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Hi all,

I’m a Ultimaker2 owner and i always used CURA as slicer for my printings because of it’s easy to use interface. But i wonder if changing the slicing software I could improve my printing quality. The fact is, I know that there are a lot of different slicers on the market and i would like to know about you experiences?

Best Regards

Helder L. Santos

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Hi @Creastudiostore, that’s a very good question! Maybe @Christiaan, @Niko or @edddy might be able to help?

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Cura is a good soft and I use it for most of my prints, but sometime I’m using slic3r, to change the infill mode, the honeycomb infill got a realy good effect with transparent plastic
I’ve also try netfabb, powerfull but it’s not so freindly, perhaps my taste

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Hi Eddy,

Have you ever tried to print the same *.stl, with different slice engines using same parameters? Are the results different?

I think this is the kind of tests we must do to understand better the FDM tecnology.

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It is hard to tell if the slicer has great influence to the print quality in general. I think it depends on the printer. Some printers do perform better woth a certain slicer, other printers are better with another one. I tried cura, kissslicer and slic3r and found the best results were always the ones from slic3r. But the difference was not very big. Using a Leapfrog Cretar myself I heard a lot of similar expierences from UM2 owner Then I switched to simplify3d and that was a big leap with a much better surfaces and the best support structures.

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@Creastudiostore - what features are you trying to improve - some are slicer dependent, and some are printer dependent!

James

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Hi James,

When I say Print Quality, I mean the finishing and surface quality of a print. For example, when i print with my Ultimaker2 surfaces with a 45° angle, even if it isn’t a big overhang, the surface has always imperfection. Another issue is support structures, easy to take-off yet capable of good surface finishing.

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What version of Cura are you using? I have always used Cura with my UM2 and i’m happy most of the time with it. I like how user friendly it is.

For supports i find that the lines supports work very well in Cura, they are easy to detach and leave some small artifacts that are easy to clean.

Except that i hear a lot of good things about simplify3d but it’s 130$

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I use the last version of Cura 14.09. I like Cura because of it’s easy to use interface but since I never used any other slicer, i would like to know if it possible to achive better results using different slicing Software. For example, i saw this comperacy between Sclic3r and Simplify3D - News - innovatiQ GmbH + Co KG. You can notice to diferent printed surface quality.

c

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The answer is YES !

  1. They don’t slice the same way so you’ll get different results. On simple models you may not see the difference. But on complex ones you do.
  2. They do not come with the same fetures/parameters. (for instance as simple as printing from inside out or from outside to the inside). So you can’t tweak the slicing the same way with each slicer. This can end up with uge differences.
  3. Cura is an EXCELLENT software hiding lot of features under the hood (Say hello to Daid @Ultimaker !). Yet it remains easy to use for most of the users.
  4. Now on specific complex prints Cura may not be enough (depending also of the quality of your printer (everything counts here sorry !)). Repetier/Slic3r can offer more parameters on prints, but there’s a learning curve here !
  5. Simplify 3D is very expensive, but it is also very very good ! It offers a lot of tweaking for difficult prints BUT there’s also a learning curve here.
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I’ve also tried netfabb but didn’t enjoyed so much too. I recently found craftware, it’s a great and fast one, and the best, it is free: CraftWare Pro Slicer from Craftbot - Slice like never before!

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for me Cura is so simple its unusable

slic3r has much more options with beautiful infills, in cura you can have only rectlinear thats very very weak compared to honeycomb, infact i believe that non honeycomb infils are a waste of material

out of experince i know Cura retracts alot as a deafult and that usually gives nice surface finish

so I`d say to use slic3r for parts that need to be structually strong and not that good looking and use

Cura for models/statues and other “dust catchers” but than again all that can be set in Slic3r

ps. no experience with simplify3d

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Cura 15.1 is now out. Tried it yet?

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I tried cura and slic3r, cura is more simple and the print preview is very fast, but I found that the top surface quality is below slic3r. Cura also dont have resolution threshold so sometimes it tried to print very small detail that make the printer vibrates so much and stop (not actually stop but moves very small distance for fraction of second).

With slic3r I can tweak so my reprap can print 0.1mm with very good surface finish (still have little problem with ooze so it cannot print moving mechanical object in one print)

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How does this work, most available printer hotends are 0.5mm in diameter. You can not print features that are smaller than that. So I think that setting in slicer is just changing the accelerations within your reprap.You are having oozing problems because slic3r calculates the feed rate/force to match what would be for a 0.1mm extruder nozzle, which aren’t available currently (smallest is about 0.28mm). If you match them correctly you won’t have issues with oozing. Play with the accelerations within the slic3r and the interface your are using to match the capabilities of your printer (that’s based on how heavy your overall reprap machine is and how bulky your extruder body assembly is). If your extruder is pretty heavy relative to the weight of your reprap printer, adjust your accelerations (a bit less than 2000 mm/s^2 is good). Print speed will decrease a bit but overall print quality will improve. I hope that helps.