I like to print on a glass bed that way I get a smooth surface on the bottom or
flip it over and get a smooth surface on the top of my 3d prints. But if you're
doing lettering you really want that lettering on the top. So can you get a
smooth surface on top? Cura has a way to do that. There's also a way to get a
textured finish. I'll show you both of these features and how to use them on
today's Filament Friday. This week's episode is brought to you by these
patreon supporters. To show you how to smooth the top of a print I'm just going
to use my CHEP cube with the letter Z on top but before we get there there's
another feature I wanted to show you that I didn't mention. And that's the
concentric pattern on the bottom. I love this on my prints especially circles.
You'll get concentric squares on a square item, concentric circles on a
round item. And it really comes out cool-looking on the bottom. It's a nice
feature and it's real easy to set up. You go over to the settings and you set
bottom pattern initial layer. You may have to enable it separately, but it
gives you lines, concentric and zigzag. I really like the concentric and I love
watching to go down like here on the first layer.
Beyond that first layer then, I just use zigzag after the initial layer of
concentric. Then it prints zigzag on top of that and goes all the way up. And I just
set that at the top and bottom pattern of zigzag. You can go concentric or even
lines all the way up. I like the zigzag so now let's scroll
this all the way up to the top. You'll see the top surface, and you'll see it's
kind of fuzzy. If I go down one layer you'll see the zigzag like I set the top
and bottom to be. But if I go up that one extra layer, it gets kind of a fuzzy look
to it. And you can see it on the Z as well because that's a top layer. In fact
it's easier to see on the Z, so let me scroll down to the Z layer. If I bring it
down and bring it back up to layer 203 then one more layer, you see the
fuzziness on the Z. It's very clear that is ironing. If you enable ironing on
your print it'll smooth out the top and you can choose concentric or zigzag.
I found there really wasn't a big difference. I mostly use the default
settings. But the ironing line spacing you increase that if you've got a bigger
print. Next is the ironing flow. It actually extrudes a little bit of
plastic ten percent of the flow. I really didn't see a major difference when I
adjusted that. Final one is the offset. It's just the offset from the edge of
where the ironing will actually start. If you don't see these settings then you
can enable them by going up to the gear and then in the set visibility just type
ironing. You'll see all the options. There's a speed, acceleration and jerk I
didn't use but all the other ones I did And here's a simulation running in Cura.
It finishes doing the zigzag and then it starts to do the ironing. It's actually
like melting a little bit of plastic, I believe, but then it's adding a little
bit of plastic to melt in. And it's just gonna go across the whole top of the
print like this and then when it's done here's the result. What you don't see is
any of the zigzag movement. Here, look at the original. You can see the zigzag
on the Z and also on the top surface. And here they are side-by-side. All the
zigzag is melted out. Even the inset to the Z, and the Z looks crisper when I do
this. So I really love this feature. I don't use it all the time. Bigger prints
don't seem to come out as good as smaller prints. But I love this feature.
The next feature is texture and here's a previous Filament Friday project I made.
This handle for my paper cutter. I wanted it rough. To get a little
bit rougher surface, I printed it at a higher layer height. That way it's not as
smooth and it gave me a good grip. I've been pretty happy with this handle. It
fits really nicely on the arm. You can see it's got a cut out. A rectangular
cutout so it slides right over the existing arm. But recently one of my
patreon supporters Bill Karkula asked me if there was a way to do a
textured finish. In the experimental section of Cura there is. It's called
fuzzy skin. If you don't have this, click on the gear. Type fuzzy in the search box.
There's four settings. You check those and hit close then it should show up.
What surprised me the most is it really doesn't take much more time to do this.
So I click on fuzzy skin. I'm going to use the default settings. You can change
the look and feel a little bit with these. But it was three hours and 28
minutes to print it before and after slicing it with this fuzzy skin, it's
gonna take three hours and 37 minutes. So like 9 minutes more. The Cura layer
view does a really good job of representing this as well. So when you
adjust those settings, you get a good idea of how this thing is going to look.
You'll see that this is very close to the final print. It won't put a fuzzy
skin on the top or the bottom of the print. It's only on the sides and that's
a problem here because, I have the inside was smooth to slide over the arm of the
cutter. So I really should oversize this a bit if I want to use this. And there's
no way to remove that only from the inside, at least not that I could find.
But because my design is rounded at the top all that was considered a side so
when I go all the way to the top you can see it's fuzzy skin all the way to the
top. Except a small patch. Now on the bottom where it's printed on the bed
it's smooth and you can see the concentric pattern, but everywhere else
it's pretty much fuzzy skin or textured finish. I really like it.
So here they are. The original on top. Definitely not a good print on purpose.
And on the bottom is the textured and you really can't tell it's 3d printed. I
mean you can't even look at the bottom. But I love the way it turned out. Really
speckled. It feels good in the hand. It's got a nice grip. This is a very useful
technique in Cura. I think these are very handy features. Being able to smooth
out the top of a 3d print or textured. That can be very handy for some
practical prints. So these are two features in Cura I think everyone
should know about. So that's it for this one. If you like what I'm doing here,
maybe check out some of these videos that are popping up. If you want to help
support the channel, patreon is one way to do it or just buy
through the affiliate links in the description below. It helps a lot. And if
nothing else click on that CHEP logo over there and subscribe. I'll see you
next time right here at Filament Friday.