can be problematic is if you accidentally had the layer height set to something bigger than your oriface. So if you had your layer height set to .45mm and your oriface is .4mm then the filament again is falling .05mm to the layer below and not getting pushed into it. That would allow for gaps in top layers.

How may "top" layers are we seeing in your photo. If just one, try printing the part and use 3 top layer. See if that fills it in. Sometimes I get sparce top layers for the first one and then the last two fill in properly for some reason.

Check your layer height setting. You didn't say what it is. If that's ok we might then need to look elsewhere. But do try to over extrude and see if you can go the other way. If you can't that will help us diagnose.

[printbus]

You also haven't said whether you've calibrated the steps per unit setting for your extruder. That can affect whether you're getting the proper amount of extrusion.

Are you using Slic3r? Try another slicer like Cura for comparison.

[Th3rd Dimension]

Ok so a bit of an update:

1. So i tried turning up my infill to 300% this made almost next to no different in my prints!
2. next i double checked the diameter of my filament, currently i have 1.75mm entered into slicer and my physical filament measures anywhere between 1.73-1.78?
3. I also tried using Cura as a slicer as "printbus" suggest, which resulted in almost similar results to slic3r (keeping in mine i roughly adjusted Cura settings to match that of sli3ers).

Moving on to answering some of your questions. When printing with slic3r i have been printing with 7 top layers and a layer height of .2mm with my first layer being .4mm. I have also payed some closer attention to how my layers are getting extruded on top of each other and the very first layer of print seams to be smashing and spreading nicely upon the print surface however from there on in it seams that my layers a being more layed ontop of each other rather than pressed/mashed down?

Lastly i have never calibrated my E-steps, i have read about it on various forums but never been confident to touch that side of things. I was given my 3D printer which is a kossel style printer as a birthday present which was bought from a chines website which almost included next to no building or configuration instructions. The printer came loaded with firmware which i have not touched and left standard. The only file which this chines company provided was a slic3r configuration file which i have been tweaking and modifing since the a few months now as there original slic3r file produced terrible printing results!

I also read on another forum that i should measure my prints and see what my margin of error is. So i printed a simple 20mm x 20mm x 10mm cube and measured it upon its completion. My print accuracy varies in approximately 0.10mm - 0.20mm not sure if this is an issue?

[RobH2]

Ok, I think you need to take off the waterwings and jump into the deep end of the pool. You need to do a complete calibration. It can be confusing and scary at first but you can't hurt anything. At least going forward you'll know that everything is set properly and then your diagnosis can eliminate what you know for sure is "correct."

Back up all of your files and folders that have anything to do with your printer. Since you don't yet know which files do or do not function as your firmware, just dump everything you think is remotely related to a Jumpdrive or something. That way if it all goes sideways, you can just replace the known good files.

Next, search the web, google, reprap.org, etc, for configuration directions. Someone posted them here in this forum if I recall. You need to find out what your configuration files are named. I use RAMPS/Marlin and my files end with .ino and I use Arduino to open and modify them. 'Configuration.h' is the main file where many tweaks and calibrations are done. It's going to take a little tenacity on your part to find directions and info but I'm sure it's out there. I spent two 10-hours days doing this same task about a month after I got my printer as I just didn't like my results. Granted, I have a Makerfarm and Colin at Makerfarm is one of the most helpful and guys you'll ever buy a device from, but I wanted to learn it so I could really know what's going on and make better prints.

So, dive in, you won't drown. And, if you struggle for too long just write back and we can try to steer you the right way.

To get you started I did a quick search and got this: http://makezine.com/2014/09/28/3d-pr...-your-e-steps/

Here's another. Zennmaster is close to a 3dprinter god so you can trust him...lol... http://zennmaster.com/makingstuff/re...part-1-e-steps

[crawler]

Having just finished building a Prusa I3 Rework and having a lot of problems I tend to agree with RobH2 & printbus and do an E-steps calibration, is it actually moving 100 mm in the X,Y & Z Axis when you ask it to move 100 mm then an Extruder Calibration is it extruding 100 mm of filament when asked if it is less then this could well be your problem if it was more then you would probably have ended up with a rough top and not like yours this was one of my problems.

Other things to consider are you said that you have measured the diameter of your filament and got different sizes did you then take the average and put that into Slic3r.

Hope this helps

Crawler