MakerGear Forum

Starting this topic so we have a place to post picture of our best MAKE Magazine torture test object (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:33902).

Here's mine:
MG Black PLA at 0.2mm layer thickness...
Dale

It looks good.
How much infill?

i havent done one of these in awhile dale. ill need to run one and post a pic.........if it looks good of course

'
Not too bad at all, some contraction on the back wall there. I know what that's from though. Wind blowing in on the back of the bed and making it contract back there...
Yep looking pretty good after all...
Oh well... maybe not! The dang piece of the bridge that starts off from the main piece decided to topple on me! First time using a glue stick ever, guess I need to practice those too!! Dang it.
.1mm layer height
125% first layer, 50% speed
.75 PLA White
70C Bed, 215C Extruder
30% Infill
Factory file attached (Well, maybe not. What do I have to name it for the system to accept it?)

That bridging piece needs good adhesion to survive. Figure out where it goes down and lard up the glue stick there.

I posted this in the old Google Groups, but I'll repeat myself here:
The torture test results as presented in that issue was a bit of an unfair apples to oranges comparison. They were trying to give an idea for an "out of the box" results, not "best possible print" results, but since some printers (like the M2) don't come with software, what is out of the box there?

In particular, the Afinia, which clearly had the best results, and the only one that could print the arch, comes with a bundled toolchain where you cannot turn the support off. So they were comparing prints without support (all the others) to one with support. While that may be a "fair" representation of what a complete novice user may be able to achieve out of the box, I think it gives the Afinia a huge crutch that the other printers didn't get, and the M2 sample print especially looked terrible in comparison to what a novice user could achieve with very little effort, with large amounts of stringing, as evidenced by your print. jdacal, would you consider yourself a novice M2 user? Your print looks way way better than Make magazine's attempt. Try it with support enabled to give it a fair chance against their winner.

I've seen some M2 prints without supports that looked perfect.

Definitely a novice user here jsc. The arch was coming along great. Assuming I can give it better adhesion it should work out ok like Dale's did.

You can reduce that sidewall ringing by turning down the acceleration: M201 X1000 Y1000 in the startup gcode.
What speed were you using?
You can upload factory files by zipping them up first.

jsc wrote:You can reduce that sidewall ringing by turning down the acceleration: M201 X1000 Y1000 in the startup gcode.
What speed were you using?
You can upload factory files by zipping them up first.

Thanks for that tip! Factory file is attached, I was using the default speed for the High preset.

Taking a closer look at the model, I would like to point out that you would never ever try to print this "for real" without supports. The eave next to the arch is entirely unsupported, and is theoretically unprintable. That corner is floating in mid air, there is nothing to bridge to. The printer manages to make it come out okay in the end, at least viewed from the top, by laying down a curve of droopy filament in mid air and building on top of that, but that would never fly in a real part.

Exactly. And, yes, mine was printed with support enabled. Here it is before I removed it from the bed:
Settings:
MakerGear black PLA 1.75 mm diameter, sliced wtih Simplify3D
Extrusion temperature: 220 C (V3B hot end)
Bed temperature: 70 C
Bed prep: Aqua Net Extra Super Hold hairspray
Nozzle: 0.35 mm, extrusion multiplier 0.94
Retraction: 0.60 mm, speed 1000 mm/min, no Z lift, extra restart -0.05 mm, Coast 0.75 mm
0.20 mm layers, 2 solid bottom layers, 2 perimeters inside-->out, 3 solid top layers, optimize start points
first layer height 90%, first layer speed 50%
1 skirt layer, 0.10 mm offset, 5 outlines
50% infill at 0 and 90 degrees, no overlap, minimum 1.0 mm, every 1 layer
support infill 20% every laayer, offset 0.50 mm, 1 separation layer, resolution 1.0 mm, max overhang 45 degrees
fan 75% first layer, 100% above; reduce print speed for layers under 20 sec, down to 50%
speed 3600 mm/min, outline 75%, support 80%, rapids at 12000 mm/min, accel 2400 mm/sec^2
other: force retraction between layers, wipe for outer-most perimeters.

NOTE the infill angle -- this seemed to help quite a bit with this particular part.

And the five wraps of skirt may seem like a waste, but they really help with getting everything cleaned out and flowing nicely before starting on the part itself. With the 0.1 mm offset, it does "touch" and help a bit with adhesion, but rips off easily.

Hope this helps others...

Dale