finish than you get at thinner layers.
Line Width
dictates how wide the line of plastic being
extruded should be. In our case it 0.5mm, which matches the diameter of the nozzle. If you
have a larger or smaller nozzle, you should set
Line Width
to the diameter of that nozzle.
Shell
contains parameters related to the exterior shell of a printed part.
Wall Thickness
dictates how thick the vertical walls in the part should be. Here it’s listed in millimeters, but you
can also specify it in “loops” or the number of times the hot end passes around to create the
wall. In this case it’s set to 0.8mm. Since the nozzle diameter (
Line
Width) is 0.5mm, that
works out to 3 loops(ish).
Top/Bottom
Thickness
dictates how thick the horizontal surfaces of
your model should be. Here it’s also 0.8mm, but since the layer thickness is 0.2mm, it’ll need 5
layers to create that thickness. This brings up an important point – you need to make sure that
your top layer thickness is adequate for the layer height you’re working with. Take for example,
the item shown below.
This example was printed with a 0.1mm layer height,
but only 3 top layers (0.3mm). Because the layer height is
so thin, it takes more solid layers in order to properly fill the
spaces between the infill structure. This same part, printed
with a 0.2mm layer height (0.6mm top thickness) results in
all areas being properly filled in. However, the infill pattern
can be seen as a slight shadow in the top layer, as shown on
the right. Adding two or more additional top layers would
have eliminated the issues presented. Bottom layers that
are fully supported by the build plat won’t exhibit similar
issues at thinner layer heights.
19
Infill bleed-through.
