Trying to increasing print surface quality (E3D on Flashforge?)

[Dargonfly]

Of the two possibilities the geared stepper will provide better results though I do not know if you can change the extrusion parameters on the Mightyboard or not. A more expensive stepper will only reduce it, you cannot cure it that way and you will be gobsmacked at how much a UK or German made stepper costs. You also run the risk of fraud however you buy it. English stickers on Chinese goods are too damn common of late.

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/EU-Fr...054390403.html

These are what you want and it is a good price but you are going to have to do some engineering to fit them because they are longer. It may not even be possible to fit them on the head and you will increase the weight and therefore the ability of the head to respond to requests for speed change (more inertia). Another potential problem with a geared extruder is the possibility of backlash in the gears. A planetary set minimises this but you may have to recalculate your extrusion retraction.

I think they have to be using micro-stepping because a minimum extrusion length of 1.74 mm is way too much. They are probably using 1/16 microsteps, you could find that in the specs somewhere I think if you need to know.

Gearing down your stepper means that speeds will be reduced so if you applied the same logic to your X Y steppers it would certainly improve things but I think the maximum speed the stepper drivers can pulse at may mean that you wait for ever to make things. I don't think the improvement in quality would be worth the expense and hastle. You would be better to put your money into getting rid of all the plastic bits inside the printer and using chains instead of elastic bands to drive the axes. It's all down to cost in the end. If you want to spend as much as a Stratasys cost then you would be better buying a Stratasys.

Thanks for the help!
I think that geared stepper would allow for more fluid feedrate. I will take pictures of what I mean with the current feedrate. It's possible to increase the feed in software, so that shouldn't be an issue.
Will get back to this with pictures tonight! (and hopefully an idea on how to apply these motors in the current build.)

I don't think mass is a problem, because I already print really slow; and if it becomes a problem I'll just lower the max. acceleration settings.
Also, I don't think I need to change everything to Stratasys quality. It's just that this is currently my largest bottleneck quality wise. (printing at 0.05 looks perfect in X & Y direction, but creates these ugly vertical osculation.)