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KeyboardWarrior
Posts: 480
Joined: Thu Jun 19, 2014 5:02 pm

Tip of the Day 19 - Additions Tab, a technical analysis

Skirt Settings

Skirts are really useful for priming your extruder prior to printing. I generally print with a skirt offset of 4 mm and 2 outlines. However, changing the offset to 0 mm, offers the ability to create a "brim" that will connect to your part and help create surface adhesion. For more information on skirts, brims, rafts, this tutorial is very helpful:
http://www.simplify3d.com/support/tutor ... and-brims/

Skirt Extruder: Selects the extruder to be used for printing your Skirt
Skirt Layers: How tall your skirt will be. If you want the skirt to be as tall as your part, you can just place 99999 in this field.
Skirt Offset:How far away your skirt will be from your part.
Skirt Outlines: # of perimeter outlines for your skirt.

Raft Settings

A raft offers a base understructure that will contour to the outline of your print, increasing the surface area to the bed. This in-turn will offer more adhesion to the print bed. However, because rafts take a long time to print and use a lot of material, it is only recommended to use rafts for prints that have a low surface area with the print bed or that generally don’t have a good base will often benefit from a raft. Also, whether due to the design of the printer or calibration, those users with beds that are slightly uneven have often found that rafts can provide a good foundation.

Raft Extruder: Selects the extruder to be used for printing your Raft
Raft Layers: How many layers your raft will be.
Raft Offset:How far away your part the raft will extend out to.
raft offset.png

Separation: How much extra distance on the Z-axis from the raft to to the bottom of your part.
Raft Infill %: This will typically be set around 80%, set the top layer of your rafts infill. For rafts made from dissolvable filament, upping this to 100% may be helpful.
Disable Base Layers: Disables the thicker layers at the start of the raft, disabling this can be helpful if your rafts stick to the bed too much.
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dkightley
Posts: 2405
Joined: Tue Mar 10, 2015 4:09 pm

Re: Tip of the Day 19 - Additions Tab, a technical analysis

I've no idea if it'll cause a problem, but I've spotted that if you use a tall skirt in conjunction with a raft, then any raft separation you have set up (to make separating the raft easier!) will give a separation in the skirt....which could lead to a print failure if the skirt layer following the gap fails to adhere to the previous layer.
Doug Kightley
Volunteer at the National Tramway Museum http://www.tramway.co.uk
Railway modeller and webmaster at http://www.talkingtgauge.net
James ORD
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Mar 10, 2016 10:46 am

Re: Tip of the Day 19 - Additions Tab, a technical analysis

I think an update to this Post is in order.
vahntaa
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue May 10, 2016 2:23 am

Re: Tip of the Day 19 - Additions Tab, a technical analysis

What about prime pillar and Ooze Shield?
Thank you.
KC_703
Posts: 238
Joined: Tue Aug 26, 2014 5:23 pm

Re: Tip of the Day 19 - Additions Tab, a technical analysis

vahntaa wrote:What about prime pillar and Ooze Shield?
Thank you.
Both prime pillar and ooze shield print after the tool change to ensure the hotend is ready to print the true object. I've found that one or the other is enough to prime the hotend on my dual extruder machine. The ooze shield is my first choice, unless the object is particularly large then I'd choose the 10x10 primer pillar to conserve filament.

Some folks have mentioned that the ooze shield leans and obstructs the print. If that happens, try specifying multiple outlines. In theory, the hotend should be properly primed for the second outline. Thus supporting the ooze shield properly. I've never had a problem and haven't tested the use of multiple outlines.
zapta
Posts: 24
Joined: Mon Nov 02, 2015 9:18 am

Re: Tip of the Day 19 - Additions Tab, a technical analysis

For skirt, I always print 2-3 layers, Much easier to remove it than a single layer.
cssmythe3
Posts: 12
Joined: Wed Mar 09, 2016 11:04 am

Re: Tip of the Day 19 - Additions Tab, a technical analysis

The separation distance has to be some function of layer thickness. If I have a layer thickness of .1mm or 1mm, isn't that going to have a huge impact on the right separation distance? Can someone give me a ballpark separation distance in terms of % of layer height? I'm guessing around 50% of layer height. I'll report back after some tests.

Chuck in NYC
msaine
Posts: 13
Joined: Fri Feb 24, 2017 1:29 pm

Re: Tip of the Day 19 - Additions Tab, a technical analysis

When using a raft one setting says how far from the part the raft extends and I am wondering how you determine this distance from the part? It appears that you use a shadow image from a Z axis point of view. This results in way more raft then is needed for a part that has a small contact footprint but is a much larger part overall. Can you either change this distance to a distance from the actual bed contact footprint or add a second setting for this.. What I am printing is a ring for BB8 and it is a curved piece with a very small contact but a lot of overhang resulting in a very large raft when what is really needed is a fraction of this area.

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