Going to hit it with a hammer!!

[curious aardvark]

travel speed also needs to drop.
these days I set my travel speed to the same as my print speed. It cuts down on sudden acceleration, which creates little spikey bits of mpalsrtic and also adds vibration.
Print times are minimally effected.

Print speed you can go as high as 65. But in that case you need to print pla at around 200-215 depending on colour of plastic. ie: black prints at a lower temp than white. Most colours print quite happily at 210 - but you will need a print area cooling duct: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:537918 .
The lowest I ever print pla at is 205 for black.

First layer speed should be 10-20% of actual print speed. For tpu/rubber filaments I can go as low as 5% on a 20mm/s print speed. Mind you that was for printing 3mm diameter tires :-)


Pla is a better final product if printed at higher temps.

Glue stick is about the best thing to print pla on. Cheap, easy to apply and clean off and you can build the layers up to compensate if you can't be arsed to calibrate often :-)
And you can apply it to any other surface.

And if you don't have a removeable print bed - it doesn't coat your printer in hair laquer ;-)

[MathewBuer]

ok ive managed to get the printer working a little better, ive slowed the print right down to 35mm and the heat is set to 205,

what are peoples views on rafts ?

Regards

[bigo93]

I've found rafts to be too problematic, a lot of time it sticks to the print too well and is hard to take off.

Glass bed and ABS juice works wonders to help both PLA and ABS stick to the glass.
Bed must be heated even with PLA though, but you get a nice glossy smooth base.

[MathewBuer]

ok ive managed to drop the speedrate down to 35 and it seems to be printing really nice, however it works maybe ill safe this profile then mod another and see if i can make it speed up without compromising the quality

[curious aardvark]

Rafts aren't becessary for pla.
Useful for abs i found.

[MathewBuer]

ok so ive printed this as my 1st big object but so far it has taken 14hours and its onlly on 76% ???
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1584975

[Alibert]

What layer height are you printing at?

With 0.2mm height and fairly optimized speed settings (standard S3D Flashforge creator profile) I get 7:12 for the base part, and at 0.1mm layer height I get 17:23 (17 hours, 23 minutes). This is just the base part, no lid added.

The print time is roughly inversely proportional to the printing layer height. Lower height means more layers means longer printing time....

[curious aardvark]

Okay next lesson (lol): Do all standard printing at 0.3mm layer height.
Do hi-res printing at 0.2mm layer height.

And only if you are printing out detailed artistic models would you ever need to go lower than 0.2mm.

Also you can print at up to 65mm/s
Change the settings to 0.3mm and 60mm/s and that box should print out in 4-5 hours.

BUT you now know that the printer will happily run all day without any problems - that's worth knowing :-)

[Sebastian Finke]

Is the CTC another Replicator clone? If so, did you calibrate the extruder? I ask because this jumped out at me:

"feedDiameter" : 1.769999980926514,
         "feedstockMultiplier" : 0.930,

[Sebastian Finke]

If it is then you need to calibrate asap. That first pic you linked is classic non-calibration...

The link is stickied in the FF forum.