Quality Settings:

The layer height of your 3D print is very dependent on the nozzle size of your 3D printer as well as the quality of the print you would like. A printer with a .6mm nozzle can go up to .4mm layer heights, and a part with .1mm layer heights will take twice as long as one at .2mm, so these factors are important to consider.

Our standard quality print settings are at a .25mm layer height. We then hone in the retraction settings for PLA. Upon clicking the “…” next to “Enable retraction” we have our profile as such:

Minimum Travel: 1.5mm

Enable Combing: All

Minimal Extrusion Before Retracting: 0.005mm

Z Hop When Retracting: .1mm

Combing refers to the printer head following the path of the print rather than attempting to clear gaps. This will help prevent “hairy” sides of a print. The Z Hop when retracting is set to a small .1mm so that skinny prints are less likely to be knocked off.

When clicking into the Advanced Settings tab we then take a look at the Retraction and Quality sections of Cura. We set our retraction speed to 10mm/s and our distance to 1.5mm. Within the Quality area of the Advanced section we do not increase the initial layer thickness but we do increase the initial line width to 115%. We have found this to help stick to the bed without impairing the print quality.

Pictured Below: From Left to Right – 100 micron layer height (fine quality), 250 micron layer height (standard quality), and 380 micron layer height (draft quality)