A Better Temperature Tower

I finally printed a custom temperature tower that shows the useful "indicated" temperature range for my Ziro Gold PLA filament. The following images show the high temperature to the right, as indicated by the grainy surface, to the low temperature on the left, as indicated by the under-extrusion.

The "Sweet Spot" for this filament is an indicated temperature of 180C.  I did some test prints at 175C and 170C, and the layer adhesion was detectably weaker at 170C.  And the stringiness at 180C was much reduced compared to that seen at 185C.

I want to stay far away from possible layer adhesion issues, so I picked 180C as my new default temperature for this filament.

And here's my Benchy printed at 180C with 0.4 mm nozzle and 0.18 layer height, next to the $5 WalMart 5" desk fan I had blowing on it during the print:

The Benchy had some cotton-candy strings on it, most of which I removed prior to taking the picture.  The biggest differences compared to my prior Benchy are that 1) the stringiness is massively reduced, 2) much more detail is present around all holes and openings, and 3) the smoke stack is just about perfect, which is due to the fan.

While this is a massive improvement, all is not yet perfect.  Tall, thin items, such as the Eiffel Tower, still have a bit more stringiness and a bit less detail than I'd prefer, but I'm attributing that to not having a fan right at the nozzle.  An off-printer fan certainly helps, but it doesn't fix everything.

I really need to dig into the 101Hero Marlin firmware to fix a few things, most importantly the temperature sensor calibration, and also some minor delta geometry tweaks.

Unfortunately, the 101Hero folks have so far failed to identify the Marlin version they are using, along with the configuration files.  That's not only a violation of the GPL, but also a PITA for 101Hero users who simply want to make the printer perform better.