Tip of the Day 10- Extruder tab, a technical analysis

[InspGadgt]

If I understand this correctly...the printer will extrude up to the coast point, at that point the extruder stops feeding filament but continues moving up to the stop point. At the stop point retraction will occur followed by the wipe which will continue along the perimeter.

So...blobs and strings that occur at the end of an extrusion are functions of retraction, coasting, and wiping. Blobs that occur at the start of an extrusion would be due to priming too much from Extra Restart Distance. Conversely if I am getting holes at the beginning of an extrusion layer then I am not getting enough priming and should increase the restart distance. Sound about right?

[brian442]

In case you're interested, the blobbing stuff is explained in much more detail here:
https://www.simplify3d.com/support/prin ... s-and-zits

There's a big section about retraction and coasting settings

[InspGadgt]

I went through that already and it is a good guide...but I'm looking more for clarification. That blog is what I used to formulate my question. I just want confirmation that I am thinking in the right direction.

[aLLmIxEdup]

I have to echo the view that surfacing this information in the application itself would be very cool indeed. If S3D ever decide to do a UI make-over I would put it high on the list of desirable features. We love the articles on this site and are happy to visit it for a good read, but these snippets of information are just what we need when pondering our settings for a print. There are already some very useful tooltips, and I suspect some of these paragraphs are a bit long for tooltips - it would get annoying for many. However, an optional linked 'webhelp' panel could point to these same resources. It might be a happy UI compromise that I have seen used elsewhere.

[simple]

Extrusion Width: The slicing engine doesn't use your nozzle diameter, but instead uses your Extrusion Width setting. For most cases, keeping this setting on Auto (1.2x your nozzle diameter) is the best route, however for certain cases where you have extremely thin nozzles, you may find it's best to go to Manual and play with lowering the Extrusion Width setting.

Thanks for explaining this. I'm still a little unclear on one point; does this ONLY change the offset used when laying down adjacent lines, or does it also attempt to adjust the amount of material extruded to "match" the new desired width?