Slicer presets
Starting points, not gospel — every printer differs. The two settings that actually decide whether a structural part survives are wall count and filament dryness, and neither one is a temperature.
lab · slicer presets
Filament settings [ baseline ]
| Filament | Nozzle | Bed | Cooling | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PLA | 200 °C | 60 °C | 100% | Easiest. Warps least. Creeps under sustained load — jigs and prototypes, not structure. |
| ABS | 240 °C | 110 °C | 50% | Wants an enclosure. Drafts cause layer splits far more often than temperature does. |
| PETG | 235 °C | 70 °C | 70% | Tough and forgiving. Stringy — tune retraction before blaming the profile. |
| Nylon | 250 °C | 90 °C | 50% | Hygroscopic. Dry it or it foams and hisses. Strongest of these when dry. |
| TPU | 220 °C | 60 °C | 100% | Print slow, direct drive only. Retraction near zero. |
Carbon-filled [ structural ]
For anything load-bearing — motor mounts, frame rails, the flywheel hub. A 0.6 mm hardened steel nozzle is not optional: carbon fill chews through brass in hours, and the failure is gradual, so prints degrade before you notice why.
| Filament | Nozzle | Bed | Cooling | Walls | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PA6-CF | 290–300 °C | 80 °C | 0–20% | 5+ | Structural parts. Hardened nozzle mandatory. |
| PETG-CF | 250–260 °C | 80 °C | 30–40% | 4 | Stiffer and far less stringy than plain PETG. |
Tips that earn their place [ settings that matter ]
- Adaptive layer height for complex geometry — thin layers where curvature is high, thick where it is flat. Large time saving on organic shapes at no visible cost.
- Auto bed levelling every print, not once a month. First-layer adhesion problems are almost always a levelling problem wearing a temperature costume.
- Walls, not infill. Stiffness scales with perimeter count far faster than with infill density, and infill adds mass. On a balancing machine, mass directly costs recovery angle.
- Cooling is filament-specific, not universal. PLA wants all of it; ABS and PA6-CF want almost none, because fast cooling is exactly what splits their layers.
- Save a profile per filament the moment one works. Re-deriving a profile costs an evening; saving it costs a click.
- Dry nylon and CF blends before every print. Not "if it sounds wet" — before every print. Wet filament pops, foams, and loses most of its strength.
Where these numbers came from. The five baseline filaments are the values you supplied. The carbon-filled rows and the wall-count reasoning come from the reaction-wheel build, where frame stiffness and mass are both measurable. None of it has been validated on your specific printer — treat every row as a starting point, and record what actually worked in the thread below.