8 great 3D printer slicer features you might not know about 

What are layer lines?

The horizontal banding you see on your printed model due to it being printed layer by layer@@RavenPhoenix696

@@RavenPhoenix696 The line/small fridge between extruded layers that make 3d prints like they were 3d printed. I'll try that setting.

Yeah, I have started using it for all of my parts, they look amazing

Prusaslicer FTW. I moved away from Cura and never looked back. Tree supports are awesome and ease of use. My goto for sure. I sell TPU drone prints.

@@armani007E55 How would a TPU drone work!? that sounds super floppy xD

@@thelogan4641 ha! TPU protecters for arms and gopro holders etc. RU-vid Johnnyfpv.

It is also in Cura

It's a very nice feature and I use it in Cura. Sometimes it adds to the print time though so make sure to compare with this on and off. There are settings that let you configure how much it can change the layer height.

Is it one of the settings that Cura lets you set per model? If so, you could use a modifier model to limit it to certain layer groups. There's also "Change at Z", if that's still around...

@@TinaDanielsson If it adds print time it will do so to increase the quality. But that can be tuned (at least, it can be with PrusaSlicer)

I started to use diferent layer highs in Simplify3d manually… at around 2016. And Prusa Slicer (Slic3r) started to do it auto at around 2018… nowadays Cura have to but they don’t create this feature

I use cutting meshes in Cura quite often.

Yeah everyone seems to forget about cura's plugins and marketplace when talking about what it doesn't have. Plenty of tools from slic3r etc are fully implemented in Cura already as plugins, so there's no need for them to reinvent the wheel and build something from scratch that already is in the slicer. I've been using a few of their plugins for model manipulation and find them quite handy.

Cura is my go to for about 4 years now. I've given all the others a fair shot but find them to be a lot less user friendly and way more confusing to navigate. +1 for team Cura here

Can we please just admit Cura sucks?

Thanks!

PrusaSlicer is really cool about that, because you can define "height zones" where you can not only change the layer height, but almost *every* setting the slicer has. For example, I recently printed a part that didn't need infill or fine layers, so the majority of the model had 0% infill and 0.28 layers, but the one section where fine layers were needed, I just needed to tell it from which height to which height I wanted fine layers. And before that section I turned infill back on to 15% so lightning could provide some support as well. The part looks a little weird, because of the drastic difference in surface finish from the layerheight, but it was functionally exactly as intended and on top saved time and a little filament. As for the adaptive infill, it also offers adaptive cubic infill, but I haven't played around with it much to know how it works. But just being able to bump the % up for a section of height is already plenty. I think the overlap method that Cura uses can also be used in PrusaSlicer, and with that a lateral section could be given denser infill than the rest. I really recommend following Michael's advice and checking out the PrusaSlicer alpha versions. I started using it with 2.6-a5 and now got 2.6-a6 and I barely miss Cura. In fact, there's only two things I miss from Cura: extensions and parameter formulas. But PrusaSlicer is working better for me in everything else to massively outweighing the "loss".

@@BloodyMobile yea indeed this can already be perfectly done in prusaSlicer! :)

I believe this is a feature in Cura

​@@Frappe3621Cura has a setting called "Gradual Infill Steps". You set in how many steps the infill will be increased from 0% at the bottom to your configured infill density is at the top.

If you're using Cura you can add an extra model (a cube from "Part for calibration" plugin for example) and configure Per Model Settings -> Modify settings for overlap (Infill mesh only) with the infill density and pattern you want. Then place that model at different locations. For example one model at 0-1 mm, another at 1-3 mm and so on. It's not per layer, but you can calculate the heights quite easily. There's probably a similar process in other slicers.

Right on. Finally this issue is getting noticed. I've been changing my offset manually when changing filament type forever now.

Yes, this ^

Ohhhhhhh em gee thank you I've needed that in the past but now I know!

And Bambu slicer

If you're having print successes, and you're happy with how things are going, you're printing right. I have not been as lucky without good part cooling. One of the interesting things about this hobby is how so many people can use the same equipment, filament, etc., and yet have radically different experiences.

I was printing a model recently that had a series of very thin, slanted arches circling up a helical center. When I tried to print this in PLA with my stock settings (on a Bambu X1 Carbon), the steep overhangs on those arches would curl up during printing and eventually cause a very messy bridge at the top of the arch at best, or at worst the print head would end up snapping off the curled-up arch. After trying all sorts of different settings to try and fix this - extrusion rates, layer heights, nozzle temperature, perimeter order, filament brand, etc. - I eventually learned that my problem was part cooling. I was printing with the door of the printer closed, and that was allowing the printer enclosure to get a bit too warm, and then the thin overhangs would curl. I left the door open, took off the glass top panel, cranked up the cooling fans, and this solved my problem. The lesson is, it depends on part geometry and speed. If you print slow, you probably don't need to worry about fans. If you print solid blocky parts, you probably don't need to worry about fans. But if you're trying to print PLA very quickly with highly detailed shapes and overhangs, you might eventually get limited by a lack of cooling.

That's rather intruiging. But then again, PLA is /very/ forgiving material to print with, compared to TPU, PETG, ABS and basically everything else you can shove into a printer. So unless you're also printing fast, like 50 mm/s and above, I'm only slightly surprised that printing that much without cooling never gave issues. Of course it also comes down to geometry, because cooling is mainly needed for overhangs and bridging. Doing these slow enough reduces the need for cooling. If most of your prints were vertical or tapering to become smaller as height increases and speeds were moderate and relaxed, then I can imagine that even without cooling things can come out well anyways. There's even a counter point to cooling: the hotter the last layer is when the next comes, the better they can fuse. It's really not a fire-and-forget solution. Some materials like ABS even /need/ to be printed without cooling (unless for extreme overhangs or bridging). That said, there's also personal bias on expectations. I have no "high-end perfect" expectations at my printer, it's a budget one and I know it, but it's serving well for the money spent. But sometimes I see other people share their DIY projects, and the surface finish they have is, in comparison to what I am used to from my printer, horrible. With uneven lines not just on the top surface and overhangs, but sometimes even on simple walls, indicating that their printer has serious tuning issues. But they don't even care about that, they purely care about the structural function of their parts, and that they made them work as intended and are rightfully excited about that. It makes me reflect that I sometimes spent literal hours, fighting with the CAD software and afterwards the slicer, to get some minor surface detail to "work out", only to realize after printing that I've wasted my time, because the detail got lost to being 2 layers thick and therefore of irreproducible detail 🤦‍♂ Ramblings aside, if the majority of parts you printed worked as intended and didn't go to the bin, then you definitely did nothing wrong.

@@BloodyMobile Wow, thank you for the thorough and thoughtful reply/commentary. I think you touched on the reasons why I don't have issues going part fan-free: 1. I always print at 50mm/s or less. 2. I design everything to eliminate overhangs > 45°, going so far as to break my models in multiple pieces, if needed (I do this all the time, anyway, to improve the strength of parts). 3. I print mostly PLA, with the odd foray into PETG (which POSITIVELY requires no part fan to ensure bed adhesion and warpless prints, but it's hit and miss on the former). If it ain't broke, etc...

@@matthewrice5721 Maybe environmental, like air temperature and humidity? I run my printer (a heavily modded Ender 3 V2) in an enclosure, so temp is stable on the warm side, but I think our relative humidity is high-ish where I am. What's really weird to me is that on one day, I print PETG without issue -- good adhesion, no warping -- , and then the next day, no changes in config at all, PETG fails miserably. It's quite frustrating at times. It's all a gamble without full control of all the variables, something certainly not possible for me.

Weirdly I never had to set any Elephant foot compensation in prusa slicer or cura. Everyone seems to talk about Elephants foot being a problem but I've never seen it no matter my print temps on my E3 V2 or E5 S1. Makes me wonder what I'm doing different.

​@@sammcj2000 Can depend on a lot of things. Could be you already have a bigger-than-usual z offset, so there's more space between the nozzle and the print bed, resulting in less squeezeout; could be you're printing at a faster speed than usual on the first layers (normal process is to print at about halfspeed on first layers); could just be that you're printing with very large layer heights; could be that you're printing with a raft or brim, either of which 'resolves' the problem by the added step of having to clean up the bottom of the print. Could also just be that it is happening but it's too subtle for you to notice. Could be all of these things combined, or none of them it all - it's not impossible, just improbable, that you magically set it up perfectly on your first try and have never shifted or bumped/warped anything ever, especially if you've been printing for quite some time or have moved your printers

Not that I can find at this stage.

Its in orca and turned on by default.