In this article I will be discussing some of the simple yet very helpful settings you will find in your slicer. You may want to change these settings so that you get better prints. If your printer is working fine at the moment don’t change the settings as you may mess something up. The slicer I typically use is cura so I will be naming the features by what they are named in that app.

Retraction: if your printer has a lot of strings you may want to make your printer’s retractions further and faster. Also, consider trying to tune the temperature settings as this might also cause strings on your prints.

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Horizontal Expansion: If your prints are too loose or too tight you will want to use this feature. To make your prints loose you go negative (I have to go either -0.1 to -0.2mm depending on the printer). To make your prints tighter together then go positive, most of the time it is the opposite way.

Adhesion settings: The adhesion settings do a variety of things, I will list what each one is good for. You typically only want/need 3 lines for the adhesion length. There is also a draft shield option, but unless you are doing multi material prints with a dual extruder or idex printer I don’t recommend using it.

Skirt: The skirt goes around your model but doesn’t touch it, this is to prime your nozzle before you print something. I recommend always using this unless you are using a different adhesion type.

Brim: The brim goes around the model and is connected to it to give it a better adhesion to the build plate so it doesn’t warp. I recommend using this on small prints or using it on prints that are going to take 20+ hours. The longer the print, the more prone to warping it is.

Raft: The raft goes on the underside of the print and can be helpful if you have a build plate with lots of holes/grooves. Unfortunately, these rafts can be difficult to remove, so unless you have a multi material printer or you pause your printer mid print and use a different filament, I do not recommend using it. These rafts also will leave the bottom of your print looking very badly.

Infill: The infill setting changes the percent of plastic inside the model. For prints that have to endure a lot of stress you will want to use 90-100% infill. If you are just printing things that are for decoration I suggest you use 10-20% infill. You always want some infill, but the less you use the weaker the model will be and there will be less plastic used. There are different types of infill, for example, cubic, triangles, gyroid, lines, and many others. In my opinion the gyroid one is the best infill pattern that you can use.

Temperature: You will want to make sure that this setting is changed to the temperature that your filament works best at. For example, PETG is best at 225-245c and PLA varieties range from 210-230c. You also will want to make sure that your bed temperature is set around 65-75c to ensure good adhesion. If you do not have these settings correctly tuned it will cause various issues. To fine tune the extruder temp I recommend printing a temperature tower, once the tower is done (assuming that you changed the temperature for each section on the tower) all you have to do is look at the whole thing and decide which segment is the best and use that temp. The bed on the other hand just has to be changed each print according to how well it stuck the last time. The temp tower is included in the link below but you will have to copy and paste it into your browser since the app doesn’t recognize all links.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2729076

Supports: Supports make it so that your printer can print overhangs where it would normally not be supported by anything. I recommend not enabling this unless you really need it since they can be hard to remove. You may want to make sure that the supports are placed only touching the buildplate and not everywhere since it will be easier to remove that way.

Speed: This varies on all printers since some are built better than others. Start with the speed with the slicers default and increase it once everything else is calibrated.

Layer height: The default is generally 0.2mm, however I have found that 0.1mm makes nicer looking prints and has a higher success rate. The only downsides are that it has to make more retractions and takes much longer to print.

If you have any questions as to what I have mentioned above or just questions in general, please feel free to tag me in the comments section.

Basic Slicer Settings