Trouble with rafts

AstroPrint Cloud Service
#1

Hi there! I’ve been using astroprint for a while and have encountered my first print that needed a raft. However, no matter what settings I use I cannot get the top layers to print solid like they did with Cura. they look MASSIVELY under extruded (the rest of the print comes out perfectly)

As well as this, I have it set to print two top layers on the raft; it only prints one and does it as if it’s printing square infill or support.

Anyone have any ideas on this? It’s genuinely the first issue I’ve encountered on this slicer.

#2

We use Cura 15.04.6. Can you try the same settings on the desktop version to see if you get the same results? Otherwise you can also open a ticket with us so we can look deeper into your settings.

#3

@Jonathan_O_Brien: If you can link me to the design and tell me the settings, I can also try to reproduce the issue on my Flashforge Creator Pro (for what it’s worth)…

A tweak you could try is decreasing retraction and/or retraction speeds.

#4

Hi there! Sorry I took so long to get back to my own thread, I feel pretty rude.

I unfortunately cannot run the same settings in Cura ( I used that on my old laptop) but now I’m using a Chromebook. Every other aspect of this is excellent and works like a dream.

I’ve run different raft settings on different models and the problems seem to be 2 fold:

-I cannot get a solid surface on the raft, although I suspect that’s due to line spacing options?

  • no matter how many surface layers I set, should it be 2, 3 or 4, they all print at the same Z height in different orientations, in the way it would print a grid infill or support. But even at 4 surface layers the Z height doesn’t increase.

The rest of the model prints perfectly, so I can’t imagine it’s retraction settings, I just cannot work it out. I’ll post a screenshot of my raft settings tomorrow as I’m typing from my phone, while watching another raft print in this manner

Link added showing the raft which prints looking super underextruded. I never have this problem on skirts or brims, so it’s not a bed levelling issue, though it certainly looks that way in the raft.
https://imgur.com/gallery/H8mu3