Investigation discovers the surprising result that slicers introduce more error into prints than the printer itself.
As an old toolmaker, Welcome to the world of understanding your process! And knowing the limits of that process.
I wonder what he actually expects for a tolerance day to day. A +/-.1mm IS doable if you’re careful. But there is enough randomness in the FDM process, even outside the slicer, that I wouldn’t bet the farm on any 1 random piece hitting that tolerance. Let alone repeating that level of tolerance every time over say, 100 parts.
A +/-.1mm IS doable if you’re careful
The software is introducing more than .1mm before it gets the printer in certain situations. No amount of care can fix that. In the video he starts with his calibration cube that has been tuned to perfect (as far as his calipers can measure). But then he printed a complex part (skull because he’s in bio medicince) and its WAY off because the slicer itself messed up the hotend positioning commands.
Not very surprising, slicers do the difficult job of determining every movement the printer will take. Printers just execute those.
When I got into this stuff, this was pretty much common knowledge. The fuck happened that it ain’t now?
Printers have become appliances instead of a hobby.
Nowadays you have: Push button -> get thing.
Instead of a 30 minute process of leveling the print bed, 4 different pieces of software to get the gcode correct, a specific time, temperature, and humidity level filament needed to be kept at, a custom enclosure to prevent the draft from walking across the room causing layer shifts, and a prayer to the ether that there wasn’t some type of fault on the SD card that would corrupt the gcode and gouge your brand new tempered glass bed.
Haven’t touched 3D printing in a long time but about the only thing I remember related to the printer itself was doing a liquid cooling mod for the head which gave a more consistent structure output.
Otherwise everything revovled around slicing techniques & settings and snapoff structure points in the correct spots.
That’s the reason KISSlicer was used for a long time. It now is almost forgotten (and sadly closed source)
Can’t watch the video right now. Anyone know which is the best?
Orca slicer seems the go to. I don’t really mess with much else anymore.
Cool, already using Orca a lot. Thanks!
Prusa. Stay away from fusion most of all.
Is there a Fusion slicer? I just know of Fusion360, the CAD software.
Fusion lets you print from the UI. I have never used it. I always export an stl or step and load that into the slicer.
I’ve always used Cura, I liked the UI more (with some plugins) was anything said about it?
In their tests, it introduced more errors into the print. Some version of prusa slicer is the best, but honestly, most of the time, the difference isn’t that crazy, but just another factor. Especially if you have other issues you may not know about.
Thanks!
