this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2026
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I'm a bit stumped, and am looking for advice. I have an extremely old (Circa 2015) Craftbot Plus. It's hardly any parts of the original unit, kept alive with custom parts out of just spite. I use cura as my slicer, and it works fine for my needs. Recently, my kids have wanted to print custom keycaps. This is a difficult FDM print to begin with, and my old hardware isn't doing me any favors; it might be impossible. That being said, my prints turn out good, except for the tiny details in the actual stem. The picture is attached of various settings; I've tried a ton of stuff. I can share a cura profile, but the gist is I'm printing in PLA and have experimented with 195-210 degrees, .1mm layer height, line widths between .175-.2mm, various speeds, minimum speed and minimum layer duration, I've disabled ironing, and I've played with retraction. I'm kind of stumped, and am wondering if anyone has things I should try.

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[–] elDalvini@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It's a bit hard to tell from a picture, but it looks like the stem doesn't cool down enough during the print. I would try setting a minimum layer time with a high minimum speed and the "lift head" option enabled. That way, the printer has to pause after each layer and actually move the print head away from the part, letting it cool down before the next layer.

[–] surfrock66@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago

I have a combination of 3 settings set to do that, but I don't think it's working? Minimum layer time, minimum speed, and “lift head” which I thought would make the print for that layer finish and then the head would move out of the way for cooling.