Post your best MAKE Magazine 2013 Torture Test here!

[jimc]

so dale, just out of curiosity......your retraction speed is set to 1000. have you noticed an advantage to retracting slowly? mine is always set to 3000 and have always retracted as fast as possible. i had noticed a long time ago that the retract would complete then the rapid movement would happen. im not sure if that is still the case. i set mine to 3000 many months ago and never messed with it. is slower retract helping you?

[Dale Reed]

Can't say I've messed with it deliberately, and I'm not sure how it got set that slow. (I may have bumped it down when some folks reported pinion gear wear in the reduction drive on the extruder stepper. ???) I bet faster retraction would help a lot with PET+, though. I'll have to play with it. Thanks for the catch!!!

[jimc]

it was no catch and im not saying your wrong by any means. i just thought it was a deliberate adjustment you had made to help tune everything in. i think default in s3d is 1200.

[jdacal]

Ok, next time I run it I'll use supports. Since it was called a torture test I thought the bridge was supposed to work itself out. Aside from the "ringing" mentioned earlier on mine do you guys see anything else I need to touch up based on your more experienced eyes?

I have to leave for a long business trip tomorrow so I'll give it another shot first week in August and re-post.

Thanks

[jimc]

well the thing that jumps out at me is your top surfaces. see how they have holes. that is a very common thing when you have low infill. there are a few things you can do. #1 increase the # of top layers, #2 lower your printing temp and #3 in your infill section uncheck the box that says "random infill placement".

[Dale Reed]

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.

And, for completion, Jin is absolutely right. Here's one from last November with no support. You can see the stringing under the arch and the mess under the shelf (even though on top it looks OK).

TortureTestNoSupport.png (926.09 KiB) Viewed 7366 times

Dale