Need some help with 3d printer settings

Hey folks,
I’ve been doing a few prints here and there lately and I’ve noticed that the bottom of the prints aren’t solid, I can see every line of filament and it looks like the filament isn’t adhering to itself for the top and bottoms of the prints as you can see in the picture. It sticks to the mat just fine though. Can anyone give me some pointers on how to tweak the settings so it looks like one solid piece? I pulled the file from thingiverse.

Calibrate your e-steps. The default e-step setting is usually way to low.

Read this thread.

Those pictures are the top of the print, as it was printed? If so, can you show us a picture of the bottom where it touched the bed?

To me, it looks odd for an e-step calibration problem. E-step problems are more consistently under extruded. The outermost (large) nautilus chamber is in tact, with a bit of under extrustion. It’s only the innermost (small) chambers that have bad flow. The 3rd spiral from the top does exhibit some flow issues out to nearly the largest chamber. That almost makes me think it’s a filament feed issue rather than an e-step issue. Possibly filament binding up?

Are you using an enclosure? Is the filament on the stock filament holder, or did you move/print a better filament feed?

I have the A350 and I built an enclosure for it with better lighting and an exhaust fan. It’s a brand new roll of filament but I’ll check to see if it’s binding. I’m using the original holder but I moved it higher so there was no tangling or anything of the filament.

I’ve calibrated it several times but I’ll check it again.

I agree with @clewis that this looks odd for an e-step problem. Does the gcode preview look normal? It almost looks like the printer just isn’t printing between walls in the middle section.

Looks like walls with no infill to me

The preview looks solid, and I printed in high quality so the infill was at 100% but generally keep the wall thickness between 1.5 and 2mm.

Do you have a link to the model? I wonder if the model is more “wireframe” than “object”. Nautilus shells get to very find detail in the center. Perhaps the model is very detailed, and the slicer isn’t handling it well.

I’d say there’s a problem with that model. Luban 4.2.3 seems to slice it correctly for me, but it’s different that what you’re seeing. Note the yellow portions that are “skin” are being printed like walls in your print:
Screen Shot 2022-05-17 at 10.51.40 AM
I can get Luban to slice something closer to what your print looks like if I scale the model down by 50%.

But whoa, check out how Cura slices it:

That’s not showing skin on the first layer, and looks a lot more like how your print looks. My model editting skills aren’t up to the task of addressing that. If you’re not running Luban 4.2.3, give it a try. After slicing, go through the layer slider and see what movements the tool head is going to make.

I haven’t dove into Cura yet, generally I just use 3d builder that came on my laptop to either design or edit and save as an STL. With the file already being an STL the only thing I did was simplify one pair to reduce the amount of faces the other pair I didn’t touch but they came out nearly identical. I try to keep everything as up to date as possible to ensure everything runs smoothly.