How to improve print quality

Hello all,
I have been messing around with settings in skeinforge and improving my print quality,
However, I can't seem to get the quality the same as the parts that came in my kit, a Mendel
There seem to be little missing gaps at the beginning of each layer, and as per the photos, not perfect fill
Can anyone recognise what I have got wrong
Many thanks in advance
Myles

Reprappro Mendel, PLA 1.75, hotend 190, bed 60

That is from your extrusion width being to wide to do a pass in small areas.

Example, if you have a 1.5 mm wall, and an extrusion width of .6, the perimeter passes will take up 1.2mm leaving a .3mm gap that your slicing software will not infill due to the infill space being smaller than your extrusion width.

I've been running my extrusion width to be the same as my nozzle diameter of .25mm and tweak my extrusion rate accordingly.

I still get gaps here and there, but very small.

Thanks Steve,
Bit of a noob here, is extrusion width called something else in skeinforge ?
I have .5 nozzle with . 3 layer height and get quite nice .5 mm walls ?
My prints are improving and now quite functional, but I would like to pretty them up a bit
Appreciate any help
Many thanks
Myles

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/18/2012 10:52AM by Myles.

under carve/edge width and under dimension/measured width of extrusion, set these values to the same as your nozzle diameter.

You may have to tweak your flow rate a bit, but overall I'm getting better results.

I'm running a .25mm nozzle, and get an 'in air' extrusion width of .33mm, but I get much better path to path overlap and stronger parts using .25mm for extrusion width in SF.

Hey Steve,
Many thanks for your advice, both your posts contained massively helpful info,
I am slowly getting my head around the settings, after taking your advice I reduced
the above settings to match my .5 nozzle and with a big decrease in extruder feed rate,
I achieved great prints.
The only drawback is the increased print time, but with your .25 nozzle and your settings,
you must be able to get the most amazing detail prints. If you have time I would love to see a
photo of the sort of detail you must be getting.
I have since tweaked my settings back about halfway to what they were and am very happy with the results.
I include 2 pics of the latest print which I feel is of equal quality to the parts in the kit.
With your help I now feel I understand the settings a lot more and will reduce the settings for more detailed prints
Many thanks for your help
Myles

Glad to see that worked for you.

Working on printing smaller currently, I'm running into either z-wobble, layer smashing due to temp expansion between bed and hot end, varying feed matial quality, or a combination of all 3, producing some layer banding. The ridges in my prints are several layers thick, thinking z-wobble mostly.

Here is a pic of my test prints, Pink Panther Lady, printed at .05mm layer, 5mm/s feed rate, 210c with ABS.

Print in blue is .1mm layers and 50mm tall, one on the right is .05mm and 20mm tall(400 layers), and on the left is .05mm and 10mm(200 layers) tall but not completely dialed in because the radiant heat is taking away some of the detail.

Also working out the vertical banding, mostly in the blue print, which I think is coming from my T5 belts, switching to T2.5 soon.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/19/2012 10:58AM by Dirty Steve.

Those are fantastic Steve, 400 layers in 20mm, how many days does that take to print ?
I wish you all the best with your improvements , I guess the finer one tries to go the more complex the settings get.
Good luck and thanks for the help
Myles

The 20mm took 1 1/2 hours at 5mm/s. Sliced with Skeinforge.

@ Dirty Steve

When you go down in layer height you need to increase your print speed. This is because of the melting rate of the plastic, it needs to melt a minimum amount of plastic per second or you end up printing with ooze from the nozzle not extrusion.

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@Sublime

About the same, maybe a little less surface quality at 10mm/s, can't go much faster without printing multiples for additional cooling time at this scale.

With my hot end, a Wildseyed variant, and at this scale, printing faster gives me lower quality, even with a fan running. At a faster speed the layers do not have enough time to cool, and the subsequent layers start dragging and distorting the previous layer.

I'm runnning .05mm prints at the bottom end of my ABS temp at 210C. I normally run .2mm layer prints at 230-240C, 30mm/s.