So I played with all kinds of settings in PrusaSlicer. Nothing changed anything.
The only things that did improve the outcome some was:
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Forcing the letters to be printed first: then the letters are smooshed and bleed into the background instead of the other way round, which arguably looks better / more legible. Nothing to write home about though.
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Dropping the first layer’s height to 0.1mm (the other layers are 0.2mm high): that improves the letters a bit.
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Dropping the first layer’s height to 0.05mm: because the first layer is so thin, it becomes kind of translucent and the wider white letter beneath it sort of show through. The net result is that it drops a kind of gaussian blur onto the lettering, which actually improves them - especially at a distance.
Other than that, there’s just nothing for it. And half of the suggestions I got concern other slicers, and I couldn’t find them or equivalents in PrusaSlicer. Oh well…
I guess that’s as good as it’s gonna get.
From the other post I remember you said that having the letters in the top layers didn’t work for you, because that meant a lot of support material to remove.
From what I understand, your product consists of two parts. The large part with the letters and a counter part, which is just a flat piece.
So why not put the letters in the flat piece? That way you can print them either way up.
Super cool to see an update on this. Thanks for posting, since it will help the community!!
Just a thought: Try making the first layer of letters empty so the letter fill is actually a layer 2 bridge.
A trick I have done is printing the first layer solid in a transparent filament, then layer 2 as 2 color.
Besides printing issues: If I were a user of these adapters I’d be fine with what you got - it’s readable, and I wouldn’t expect high definition on this.
I was thinking you could inset the letter boundaries on the letters first setup, but it looks like you only get 2 walls out of the slicer. Maybe try setting it to not outline the walls at all in letter first mode?
I’m not sure if any of the tips will translate well to your project, but this is another project that worked with small lettering: https://youtu.be/e7K3BXWmipk
That being said, I printed this project, and the results were kinda ‘meh’ even after loads of manual cleanup. Probably one of the most tedious prints I’ve ever had to do.
Did you calibrate flow rate, retraction and z offset? Teaching Tech has a pretty thorough guide for all things calibration.
Fuck me retraction has done me dirty so many times, I’m convinced it’s just not worth it unless you’ve got a direct drive extruder
You mean you have turned it off completely? I used it with the stock E3v2 extruder and BMG in Bowden mode, and later with BMG in direct drive mode, without any retraction related problems and I think it’s the same for the majority of 3d printer owners. Perhaps your printer had some other issue, which only showed up in combination with retraction?
Yes I have, and it’s not even worth troubleshooting tbh, I’m not having any of the issues that having it on would fix
Maybe play with the first layer line width.