The slicer. A mythical piece of software that
decides the fate of your every 3D print. To
tame it, you must first learn its language
and appease the demons that live within.
At least so it seems. Today we’re going
to go over the common settings you might want
to adjust to get better prints out of your
filament printers!
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Let’s get back to the video.
Right, so for this video I’m going to be
using Prusa Slicer, even though the name doesn’t
suggest it, it actually works for any filament
printer that accepts standard gcode, which
means basically every relevant machine. Some
of the settings might have slightly different
names in Cura or Ideamaker, but the ones we’re
going to go over today all work in the same
way between different tools. But before we
move over into the settings, let’s start
here on the “Plater” tab, this is the
view that you’ll be using the most for actually
printing stuff. So obviously, after you’ve
pulled in your model, you’ve got the basic
tools of moving, scaling and rotating parts
as well as automatically arranging models
on your printer’s workspace. You’ve also
got the 3D preview of your parts right here,
but there are two neat features in here that
you might miss.
First, you sometimes get parts that don’t
have their right side up. You usually want
a large, flat surface to stick to the build
plate. Now, you could use the rotate tool
and shimmy it in place, and that’s doable,
but you’ve also got the “lay flat” tool
that auto-detect ways how the part could lay
down and just lets you pick one of the options
it’s giving you. Really quick, really effective.
The other one is the “slice Z” tool that,
if you use weird models that don’t have
a flat bottom, you can just use to slice off
a bit of your part and get that nice, clean
bottom. You can also use it as a simple way
to split parts in half that are, maybe, too
tall to print in one go.
Alright, so over here you have the first few
actual settings that you can tweak for a print.
Of course, there are some presets up here,
which change everything, but those are something
that not every printer has. I mean, typically,
on printers where I run my own profiles, I’ve
got one, maybe two or three profiles that
I can switch between, but really, I’m mostly
going to be using one “compromise” profile
that works for everything. But if you do decide
to tweak stuff, these are a great way to at
least save a backup of your status quo and
then later compare how the results of your
new settings differ.
The three config options you get right here
are “supports”, the infill ratio and “Brim”.
Let’s start with the infill ratio, this
determines how dense that supporting structure
on the inside on your parts is going to be.
Now, putting more filament into the infill
isn’t the best use of material if you want
to increase the strength of your parts, its
job is actually more to support the top surface,
think of it as the roof of a print, so that
that has something to rest on and doesn’t
cave in, and also to tie together the wall
of your parts. But, like I said, if you want
strong print, a thicker shell, which we’re
going to look at in a second, is much more
efficient, so typically, you’re going to
be using anywhere from 10 to maybe 40% infill
at most.
Next, support material. If you’ve got parts
that have geometry that’s hard to print,
support material can help, well, support it
while it’s being built up. The option “support
on build plate only” isn’t something I
ever use, because, usually, it doesn’t generate
support material in many spots where I’d
actually want it. So for me, I either go “everywhere”
or “for support enforcers only”, which
is a really handy feature you have where you
can overlay extra shapes on your model to
tell the slicer where you want and don’t
want support material. Now, support isn’t
a perfect solution, which is why you generally
want to use as little as possible. It uses
extra material, makes prints slower and usually
leaves a surface finish behind that isn’t
particularly great. You’d be surprised how
far filament printers can go without needing
support material, and usually, parts designed
for being 3D printable will already have taken
the limitations of the process into account.
Lastly, we’ve got “Brim”, which creates
an extra lip around your part that helps it
stick down better. If you’ve got parts where
the edges tend to lift up, Brim is an easy
solution and is fairly easy to peel or slice
off after a print.
Okay, so that’s the plater, let’s head
over into the settings tabs. Right now, we’re
in “Simple” Mode, which hides many of
the settings for “tweaking” a printer’s
performance, like I said in an earlier video,
tuning or tweaking a profile is not trivial,
so we’ll be looking at the settings that
you’d be changing to better suit a particular
model, independently of what printer you use.
And the very first setting is one that I’d
actually rarely change, and that’s layer
height. It should be fairly self-explanatory
what it does, but since so many of the currently
hidden, “advanced” settings would get
thrown off by changing the most fundamental
setting, layer height, I usually leave that
the same throughout. 0.15mm is a fairly fine
layer height already, but you might see anything
between ¼ and ¾ of your printer’s nozzle,
which usually is 0.4mm - that means layer
heights between 0.1 and 0.3mm, and scales
up and down if you’re using a different
size nozzle. Printers that don’t have auto
bed leveling might have specific layer heights
that they work best at.
Next, everything related to the solid shell
of your part. Now, the way this is all laid
out is, honestly, kind of unintuitive. It
has historically grown into what it is now,
every slicer does it like this, but really,
these could all be condensed down into a single
setting, “shell thickness”. But as is,
it’s really granular, so let’s go through
it. Okay, first, the horizontal wall thickness
within each layer is the “vertical shell”,
counted in “Perimeters”. Basically, you’re
setting how many times your printer is going
to go around the outside of each layer, laying
down an extra filament line before it moves
on to filling the inside with infill. The
equivalent to that, vertically, would be the
“Solid layers” that cap off the top and
bottom of your infill. If you want, for example,
a fairly strong 1.5mm shell all around your
part, you’re going to have to do some math
with how things are currently laid out. With
a 0.4mm nozzle, which is actually set to lay
down a line slightly wider than that, you’d
need 4 perimeters and, with a 0.15mm layer
height, you’d need 10 solid layers top and
bottom. At least for the solid layers, you
could also just set specifically PrusaSlicer
to 1 layer top and bottom and then use the
“Minimum shell thickness” to have the
program figure out how many it actually needs.
The lowest I’d go here would be a 1mm shell,
that’s barely enough of give you usable
walls around the sides and a top shell that
won’t have the infill structure printing
through. With bigger thicknesses for stronger
prints, you might also want to start increasing
the infill ratio at some point. Probably the
most I’d do is a 5mm shell and about 40%
infill, anything that needs more than that
should maybe be a part made from at least
a stronger plastic or maybe even machined
in metal.
There’s one more setting in here, spiral
vase, if you want no infill and just a single,
continuous perimeter all the way around your
part, well, to print a vase.
Next, Infill. Really the only setting to “adjust”
is the fill density, less density gives you
a coarser, less dense pattern. Now, for fill
patterns, there are a lot to choose from,
and probably 2/3rds of those are kind of fringe
application or “because it sounds cool”
patterns that have been carried over for years,
but nobody should ever use them. The ones
that I would say are worth using are Triangles,
Cubic and Gyroid. They’re all patterns that
support your prints in all compression and
shear directions, which should give your fairly
consistent strength and stiffness in your
prints. If we’re being honest, “Triangles”
is probably the best one out of these, but
Cubic and Gyroid are “better” on paper,
but realistically, they just look really cool.
Gyroid doesn’t always print quite as fast
as the others, too.
The top and bottom patterns decide how your
parts get capped off at the top and bottom,
some patterns blend more nicely with specific
prints, but for 99% percent of applications,
“Rectilinear” is fine.
Next, Skirt and Brim, Skirt distance, you
usually don’t have to touch, and setting
Brim width to 5mm here is exactly the same
as checking “Brim” over on the plater
tab. Maybe 10mm is something you might need
to use with some prints if you’re using
one of the warpier filaments.
Then, support material, and here, I think
the “Simple” view mode is hiding a bit
too much, so let’s jump over into Mode -> Advanced.
There are three settings in here that you
should look at. First, “Generate support
material”, this one turns on or off supports
entirely, next, “Overhang threshold”,
this determines how aggressive the support
generation is. An angle of 0° will only support
the most critical bits of your model, and
90° will support everything. Quite often,
30° is enough to just help out prints that
would otherwise show a bit of drooping or
curling. Remember, every bit of support material
you generate here is something you will have
to peel of later.
And when it comes to how easy it is to peel
it off, the “Contact Z distance” is one
setting that determines how big the gap between
the support material and your part is going
to be. Make it bigger, and it peels more easily,
but also leave a more droopy surface, make
it smaller, and it sticks better, but is harder
to remove and leaves more scars.
Switching to advanced mode has actually opened
up a whole bunch of other options, just in
the print settings tab. Now, again, most of
these you don’t need to touch for every
print. Also, it might be tempting to head
over into the “Speed” tab and try seeing
how fast your printer can print stuff, but
that will almost always be at the expense
of reliability and quality. So in the case
of the speed settings, instead of tuning “up”,
I’d actually recommend tuning “down”
first, because if you’re simply printing
at a constant, say 40mm/s, there are now so
many other things that can’t cause issues
anymore. Plus, the speed gain isn’t linear
when you just allow faster max speeds for
your printer, it still needs to slowly accelerate
up to speed and then brake back down.
But there are two settings that are only visible
in “advanced” that are something I use
to easily get prints to stick. So first, you
want your first layer height to be fairly
large, maybe 0.25 or 0.3mm. Well, that setting
is actually always visible. Now, this will
not just lift the nozzle higher for the first
layer, but it will also pump out more material
to make up for that extra distance. Combined
with the other setting in Advanced -> Extrusion
Width -> First layer, which I usually have
at a millimeter, you’re increasing the width
of that filament sausage being laid down as
well. What that does is that now you don’t
have just a round filament sausage that’s
being dropped onto the bed, it’s actually
being smooshed down a lot. What I’ve found
is that, especially when you have a bed that
isn’t flat or level, or your nozzle distance
isn’t set right, this really helps with
getting prints to stick down.
You might need to reduce the speed for the
first layer if your extruder can’t keep
up.
Okay, so over in the “Filament Settings”
tab, there’s nothing that you’d adjust
for any particular print, but you’ll find
the basics for setting up a specific filament
type. That’s enough content for a video
all by itself, so here’s the quick version.
First layer temperatures determine how well
your part sticks down onto the bed, and it’s
usually a good idea to leave at least the
bed temperature constant for the entire print
as some beds like to bounce up and down as
they heat and cool. Use the manufacturer’s
recommended temperatures, but it’s actually
not unusual if your specific printer reads
its hotend temperature 10 or 15°C high or
low, so if your layers split apart easily,
increase temperature, and if you get melty-curly
issues, reduce temperature or turn on or increase
the part cooling fan speed.
The “Overrides” page is, as the name implies,
an override to one of the few “tunable”
settings in the “Printer Settings” tab,
and that’s retraction. When you get wisps
or strings on your parts where the hotend
was moving from one spot to the next, you’ll
generally need to increase the retraction
length. The other feature in here is Z hop,
which lifts the nozzle up by a slight bit
in addition to retracting and sucking the
filament back up. It’s really useful to
reduce stringing and reduced the risk of knocking
over a tall print with the nozzle.
So obviously, we could go through every single
setting, but we’re already starting to blur
the lines between what it something you can
adjust for a specific print and what is printer
tuning.
In either case, the last thing you’ll do
is to hit “Export gcode”, and then feed
that gcode to your printer on an SD card or
USB drive.
Let’s recap! On the “Plater” tab, you
get your basic move, scale, rotate and the
super useful “lay flat” tool. If you think
your print needs to be stronger or more rigid
than normal, increase the shell thickness
first before you start using material for
the infill. There are reasonable limits for
all of these settings. Resist the urge to
start tweaking everything, but if you do,
make sure you create a backup profile and
compare the before and after. A good start
to tuning things would actually be to de-tune
and for example set your print speeds to a
chill, constant 40mm/s. You don’t gain much
by having prints come out unusable or fail
outright - slow and steady wins the race.
But then again, every printer is different,
and what works for one doesn’t necessarily
need to work for another.
So that’s it for this one, in the next video,
we’ll look at what the entire process of
going from an idea to a part looks like, until
then, thank you for watching, make sure to
get subscribed, keep on making, and I’ll
see you later.
