Slicer defaults are handy, but are they the BEST settings for your 3D Printer? These are the top 5 settings I change first when using default profiles. Don't miss number 4!
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TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Intro
1:10 Downloading Slicer Profiles
3:08 Perimeters
4:52 Infill
6:58 Elephant Foot Compensation
8:44 Seam Placement
11:36 Ensure Vertical Shell Thickness
14:58 What settings do you change?
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I got a job at a facility where we prototype and manufacture medical products using FDM and SLA 3d printers. I can honestly say I wouldn't know the slightest bit of what I'm doing at my job if it wasn't for your channel. my very first day on the job, I was tasked with repairing 5 broken ender 3's. I repaired 2 the first day. I literally play with 3d printers for a living now and am in love with my work.
How did you get that awesome opportunity for the job?
@@pcdc1337 I have a buddy who already worked for the place as an engineer and he asked me if I'd like to come check it out and possibly work there as an engineering tech (basically his assistant). I have no degree and no prior experience otherwise. I just love 3d printing and watch a ton of videos about it.
I work at a biotech company and it's so cool to see the instrument prototypes 3D printed
@@TheLazzarus101 Goodluck it's indeed a good opportunity !
Man's living the dream.
Really helpful video! Quick suggestion: it would have been very interesting for you to show the cube printed once with the default settings, and once with the improved settings at the end.
i agree, I was hoping to see that too. At least we saw the the aligned difference
Agreed - Please
Bit late for this at this point 😂😂😂 From my own experience up to now though, everything he says works exactly as he says it will
In Cura: The Cubic support can be done in a similar way with essentially any infill using the infill subdivision feature. A separate setting also works on supports that get denser at the top (not roof, the support structure itself). Starting with a version several months back (I think 4.11), seam placement is (finally!) also nicely visible. Seams: nothing like the aligned that I know of, but sharpest corner+smart hiding works quite well most of the time. In some cases, I set my own seam coordinates. Still, seam painting in PS is clearly superior. Settings I changed in Cura: (Ender 3, but most apply anywhere) Infill - grid is fine for visual parts, cubic or gyroid anywhere else. Connect infill lines (for prints that I want strong), sometimes I drop in infill line multiplier too (IMO works better than high infills >30%). Initial layer line width to 150% for materials where adgesion is notoriously poor. Combing - on, but with max comb range 10mm and "not in skin" setting. Regular fan speed from 3. layer (2. is then 50% of set fan speed), minimum layer time 6s. Low jerk on first layer (10, with some materials even 5). Helps prevent ripping of at sharp corners etc. Acceleration tuned down a bit too. Increased travel to 200mm/s, including on first layer. Support density 15% (but depends on project), support roof 100% density concentric, 1mm thick. Z gap 1-2 layers depending on model needs (1 is fine under flat surfaces but can be hard to remove on complex shapes). Support brim on. Support overhang angle 50-60° (but can go to 70° in some cases). Support skin fan speed 100% (cools stuff above support so it can be easier removed, useful when your base speed is not 100%, like PETG etc). Often Conical supports or even tree supports can work wonders, reaching over structures to support stuff above, without building supports on top of parts of the model. Unless brim needed, skirt with just 2 lines. Huh, that was quite a lot :-D
Man that was a lot. I would love to see a video from you describing how you came to these settings and what made you pick the numbers you did. I got pushed into cura when I bought a new 3D printer Qidi i-fast. I'm really not thrilled with their version of it and so I'd like to build my own profile but I'm scared to death of all the settings.
This is great information, thanks! I just got an Ender 3 V2 and am working on tuning it. My prints look pretty nice so far, but I want to push it to print a bit faster if I can without compromising strength and appearance.
Do you know what the insure vertical shell thickness is in Cura?(Nevermind, found it. It is "Skin removal width" in the infill advanced settings. I increased it to 3mm and all of the extra infill on the slanted walls disappeared. Took my time down from 1hr 44min to 1hr 27min. Only 1 gram difference but it's not that much infill, just takes extra time.
Hey I am very very interested in your comment because I am relatively just staring out with an ender 3 on cura but it is really hard to follow your writing and obtain the great information your sharing. If you wouldn't mind could you make your info in more of a list format, I thank you for sharing this information in the first place the community is only benefited by people like you spreading knowledge and wisdom
You know what man I'm sorry I read your comment back again except this time on my desktop and it was way easier to follow. Before I was viewing on my phone and it was very hard to tell where you were stopping one setting and starting another lol disregard my original comment, thank you again man this is great knowledge
Another one to save your bacon in case you use variable layer height is minimum shell thickness. If you reduce the layer height of the top of a dome for example, you might only have 3 top layers at 0.1mm which is very thin, but the rest of the print is at 0.2mm so 3 layers is plenty. setting minimum shell thickness to 0.5mm will ensure that if you reduce the layer height anywhere you don't accidentally create holes. Otherwise it changes absolutely nothing, so no hurt in enabling it just in case.
Miss these tips and tricks videos, Thank You, always learning new helpful concepts and approaches here!
Hope to keep making them ! Thanks for sticking around :)
@@MakersMuse is nossel clogging common
@@Randomperson0467 it happens for me lol
@@Randomperson0467 but my prints turn out just fine!
Ok
Really great tips! I love how the advice on this channel is always so practical. The seam in particular is one things I've tried to adjust a few times and was never happy with. Interestingly I've actually never considered setting to "aligned", thinking it would show up and I could just hide it by using random. It's not hidden… now it's much harder to clean up since there are bits sticking out everywhere.
The "ensure vertical thickness" algorithm has changed recently in PrusaSlicer (I think in either 2.6.0 or 2.6.1). Instead of all of the short moves perpendicular to the perimeters, they are now generated parallel to the perimeters. Much less print-induced vibrations.
You also can't remove them now...
Thank you for this, and all your videos. I've been printing for about a year now, and have learned everything I know only from KZhead since I'm not part of a local community of print enthusiasts. Thanks a ton!
I can't adequately express how helpful your videos have been! I've been trying to figure out what the white dots are, and how to get rid of them, since I began printing.
Vertical shell thickness! I’ve been wanting those purple lines to go away. Thanks again Angus.
It's stuff like this that makes this channel the gold standard for 3dprinting videos for me. Keep it up.
WOW!!! What valuable resource for beginners. I recently got a Prusa and have been printing a week now and this is exactly the material I needed to take it to the next level of my fast track crash (and i mean CRASH!) course through the basics. Can't wait to see the difference! I especially love the explanations as to "why". Great job and thank you VERY much!
Thanks for these videos. I purchased a Bambu Lab P1S last week and your content is incredibly educational. The printer itself just worked out of the box, but learning about print settings has been so helpful. In one of your previous videos you discussed overhang angle vs layer height and it has saved me so much time and material already. Thanks!
The seam in cura recently is really cool. Its called smart hiding and it aligned for the sphere like in your example but instead of protruding outward in goes in like a nice zipper and I find it a step better and smoother. Thanks again for your tips.
Love it!! I agree with so many of these, including the vertical shell thickness, HOWEVER there are times where the vertical shell thickness is worth it. Models that are more anatomical tend to benefit to leave it enabled so you do not lose detail near the head. Great vid with helpful tips!
Just an fyi for those who may not know, support cubic is now adaptive cubic.
Instead of a third perimeter I like to use Cura's "Connect Infill Lines" feature (probably available in other slicers). This greatly strengthens infill by linking sections together where they connect to walls, reduces the number of retractions you need to make, and provides a modest improvement to wall strength without printing a full third perimeter. For a similar reason I also use the zig-zag top/bottom pattern instead of lines; I don't have the equipment to measure improved mechanical strength, but logically it should be more robust to have a single undivided line of extrusion rather than many separate ones. Another option is Cura's "Alternate Extra Wall" feature, which adds an extra wall every second layer. I don't imagine this is very useful on its own, but combined with "Connect Infill Lines" it uniquely sandwiches infill and perimeters together, noticeably improving strength. On some occasions I've used these two features together and only used a single regular external perimeter. For my parts at least, this is obviously stronger in the hand than just having regular unconnected infill with 2 perimeters, while printing much faster and using less filament. Cosmetically it won't be as attractive though since the infill will show through. To both make my seams less noticeable and improve print speed, I print external walls narrower (and a bit more slowly), say 0.44mm for a 0.4mm nozzle, and internal ones wider depending on desired strength. 0.8mm or even 1mm is fine for a 0.4mm nozzle. This technique doesn't harm external appearance in any way I've been able to notice. Printing wider than your nozzle opening (but no wider than the nozzle tip) is a good way to improve layer adhesion and strength, as it sandwiches the plastic together across a wider surface and forms a *much* stronger bond to the previous layer. Wider infill can also a good idea for reducing print time without sacrificing strength but it's not always practical, it depends on the structure of the part you're printing. Sometimes you want lots of small supports in thin spots, while other times you have a big space to fill and printing wide infill has no downside. If you use a low infill percentage this may not be beneficial as it greatly increases the gap between infill lines. Before using wider extrusion you should check to see how fast your hotend is capable of melting filament or else you could have hidden underextrusion in your internal walls. Also when using wider top/bottom lines, I recommend specifying a custom top skin line width and selecting 2 "top surface skin layers". In Cura this is an experimental feature and I use 0.4mm. It greatly improves surface finish, ensuring the top of prints are as flat as possible with virtually no blobbing. I don't use it very often since it leads to an inconsistent and unattractive surface finish with glossy filament, but if that doesn't matter I like to use Adaptive Layers. I normally use 0.24mm base height with 0.08mm variation in both directions, so when I'm printing an angle or a curve it's smoother (0.16 layer height), but if I'm printing a flat section it's much faster (0.32 layer height).
Yep 👍
i think it is always-on in prusaslicer.
I wonder if this is the combine infill every X layers setting in Prusa
@@shanold7681 it is.
prusa do that by default
I really appreciate you explaining why you choose your settings, it helps understand why and when these settings are better
Im REALLY surprised. I finally bought feeler gauges (after blindly using whatever is preset from facrory in sparkplug world
Great tips for general printing. I generally use 3-4 perimeters, and I always find myself adjusting the default speeds! Some of this info will likely need updating when the new public version of PrusaSlicer comes out. I think it will be a game-changer. Thanks for always producing useful content!
I've been printing for about 1 year and it's amazing (insane) the amount of i fo I get to pick up on on a daily basis. This was very helpful! 🎉❤😊
These “Tips” videos are sooo appreciated and extremely under rated. Thank you so much for all your help
Thanks! Plenty more to come.
I always come back to your videos, well explained, easy to follow and most importantly actually useful. Great job
Thanks for the little detailes. Very helpful.
This has been the single most useful 3D printing video I’ve ever seen. Seriously! Thank you so much!
Dear Angus, you are so kind regarding empowering us with technology. Thank you. Also I am a 3 perimeter person.
Very educational. That's pretty much my settings on Cura apart from the 3 walls. I've only ever used 2, but after seeing this video I will definitely be changing to 3 walls especially to hide infills.
Great video as always 👍 Great tips. I often used adaptive infill. Thanks for sharing your experience with all of us 👍🙂
Everything is well explained. Thanks for sharing such effective video👍👍
Your videos are very helpful. It has made my introduction to 3d printing much less painful. Thank you.
good tips. Thanks. Its good to know your preferences as we know they come from experience
I really enjoy your videos and your enthusiasm. Very informative and engaging. Well done! Thanks
This was really helpful. I've been 3D modeling and printing for years, but I've never really focused much on the slicer itself. Thanks for making the video
Great video! I'll try out disabling that vertical thickness setting! Thanks for the tips as always Angus 👍
I'm considering buying my first printer and this type of video is invaluable. Thanks for taking the time!
Thank you, your fine details are explained very clearly. You're including the why with the what & how which makes it make more sense.
Thanks man. Appreciated!
Dude, this video was insanly helpful. I struggled for months with elephant foots and didn't even know there where a setting to prevent it. Thank you so much for the Other Tipps as well.
Awesome! Thanks for the comment, glad it helped. Elephants foot was so frustrating to figure out when I first got started too.
Great video with very clear explanations. I look forward to seeing the differences on my prints. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you for sharing your experience with all of us! this video is really helpful!!
Great tips and great video, now all I have to do is try to remember them and see what happens. I like using 3 parameters and 25 percent infill. It works for me. Thanks for everything 👍
Being fairly new in the 3d printing world, this was absolutely amazing. Cheers.
This is EXACTLY what i am looking for. A to the point explaination of each setthing to take notes for myself. Thx!
Great Tips, Thanks, I'll try them out later 👍
Oh! Thank you for this, I'm still learning and this has addressed multiple issues I've not known how to even research, lol. Excited to give these changes a try!
Thanks! Just after a few testprints i am convinced to switch from Cura to Prusa Slicer. It just works so much better for my Printer
This was super useful thanks! Would love to see a part 2 someday!
These are really good tips. I'm going to have to try disabling "ensure vertical thickness". I usually pull infill down to 15%, and change the bottom layer to 5 for strength and stability. Some adjustments I make in CAD, though. I normally put a shallow radius on the bottom to eliminate elephant's foot and give a consistent finish, at least with PLA. To make the sides stronger, I'll print the sides at a 3mm or so width. That makes for a hollow exterior wall with the infill, and it's quite a bit slower, but it's very light and strong. A bit like making the side walls of a print with balsa core plywood.
With seams, doing aligned on something with threads will cause binding. If printing something threaded use random.
Great video many many thanks for the seam tip !! A lot of your parameters tips are corrected by default in the fork SuperSlicer ! But your video allowed me to learn a lot about all these parameters and will allow me to improve the quality of my prints so thank you very much !
Great Video, will definitely be using some of these on my prints. Also to note about the Seam Placement: PrusaSlicer has a paint on seams setting where you can literally tell it exactly where it should place the seam. That way you can place it on the back of models or in internal corners to hide them much better.
Prusaslicer 2.5 hides it so insanely good. Definitely a big upgrade and time saver. It has hidden the seams better than what I could do after over an hour painting seams on it. However it might still put them in front instead of the back if the back is a slope (seams on slopes are not good)
Thank you for pointing out Seam Placement. I always wondered about these pock marks on my prints.
I'll definitely keep a look for the vertical shell one, always interested in saving some time, and since i usually increase perimeters too might be a good idea. It would have been really nice to print both the before and after to show the differences on the actual print other than in the slicer, it would have been interesting to see some measures to show the accuracy isn't really that affected.
Missed this tutorial. Great channel
You have become my favorite 3-D mentor.
yet another clear, understandable video. Great job and keep it up!
Such a helpful video! I just got a 3D Printer, and didn't know about any of these settings. It is very helpful. I am glad that I clicked on it!! 🙂
Been printing for about 1.5 months and only now brave enough to escape the presets. This was a great video, thank you
Now start designing your parts that actually fit together and do the job YOU want them to do. When I started I soon got fed up with printing someone else's stuff off say Thingiverse and finding that I spent more time making the bits fit together than actually printing them. Want really strong parts? - fabricate them with internal hidden voids to make them even stronger. Walls matter more than infill.
Thank you for sharing your insights 😊
Great information! Thank you. I enjoy this style of video.
I use the CHEP super fast profile in Cura which is fantastic. And I've always used triangle infill as CNC kitchen found this to be very good for strength
Amazingly helpful video! Thank you!
Excellent tutorial on PrusaSlicer.
This is fantastic info. Thank you.
As usual thanks for sharing this video and information.
Amazing video! Wish I'd learned these tricks earlier. Will definitely use them from now on.
Excellent video, so much useful information for someone like me that is just learning 3D printing and setup. Thank you!
Great and well described tips and tricks 👍!
Personally I have found that each different print may require some tweaking of the settings, one setting never does it all. I do agree the "3 wall parameter" setting is a great over all setting, that I don't mess with much. And on a side note, I'm really impressed how many options and how great that Prusa slicer works. I've been a hardcore Simplify 3d user, but slowly starting to switch over now
I knew simplify3D had fallen behind but I didn't realise how far, wow. I've really only stuck with it because of how much i paid for it. But I do agree, every print is different and you are always tweaking settings to get the best print for the application. No two prints are ever the same.
Check out the new Cura 5 as well, that really improved my prints. S3D is really outdated, I wouldn't use it anymore..
Wish I had seen this video a year ago! :) I eventually arrived at everything you mention (including the Cubic infill, which is also my favorite!), but it took me quite a while to figure out what exactly the settings do (or that they even exist). Some things I change in addition are: - "Avoid crossing perimeters" as I now print on a Bowden extruder Prusa Mini most of the time, and it really helps with reducing stringing. - "First Layer Speed" - I slow it down a bit from the defaults, I can take the extra couple of minutes in exchange for a more reliable first layer. - First layer filament temperature - I don't know when it changed, but it used to be that the (Prusa Slicer) filament profiles had a temperature couple degrees higher for the first layer (whereas now it's LOWER for PETG?) and now they don't, but I find that worked slightly better for first layer adhesion, so I usually change that too. - "Ironing" SOMETIMES - the print time hit is huge and not all prints benefit, but man, is it magic! It ends up with a top layer that's smoother than the bottom one!
This was an excellent lesson. Thank you.
Thanks Angus, this is great. I like Prusa slicer and appreciate you explaining what the features do. This is great list. I haven't used it enough to recommend any setting tweaks.
Thanks Robert! Glad you found it useful.
Appreciate your video as I'm still in the 'try it and see how it prints' camp using prusaslicer.
This was just great and super informative!
Thanks for this info. I am new to 3d printing and this video was helpful and informative.
This video is top quality content, awesome job Angus!!
Awesome vid. Thx for sharing 👌🙌
Thank you for tip #5. I've been curious how to disable those for years!
Great Video, thanks for the tips
Thanks a lot Angus for sharing this.
super handy video. thanks for sharing. this helps a ton
Excellent suggestions…thanks so much
Really nice video, you sold me on the Prusa Slicer, I used the default my Ender 3 came with, and I fould that by rotating a model 45 degrees from the top down view usually cut a lot of time for the prints
First time to hear about support cubic. I will definitely try it. I'm surprised how I don't see people change extrusion width. I increase it at least for infill, and for functional parts I increase it for everything. It increases strength & cut printing time
Hey Angus, thank you for the videos. I purchased you Castle Test STLs last night. Brilliant! 👍
Cheers!
Great video man. I must be getting decent at this hobby because I’ve already been using all of these settings 😂 🎉
I’m really new to this but the first thing I change is the initial layer I bump it up to 115 or 125 for a more stable base and slow my initial layer speed to 20% and my initial fan speed to 10 and let it increase with the build but I’m really looking forward to to change of wall thickness and turning off the vertical thickness cheers for the video I e been studying all the information you have put out as I’ve only been printing a few days and always can find an answer to any issue I have had from your channel
Thanks, will try these out.
Great insights, thanks for the tips!
¡Gracias! Muy buenos vídeos.
I like me some Cubic, but man, Gyroid is SO NICE.
Cubic vs Gyroid fight!
@@MakersMuse if you don’t have silent steppers, gyroid sounds like you’ve stepped into an ‘80s arcade when it gets going. That alone endears it to me. :)
gyroid for life
i love your tech videos. i'd like to share it with my friends who can not access youtube. Thanks.
You hit the exact ones that I change to, right down to the maintain vertical shell thickness.
On Cura, I'm always trying to improve movements and retraction to avoid stringing. I use materials that are quite subject to stringing and it's super hard to remove it. For instance, the Zelda Ocarina you showcase in this video, I tried 3 different PLAs from eSun to make it, and it had stringing all the time. So to reduce stringing, I try my best to "diagnose" the movements in Cura to see if it might induce stringing, and compare filament retraction with Z-axis moves on every finished line, and it always depends on the shape, so it's quite hard. I learnt a LOT with your videos before even having a 3D printer, and I experimented a lot of different shapes to have "perfect" config for each print, and I noticed both vertical thickness and perimeters impact, so I'm super glad that you're talking about them because they seem quite critical to me! However, thanks a lot for your "seam placement" recommendation, because I didn't knew this one, it's gonna be SO helpful!
I usually reduce the number of solid layers to 4 (top, default was 5) and 3 (bottom, default was 4). I use to always drop the skirt height to just a single layer, but leave it at 3 when printing extra thin layers, especially on a textured print bed surface. I also change the Start G-code script to wait until the bed is warm before setting the nozzle temp. I find that the nozzle heats up so much faster than the bed, and will end up oozing filament if left hot too long. Also in the Start G-code, as I use Octoprint to host the files for my Prusa MK3, I add the "@BEDLEVELVISUALIZER" line to have it watch for the mesh values - the visualizer makes it so easy to adjust the screws for leveling the bed... Thanks for your tips!
notes for myself 😊 number of walls :4 cubic infil 20% elephant's foor compensation 0.2 alligned seams ensure vertical thickness : disable it
Angus, as ever your videos are fun and informative - I use Cura, but I completely agree with your observations about seam positioning, I do a lot of repeat printing of the same parts, as I make 3D prints commercially, putting the seam in the same place every time removes those seemingly random blobs from surfaces that should be smooth, walls too - many of my parts are handled by customers, one part in particular was breaking until I increased the wall count to five and the top and bottom thickness to 1.6mm - its a handle for a lever arm, and people turn it, so we had a few breakages in the early days, not any more. No amount of infill solved the problem, I hardly ever use infill at greater than 30% - and gyroid is my go-to. As for elephants foot, everything I print has a 45 degree or steeper chamfer at the bottom, and if its a cuboid, every edge has a chamfer, same with cylinders and holes. The finished parts look way better and take a lot less finishing. As I use OpenSCAD its just been a question of building / finding the right code to do the heavy lifting.. Great job.
I usually go with 80% infill for mechanical parts, I‘m gonna try thicker walls next time and less infill
I change the layer with for the perimeters so they are wider except the external perimeters. So except the outer perimeter if have wider layers. I don't think I loose quality but it goes faster to make the print stronger. When I want 100% infill, I just print a very large number of perimeters.(Mostly on a tiny part of the part) The chamfer trick is also a good one. I think Angus also mentions the chamfer one in off his design vidoes.
@@83darksteel yeah, definitely came off one of Angus' videos, along with thin elements to provide support, although I avoid printed supports like the plague, I'd rather chop a model into three and fabricate than print supports. Bitter experience of a model needing 'Everywhere' and then being unable to get the support off without destroying the part.. I use a combination of solvent welding or blunt point self tapping screws depending upon the application.
What's the name of your business? and what are your products? Thanks
@@martyboi We make 3D printed Circular Sock Knitting machines, based in the UK, you'll find us with a swift Google. We could make other stuff of course, everything is made in-house, apart from the metal bits.
Im late to the 3D printer scene but there is SO much information in this one video. You sir, get a sub.
thank you verry much for this 5 tricks, you make my day.
Thanks for teaching me this