Hey all, glad to see others using 3d printers for pinball stuff!

I recently joined the club with a PrintrBot Simple Metal, soon after I bought a heated bed because I wanted to try out ABS.

I have no problems with PLA or ABS getting to stick (sometimes it sticks too well!) I am using blue painters tape. I do need to use new tape each print, but that is easy enough.

I was getting frustrated at first with bad prints, but I found some hints scattered across the net to help with calibration, and also I was missing some critical settings (using repetier) that needed to be set correctly.

Since I got everything setup, it seems to print reasonably well, even at the minimum .1 layer height.

The one issue I am running into is wrapping my head around how to calibrate/set the layer WIDTH. I found some calibration objects for making a 1 layer wall, so you can use a micrometer to check the layer width, and also some "plug" objects to test how well 2 objects fit together. When I print the plugs, they don't fit together (the objects were printed too big).

I forgot what the measured width of the 1 layer wall was, but it was also bigger then I was expecting.

I guess my question is, with the simple metal and .040" extruder, what is the width SUPPOSED to be on a normal print? I guess I just assumed it would be around .040 with default settings. (extruder multiplier at 1.0x)

I see in another post you mentioned: "When the printer lays down a layer, it usually squishes out a bead of filament that is 0.6mm wide." So is that the normal width and what I should be aiming for?

that makes sense about it squeezing out more and squishing it flat to get the wider thickness.

I didn't think reptier had settings for this, but I guess I didn't put it together that this section here is what I am looking for. Oddly enough it is called "Extrusion width"

being percetages it threw me off.. but now I know what to play with here! Thanks!

extrusion.png