Thanks for asking this question Bladerunner. I also want to hear opinions about this from others.
I have been using Cura since December and have grown to like it. I’m sure there are better platforms out there, but I’ve learned a few things about Cura that make it easier to use.
Use the “Layers” View Mode to see how it’s going to print the layers, fill, skirt, brim, etc. It may take a bit for it to generate the full preview, but sometimes you will see something that you want to change before you hit print.
I’ve had a few times where I had the Control Panel open in Cura and made a change in the settings that didn’t take. I’m not sure if it was something I did or didn’t do, but it sucks to have to abort a print because you added a brim and it ignored you.
If you click on the temperature graph, it will enlarge. Click again, and it goes back to normal. I found this by accident, but it’s actually kind of neat to know.
Setting your Z-offset will make things a lot better in the long run, and it’s a good place to start as that’s where it all begins. For mine, I printed the Nickle_Calibration stl file a bunch of times. My nickel still doesn’t fit the hole, but I have fine tuned the other parameters to what I wanted to see. I print a brim and make sure that brim is the right thickness. I used this thickness to slightly change my Z-offset to perfection. That makes the bottom layer look awesome, and the brim is nice and even. If anyone knows what I should change to get the nickel to fit, please let me know…
Changing the filament diameter and flow percentage may sound the same, but I had vastly different results with the same “percentage” of changes. Make changes, look at it under magnification, make adjustments and reprint. Eventually you will close in on it.
A previous poster suggested fine tuning the E-Steps, but I haven’t figured out how to do that yet. Do I need something other than Cura? Will any changes I make still work in Cura? Something seems to be missing.
Also, for Slic3r, what else do I need to load? Cura slices and prints. Slicer doesn’t seem to print. I’ll admit I know very little about this, what do I need to complete the picture if I want to try Slic3r?
Sorry if I hijacked your thread, but hopefully we can both learn from this.