How do I print a good top level when there are holes in the print
Hi,
I am so pleased with the almost straight out of the box (after building of coarse) PLA prints I am getting from my new Prusa Kit.
But I have something that has been causing me trouble for a few months now on a Ender printer, and same on the Prusa, this is when printing large flat thin objects (230x40x3 for example) with holes in them. These are back panels for amplifiers with holes for connectors. The prints are excellent apart from the top surface where the slicer prints until the hole then goes off to do other parts of the layer and comes back to finish of behind/in-front of the hole to cover the layer. This leave lines in the top layer the ruins the esthetics of the print.
I have tried all sorts of things to resolve this none have been successful on the Ender and those I have tried on the Prusa have been similar. Has anyone come up with a fool proof method of getting a good top layer under these circumstances? The real parts will be ABS (kevler black) so small imperfections should be hidden by the texture or smoothed out with acetone vaper, though there is text printed on top of the "top layer", so not sure if acetone smoothing can be used to much or the text could be smudged.
Thanks for any replies
Jessica
Best Answer by Neophyl:
The current version (2.2.0) of Prusa Slicer you cant really get around these things. The pre alpha not yet released version (2.3.0) has a couple of upcoming features to help with this though. One of them is called ironing the other is a new top infill type called 'monotonous'.
Ironing is where the nozzle makes small passes over the top surface and uses the hot nozzle to flatten it down. This is already available in other slicer such as Cura and Super Slicer if you cant wait for the release of 2.3.0.
The new infill type of monotonous fills in the top layer always in the same direction. This means the bump where 2 lines meet no longer happens. It can actually work out smoother than Ironing. I have been playing with 2.3.0.
You could also experiment with other top infill patterns like concentric or hilbert curve in the mean time.
Super Slicer is available here https://github.com/supermerill/SuperSlicer/releases it is a fork of Prusa Slicer so will be familiar to anyone who has used Prusa Slicer. Its got a more options though when it comes to tweaking all sorts of things.
RE: How do I print a good top level when there are holes in the print
The current version (2.2.0) of Prusa Slicer you cant really get around these things. The pre alpha not yet released version (2.3.0) has a couple of upcoming features to help with this though. One of them is called ironing the other is a new top infill type called 'monotonous'.
Ironing is where the nozzle makes small passes over the top surface and uses the hot nozzle to flatten it down. This is already available in other slicer such as Cura and Super Slicer if you cant wait for the release of 2.3.0.
The new infill type of monotonous fills in the top layer always in the same direction. This means the bump where 2 lines meet no longer happens. It can actually work out smoother than Ironing. I have been playing with 2.3.0.
You could also experiment with other top infill patterns like concentric or hilbert curve in the mean time.
Super Slicer is available here https://github.com/supermerill/SuperSlicer/releases it is a fork of Prusa Slicer so will be familiar to anyone who has used Prusa Slicer. Its got a more options though when it comes to tweaking all sorts of things.
RE: How do I print a good top level when there are holes in the print
@neophyl
Thank for this info, I have used ironing in Cura for the Ender, it does work to and extent, I can see if the better printing of the Prusa gives better results, though I believe for the MK3 the Prusa Slicer is a better product. I like the new options for the next release, they could be very useful. In the meantime I will try some of the other infill options.
Jessica
RE: How do I print a good top level when there are holes in the print
The holes, close the last 2 or 3 layers of the holes, then you have a big flat model, then after printing open the holes.