now let's talk about print quality... *sigh* the number one bugaboo of 3D printing

 "PRINT QUALITY"?? 
Hey isn't that where we left off eighteen months ago? 
(yeah, pretty much, before the upgrades and modifications, the extended cable
drama, the broken camera ribbon cable socket, the camera noise problem,
printer firmware updoot, controller updoot...)

Ahem.  Finally we return to working on the printer's actual purpose, printing.  I was pretty proud of the big owl I printed a year or two ago until I noticed the overhang problems.  Granted, printing overhangs without a support is a recipe for trouble, and I was using a comparitively primitive Cura Utilimaker to slice then.  I am now using PrusaSlicer, and if I do it again, there will be a mess of supports, probably.  The whole breast of the owl?  Couldn't we uh, just make it print overhangs somehow?  Mostly no, AFAIK, but a lot has happened in the last eighteen months, and gho knows what new cleverness has been released since then.  edit, later: I think the solution for that owl is to print it upside down.  I'm serious.

 Amusingly, as soon as I loaded good old Benchy into Prusa, it complained about the model, saying it might not be stable, there might not be sufficient bed adhesion, I should consider supports and a brim. 

Well, Benchy isn't supposed to be easy to print beautifully, it is supposed to be hard to print beautifully.  That's why and how it is a benchmark.  I also use CHEPs cube and anything else someone can show has merit.  The thing about Benchy is that everyone uses it and there's a lot of information about it, charts featuring it, etc.  Great for the beginner like me.

 But as for the low bed adhesion warning (which it bases on the base minimum width vs. the model's maximumn height) well, I could be a spokesmodel (can you see me in a bikini? Egad, best not.) for that Layerneer bed glue. It's a routine part of my flow now.  Granted, sometimes I just re-wet the existing and smear it around again.

 I think it is an Amazon stealth brand, TBH.  Got bed adhesion problems?  Stop!   Before you start messing with rafts, brims, and supports, and assuming you have a sane bed temperature profile, try somebody's, anybody's bed adhesive.

 I only have experience with this Layerneer stuff, which came to me as part of an Amazon starter package (I swear to Ghu, it was the exact thing I needed, in that moment).  Maybe I'd use it up faster if I printed more (I took more than a year off, whaddya want)  Since I began using it, I've only had a model break loose once, and that was because it was a max-volum model with many supports, and when the bed was allowed to cool off as "normal", the model broke loose.  A solution I haven't tried yet (because the print quality was ass too) is to leave the bed hot for the whole print.  Next time.

 

 Here's a test print I did with a small kodama ornament; you can see it's got serious issues.

 The tiny blebs are mostly due to the filament having sat unused and forgotten, on the printer, inside the tent... for the last eighteen months.  💦

 The only reason this prints at all is that the tent was closed up and it has a lot of silica gel socks lying around the bottom of it.  This is why filament dryers are useful, and why good dry storage is mandatory.

 Aside from the blebs, you can see that the first layer -  in fact all the layers - look a little bit high, and should be smooshed flat against the bed just a little more (for good bed adhesion).

 A taller layer height also makes for more pronounced layers and a less-smooth print.  Okay, so layer height needs to be tweaked in the slicer, right?  Ah, but reducing layer height strongly increases the number of layers and thus the print time. 

 I'll worry about that stuff when I'm satisfied with the bed leveling, which is taking me some time because I am being anal about it, and because there is no screw in the center of the bed and it seems as if there needs to be one. >_<

 And an afterthought: I've got some soft PLA I haven't tried.  It's yuge, as in 1.75mm, and I haven't any nozzles big enough - maybe.  Some say a standard 0.4mm can be used but most do not recommend the usual, saying 0.6mm is the absolute minimum. 

 The fancy "splitter" nozzles (see right) look like a good idea for such large filament because thick filament is harder to heat through if the filament is moving fast - plastics are lousy conductors of heat.  So Bondtech CHT and imitators have a design that splits the incoming cold filament into three separate channels, significantly increasing surface area, and reducing the "heat-through" cross section greatly.

 Unfortunately I'm not feeling generous right now and they want too much coin for just one nozzle.  There are "clones" but most I've looked into seem like very bad fakes, not clones.

 In fact, I'm thinking of drilling out a spare nozzle and trying it... getting the nozzle smooth around the hole >_> might be tricky.  Not sure how I'd drill it either, given that the lathe is currently in several pieces.