To start with, as stated in the title, I am very new to 3D printing.
We're a toy/boardgame shop and we're experimenting with 3D printing because it could open up a huge market for us. To this end, I'm asked to try to get this off the ground, but also for me it's a big experiment.
General Information
Printer: Craftbot Plus
Slicer: CraftwarePro (1.1.4.368)
Filament: PLA - 1.75 mm
Designed in: Tinkercad
Problem
I designed a puzzle box in Tinkercad. Here are some images of the design:
I've printed it twice, but both have some problems. I made some pictures, hopefully showing the flaws clearly.
Print 1
This print actually came out pretty ok, but not the quality I'm looking for.
Print 2
For some reason, this one came out way worse in my opinion. I didn't change any settings. The reason why I made this second print is that there are some design flaws in the first print.
As you might be able to tell, this one has some more severe problems, like the prolapse on one of the corners of the lid and some threads that just seem to be broken off here and there.
Question
My question is basically, what is likely to be the problem, and how should I solve them. Are there some settings on the printer, or in the slicer that needs to be changed? Or could it be something with the design, for example, would it be better to have the lids laying down on the bed, instead of standing up as I have them in the design right now?
Also, here and there seem to be threads of plastic where I think there should not be any.
What have I found myself
Since I'm very new to this, I wasn't really sure what to search/look for. I know it's expected to do some research yourself before posting any question, but I really didn't have a clue where to start.
Though, while typing in the question, 2 suggestions showed up:
Suggestion 1
I have bad print quality, what should I do?
I'm not sure this looks like any of my problem areas, but somewhat similar.
Suggestion 2
Bad quality at horizontal faces
This looks very much similar to how some of my areas look. Is the problem described in this post indeed the same as mine, based on the pictures?
Conclusion
In both posts, "Under Extrusion" is mentioned this is probably something to look into?
Some personal observations
There are 2 things I noticed myself, maybe some conclusions can be made from this:
Something else I'm noticing while heating up the extruder is that plastic already leaks out in a very thin thread before it actually starts printing.
When the print is done, I notice thin threads of plastic between the different objects (Like a spiderweb), this probably has something to do with point 1.
When the printer is starting, I notice that the very first threads of plastic are not a fluent string, but sometimes get interrupted, as if no plastic is coming out of the extruder for a short moment.
Conclusion
Hopefully, I provided every information that is required to answer this question properly. I'm looking forward to any offered assistance.
In case any additional information is required, I'm happy to give this next time I'm at the office.
P.S. I had to remove 6 links (pictures) to get to my maximum of 8