Improving quality of my prints? Newbie help.

[cjalas]

Hey all, I recently bought a CTC (you can see more about my beginnings in a forum post over in the CTC forum); although I just found out this is where all the community action is happening that revolves around FlashForge / Makerbot / CTC / Clones .

So I've started some test prints on my new CTC printer (alongside some mods), and I'm hoping maybe the community here can point me in the right direction to improving the quality of my prints before I keep using more filament. I printed out a "3d printer test" print from Thingiverse (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:704409); and mine just looks like poop.

Now, I've been using Astroprint to send my STL files directly to the printer wirelessly; to my knowledge Astroprint slices and saves the print file locally on the 3d printer NOT in the cloud. I'm also noticing (what seems to me) to be A LOT of shaking of my printer housing as the extruder head moves about. Not sure if this is contributing to the messy prints.



As you can see in the image, the small words look like blobs, and I'm getting a lot of "noise" or messy layering at random (most noticeable with the pyramid and cylinder). Overall the tightness and spacing of the filament being laid down seems alright to me, and I did successfully print something else beforehand. It just seems like smaller details are turning blobbish or not coming out right. I've been printing with a 1/8" borosilicate glass bed at around 60C, and the nozzle at 220 to 230C. Also been having problems with lifting, and this is with PLA filament.

Any help is appreciated!