Quote Originally Posted by minneapolis-matt View Post
I have done nothing with z hop at all. Should i generally set it to something? What are the trade offs if any?
Trade-off with Z-hop is that it makes the print take a little longer. Contrary to what aardvark says, it does not introduce errors into prints. On any reasonably built printer, the Z-axis has no issues at all getting back to the same position. What it does it lift the nozzle away from the print when travelling between printed parts. This means that if you have any over extrusion, or the very common slight lift around the edge of low angle PLA parts, the nozzle will not collide with the print when travelling. It's typically set to 0.6 to 0.8mm. It may well be already set, as PrusaSlicer has it on by default (at least for Prusas), and Cura has it set to occur on retractions.