this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2026
26 points (100.0% liked)

3DPrinting

24237 readers
76 users here now

3DPrinting is a place where makers of all skill levels and walks of life can learn about and discuss 3D printing and development of 3D printed parts and devices.

The r/functionalprint community is now located at: or !functionalprint@fedia.io

There are CAD communities available at: !cad@lemmy.world or !freecad@lemmy.ml

Rules

If you need an easy way to host pictures, https://catbox.moe/ may be an option. Be ethical about what you post and donate if you are able or use this a lot. It is just an individual hosting content, not a company. The image embedding syntax for Lemmy is ![](URL)

Moderation policy: Light, mostly invisible

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] paf@jlai.lu 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I would try a 0.4 nozzle with 0.08 layer height or 0.12 (no need of 0.2 nozzle for those layer height) with standard layer width. Also would try to print a couple in same time to let more time for filament to cool down

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

I can try when I swap the hot end back out; I had that thought and was going to print a silly model in the same print just to have more stuff to do each layer.