I'm getting tiny gaps in some of the lettering I'm printing on a box. Attached is a picture showing the holes.
Also attached are the two stl's I used to print the box and text. I made them zip files so I could upload them.
Any idea how to eliminate the holes. Cura can print the lettering w/ out holes, so I'm wondering how to tweak KISSlicer to do the same because KISSlicer makes a nicer looking part overall...just gotta deal w/ the holes.
Here's another situation with gaps in the print that don't make any sense.
KISSlicer fills part of the length of the gap between the letters N and E, but it doesn't travel the full length of the gap to completely fill it in. Why doesn't KISSlicer fill the whole gap between the N and E?
I also attached my Style settings for reference.
Attachments
Gaps In Print Between Letters.JPG (17.13 KiB) Viewed 5481 times
Gaps In Print - Style Settings.JPG (52.98 KiB) Viewed 5481 times
Good news, when I changed the Oversample Resolution from 0.125 down to 0.025 the gap between the N and E disappeared completely (see first attached pic). Strange thing is, the length of the gap got longer when I moved the Resolution from 0.125 down to 0.05 (see second pic below) and then completely disappeared when I moved the Resolution from 0.05 down to 0.025.
Anyways, KISSlicer showed it's power once again when you know how to tweak it...now on w/ the print.
Attachments
Gap Disappeared With 0.025 Resolution.JPG (16.71 KiB) Viewed 5478 times
Gap Got Bigger With 0.05 Resolution.JPG (16.73 KiB) Viewed 5478 times
I think it is due to the geometry of the text. Non constant distances from one side of the letter to the other side. 2 loops with infill would be solid, but probably not what you are looking for.
In my first post regarding the "N" and the "X" you might be right about the geometry causing KISSlicer to slice gaps into the letters even though the letters are really solid; however Cura's quick slicing defaults handle these letters great w/ out creating any gaps. That was the original premise for my question, I want KISSlicer to handle small spaces like this easily as well. To eliminate the gaps in KISSlicer I need to substantially increase Resolution and slice very slowly. I'm not knocking KISSlicer, it is a very powerful, wonderful program, probably the best in the wild right now.
I merely posed my question to see if I'm missing something or maybe highlight that KISSlicer can handle some things better than it's currently doing.
In my second post, I don't think your analysis is relevant because the distance between the "N" and the "E" appears to be identical along their lengths; yet in KISSlicer 0.125 Resolution fills the length of the gap better than 0.05 Resolution. Why does that happen? Here again Cura does a much better job, completely filling the vertical space between the letters (no gaps) w/ quick slicing right out of the box.
Here's another example that makes no sense. The first pic shows a solid letter "H" sliced at 0.125 Oversample Resolution. The second pic shows the same letter "H" with all the same settings except the Oversample Resolution was set to 0.025.
Why does an Oversample Resolution 5x as fine (0.025 vs 0.125) give me a poorer quality print with big gaps in the letter "H"? In this case it seems the much poorer Resolution (0.125) gives me a higher quality print.
Jonathan can you please elaborate on this. Am I misunderstanding how Oversample Resolution is supposed to work? Does it need to work in conjunction w/ some other setting to work properly?
Attachments
0.5mm Ext Width 0.125 Resolution.JPG (11.85 KiB) Viewed 5453 times
0.5mm Ext Width 0.025 Resolution.JPG (12.84 KiB) Viewed 5453 times
plexus wrote:ah yes. thats what i have to do to get thin walls to print and sometimes it wont even with smaller oversampling values. same bug?
You've probably done this. I've had to mess around w/ different combinations of the Extrusion Width, # of Loops and Oversample Resolution to get KISSlicer to fully trace out the solid text w/ out large gaps. Not sure why often times refining the Resolution w/ smaller / finer values frequently gives worse results than poorer Resolution settings. Apparently, printing thin walls is a problem for KISSlicer as well. To me these are a big bug(s) that Jonathan needs to address at some point unless I'm missing something.
It's hit and miss to get KISSlicer to work right when printing text...it's still the best slicer out their though IMHO.
plexus wrote:ah yes. thats what i have to do to get thin walls to print and sometimes it wont even with smaller oversampling values. same bug?
You've probably done this. I've had to mess around w/ different combinations of the Extrusion Width, # of Loops and Oversample Resolution to get KISSlicer to fully trace out the solid text w/ out large gaps. Not sure why often times refining the Resolution w/ smaller / finer values frequently gives worse results than poorer Resolution settings. Apparently, printing thin walls is a problem for KISSlicer as well. To me these are a big bug(s) that Jonathan needs to address at some point unless I'm missing something.
It's hit and miss to get KISSlicer to work right when printing text...it's still the best slicer out their though IMHO.
Yes I have had to deal with this. i feel its a major bug because you can't rely on KS to produce printable gcode with some models. the issues i've experienced have had to do with thin walls where no matter what setting I use I can not get the walls to generate gcode without gaps in them. earlier versions of KS did not have this issue and other slicers do not either. in my opinion a slicer should produce printable gcode, otherwise it should throw an error and not require the operator to check every layer to ensure its printable. to repeat, I never had an issue with earlier versions of KS. i could go back to using an earlier version however I have become accustom to some of the more advanced features of the latest beta. so what I do is first try in KS and if it doesn't produce printable gcode, I switch to Slic3r.
However, Slic3r has also shown some bugs. I thought I could just move to Slic3r and get reliable gcode. not! I sliced a print recently in Slc3r that would not print the top layers! nothing I did would work. but in KS it sliced with top layers and otherwise fine. so at the moment, between KS and Slic3r, there is no clear cut winner. I don't want to bring a 3rd slicer into my workflow so for now I'll use KS or Slic3r which ever produced the best gcode.
One potential solution that hasn't been mentioned - drop down to 1 perimeter and rely on the alternating infill to fill in the gaps. Anything that is missed in one layer is likely to be filled in on the next layer. (set to 100% infill to get this)
When the perimeters are set to 4 as the screen shot showed, then you are effectively disabling infill for this small part.
