Understanding Top and Bottom Layers: The Key to Perfecting Your 3D Prints

when you talk to most people in the 3D printing Community about better looking top layers the first thing they'll say is enable ironing yeah that'll help some but in this video we'll take a look at a few things you can do to get better looking top and bottom layers and get your printer plush in plastic [Music] the true key to better looking top and bottom layers is more of them not only will your prints look better it's going to be stronger it's going to prevent the infill from showing through as well as prevent pillowing and sagging the downside to more top layers is longer print time and using more material now the 0.8 millimeter default in Cura should be considered more of a minimum value than it is a default the best range for a top layer and bottom layer for what it's worth is somewhere between 1.2 and 1.6 millimeters whatever you choose it should be a multiple of your layer height I use 1.2 for my top and bottom thickness on my models with a 0.2 layer height so I'm using six top and six bottom layers in Cura updating your top and bottom thickness will automatically update the number of top and bottom layers for you keep in mind that it's the thickness that's more important than the number of layers for top and bottom for example if you were doing a print with a layer height of 0.12 millimeters and used six top and six bottom layers your thickness is only going to be 0.72 millimeters so you may get a top and bottom thickness of 1.2 millimeters you'll need 10 layers to get there for this reason I would recommend setting the top bottom thickness and let cure do its magic to set the number of layers the next thing we're going to look at is monotonic ordering you may have noticed that when you're looking at your prints or even watching your printer that the order that the lines are laid down are just strange to say the least there seems to be no order to it at all everything will appear to be normal then the nozzle comes to an area where there's a hole it fills in one side you're expected it to move to the other side of the hole but no it skips the whole area and then comes back to it later this leaves some nasty looking lines on your surface monotonic ordering is a setting that allows the top and bottom layers to be extruded in the same direction and in a better organized manner it aligns the layer lines so that the overlaps between the lines are consistent across the model surface this gives us a more even surface and a better looking finish by default monotonic ordering is turned off into you can turn it on by coming up here and typing mono in the search box you don't have to type the whole word here we'll filter it for you next click the setting symbols this will take us to the area for cura's top and bottom settings scroll on down to monotonic top bottom ordering and check the box now you'll notice that I have top bottom line direction also checked I'll show you what that does I have monotonic top bottom order enabled I'm going to enter 0 inside of the brackets of the top bottom line Direction setting and re-slice notice the direction of my lines they're running straight up and down instead of diagonal now change that 0 to 90 and re-sliced now my lines are running horizontally like I said in the opening if you jump online and ask how to get better top layers everybody and their brother will scream out turn on ironing personally I don't use ironing much ironing is another setting and cure that you can enable to improve your top layers by passing the hot nozzle over the surface to smooth the layers as the nozzle passes over it still maintains a much lower flow rate this fills in the gaps in the top layer now it works best on flat surfaces so if you have a curved or angled surface you're out of luck ironing is going to add some time to your print as well ironing comes with a lot of optional settings these settings can be found by going to curious manage settings visibility screen and scrolling to the top bottom area check the boxes of the option you want to make visible the settings we're going to look at are iron only highest layer ironing pattern ironing line spacing ironing flow ironing inset and ironing speed let's start with iron only the highest layer setting this one is pretty much as advertised it only irons the top most layer of your print so if you printed a staircase and you had this enabled you'll only have the top Landing iron if you wanted each step iron uncheck this option the ironing pattern setting only has two options zigzag and concentric in a perfect world it won't matter for the appearance since the idea of ironing is a smooth flat-free surface the difference you might experience is time you'll have to experiment with each of these to find out which works best for the particular model you're printing next we'll look at ironing line spacing this setting controls the spacing between each nozzle pass typically the nozzle has a small separation between each line pass because one Ironman pass can smooth more than one normal Printing Pass the higher the spacing value the less time it will take to iron your model but it can also make your surface look less smooth this is another one of those settings that you'll have to experiment with now when ironing you'll still need filament flowing through the nozzle but at a reduced rate this is controlled with the ironing flow setting if it's set too high you'll start to see over Extrusion on the top layer you might also notice some scarring on the top surface if you notice these problems decrease your ironing flow the ironing flow is based on a percentage of your profile flow rate if you're going to use ironing it's another good reason to make sure you've determined the right flow rate for your printer and filament I have a video on my channel that shows how to do that Now setting the ironing flow too low and you'll notice that it doesn't fill in the gaps if you're noticing a lot of gaps increase your earnings your ironing flow you'll have to find the sweet spot for ironing flow it seems to give best results anywhere from four to ten percent if you're going to use ironing I would recommend making some small test pieces to find what setting works best for your printer now I don't use ironing much but when I do I find that eight percent has been working for me now ironing inset controls the distance between the edge of the top surface and where the nozzle actually Begins the ironing process if it's set to zero the entire top surface will be ironed it might sound like a good thing but it's going to leave a lot of jagged edges on your points I would add a little bit of space maybe the width of your nozzle like 0.4 millimeter finally the ironing speed to me this seems like to be one of the most overlooked ironing settings it controls how fast the nozzle moves when ironing normally the slower the speed the better the result of course this is going to increase print time which is why it's probably overlooked so much experiment with these settings and let me know what you think of them down in the comments what worked best for you now another setting that you could enable that might help is to enable z-hop when retracted and you could also use combing to improve your top layers if you use combing make sure that you set it for not in skin this will reduce any marks or blobs you might get on the top layer you could also enable cures top skin layers this allows you to set a number of extra skin layers that are applied to just the top of the model Cura recommends reducing the print speed and jerk settings for just the top surface skin I personally don't use it but if you do let me know what you think about them down in the comments maybe you can go ahead and convince me to use them I hope you found the information in this video useful if you did I'd like to hear about it down in the comments please don't forget to hit that like button smash the Bell live your life one layer at a time and please don't 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Channel: Pushing Plastic

Views: 31,930

Keywords: cura, creality, ender, 3d print, pla, petg, plastic, filament, print speed, flow rate, 3d printing, slicer

Id: fMHSsfYNino

Length: 9min 34sec (574 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 06 2023