Hi, I’ve been having some trouble producing smooth parts–I understand that some striping is unavoidable due to layer thickness, but the stripes that I have been observing are decidedly much larger than the ones from the layering (see attached image dimensions of the entire print are roughly 1.5"x 2" x 0.5"). Does anyone now what the stripes might be from/ how to resolve these? I’m making molds for PDMS casting so this isn’t just an aesthetic issue :S
I’d appreciate any help! 
I think I saw something like this once, and that I fixed it. I must have since I’m using the same printer and it’s not happening now. I’ll be damned if I can remember how. I suspect reorientation was the solution.
This part looks like you’re printing it “square” to the build plate. Try a taller angle, like 45º or so…
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It looks like you are printing a few degrees from level, in which case those are layer lines.
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Got it, thanks so much! Just to confirm, would those resolve if the prints were made at a much larger angle? Also (I’m just curious), why would layer lines be on the xy surface of the print and not along the z direction, and why wouldn’t they be ~the same thickness as the layer thickness?
Thanks a lot for the reply!! I’ll probably try that next 
The layer lines show up whenever the surface crosses a layer, so if you have a flat that is 100 mm wide that slopes by 1 mm over that width, it’ll have ten steps on it (assuming 100 µm layers) and those steps will be spaced at 10 mm = 100 mm / (1 mm / 100 µm). Once you tip it by twenty degrees or so, there will be many more steps and so they’ll blend together. Or print it axis-aligned.
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the smaller the angle the greater you will see the Z-layer steps because it will extend a surface across fewer layers
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Think “topographical map”. The higher the slope, the closer spaced the lines are.
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