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MatterHackers / MatterControl

3D printing software for Windows, Mac and Linux
http://www.mattercontrol.com/
BSD 2-Clause "Simplified" License
455 stars 182 forks source link

Matterslice extrusion width #52

Open whosawhatsis opened 9 years ago

whosawhatsis commented 9 years ago

Matterslice doesn't seem to include any way of setting the extrusion width, it just uses the nozzle diameter. The theoretically ideal extrusion width is actually equal to the nozzle diameter PLUS the layer height. This will produce an extrusion with flat parts on the top and bottom that are the width of the nozzle, plus a semicircle on each side with a radius of half the layer height. Using an extrusion width smaller than this can result in an unpredictable extrusion profile, and it may cause poor inter-layer adhesion, bad overhang quality, etc. The obvious exception is bridging, where the plastic is not being compressed by a previous layer, in which case the extrusion width should ideally be adjusted to make the cross-sectional area match that of extrusion of the same plastic into air at the same speed and temperature (there are a lot of variables that go into die swell).

Ideally, MatterControl should calculate this theoretically ideal extrusion width by adding the nozzle diameter and layer height settings, and provide that value to the slicer as extrusion width.

seemecnc commented 9 years ago

Was just emailing with Lars about this last week. He said they can add it in there. I'll post a 2nd here to add it, under the show all settings/show advanced wording?

soychicka commented 9 years ago

Thirded... was trying to find this setting yesterday :\

In the meantime, could anybody recommend a way to mod this value? Just about to dig in to do more research, but should anybody have the answer, I'd be happy to be lazy... I'm thinking a ruby script to post-process the generated gcode, but I don't know - would simply modifying the E values?

GreyMatterDroppings commented 9 years ago

Just curious, has there been any progress on this over the past few months? I got in a mattercontrol touch last night and I noticed the only onboard slicer was MatterSlice. Which is limiting when you really want to tweak the extruder width… unless I'm not seeing something in the settings.

larsbrubaker commented 9 years ago

What are you trying to do? Can you send me a model that is causing an error that you want to address. We really want some concrete examples of what is trying to be accomplished so we can plan accordingly.

whosawhatsis commented 9 years ago

@soychicka Just lie about your nozzle diameter.

@larsbrubaker The idea is that the optimum extrusion width may not be (I'm convinced that it is not) the nozzle diameter. Ryan Carlyle (who is in the other camp) and I have been discussing this in depth and doing some tests here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/3dp-ideas/2FG_gUxa_fE

larsbrubaker commented 9 years ago

@whosawhatsis, thanks for that link. Very interesting stuff and it may give us some direction on how to address this issue.

We'll give it a through read over the next few days, and see if there is some experimenting we can do here with MatterSlice. I'll let you know if we have something to test.

Again, thanks for the research and persistence.