<p>Kilisi is absolutely right that you necessarily (without advanced non-planar slicing techniques that aren't available in production slicers) have a &quot;stairstep&quot; effect whenever you have a shallow angle top surface like that. However, it looks from your picture like you also have some <em>gaps</em> that are accentuating the problem and making your top surface non-watertight. This can be fixed.</p>
<p>Slicers (at least Cura) are fairly bad about figuring out where they have to put material under the very top layer to ensure that you have a solid wall of the desired thickness. Where the outer wall face is pointing almost-upward, you would need either a lot more outer perimeters than the shell thickness you want, because they're significantly offset from each other (often by as much or more than the whole 2D wall width) at each successive layer. Using excessively many walls will solve this, but wastes a lot of print time and material. Using more top layers is the easiest fix I know. I find that 5 top layers at 0.2 layer height pretty much always gives solid curved tops, even with spherical top shape. The only way that might fail is if you have really low infill and they all &quot;sink in&quot; rather than bonding properly.</p>
<p>Of course these gaps could also be caused by underextrusion or misplaced extrusion. Check instructions for enabling and calibrating Linear Advance/Pressure Advance on your printer for one of the big ingredients in fixing top gaps and related extrusion inaccuracy problems.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-04-10T15:39:08.620Z
2022-04-10T15:39:08.620Z
R.. GitHub STOP HELPING ICE
<p>At the top of curves layers will always be more visible because the layers are increasing offset from each other. Layer height will help with this, but if you really want it smooth you will need to do some post-processing.</p>
<p>Usually if possible I avoid having a top surface like that of any significant size. But when I do I either leave it and post process or add some little design elements to break it up a bit. So it's still there but not really noticeable.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-04-10T10:15:12.200Z
2022-04-10T10:15:12.200Z
Kilisi
<p>This problem has been occurring for a while. On the top of round objects, you can see the individual layers. Maybe I just need a lower layer height.</p>
<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/AQqhp.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer" title="Photo of a 3D printed model with printing errors on the top"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/AQqhp.jpg" alt="Photo of a 3D printed model with printing errors on the top" title="Photo of a 3D printed model with printing errors on the top" /></a></p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-04-10T12:24:00.157Z
Please [edit] in additional information such as printing temps, speeds, etc. to help offer a solution.
agarza
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-04-10T17:49:45.693Z
See [this answer](https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/a/13918/), it describes why the top layers of dome/round shapes are rough.
0scar
<creality-ender-3>
Weird top layers on Ender 3 Pro
Daan Broux
# Weird top layers on Ender 3 Pro

(Asked by: username_0 on 2022-04-10)

This problem has been occurring for a while. On the top of round objects, you can see the individual layers. Maybe I just need a lower layer height.

[![Photo of a 3D printed model with printing errors on the top](https://i.sstatic.net/AQqhp.jpg "Photo of a 3D printed model with printing errors on the top")](https://i.sstatic.net/AQqhp.jpg "Photo of a 3D printed model with printing errors on the top")

**Tags:** creality-ender-3
> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Please [edit] in additional information such as printing temps, speeds, etc. to help offer a solution.  
> **username_2**: See [this answer](https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/a/13918/), it describes why the top layers of dome/round shapes are rough.  

---

## 2 answers

### Answer by username_4 on 2022-04-10. Score: 3 | Accepted answer

At the top of curves layers will always be more visible because the layers are increasing offset from each other. Layer height will help with this, but if you really want it smooth you will need to do some post-processing.

Usually if possible I avoid having a top surface like that of any significant size. But when I do I either leave it and post process or add some little design elements to break it up a bit. So it's still there but not really noticeable.


---

### Answer by username_3 on 2022-04-10. Score: 2

Kilisi is absolutely right that you necessarily (without advanced non-planar slicing techniques that aren't available in production slicers) have a "stairstep" effect whenever you have a shallow angle top surface like that. However, it looks from your picture like you also have some *gaps* that are accentuating the problem and making your top surface non-watertight. This can be fixed.

Slicers (at least Cura) are fairly bad about figuring out where they have to put material under the very top layer to ensure that you have a solid wall of the desired thickness. Where the outer wall face is pointing almost-upward, you would need either a lot more outer perimeters than the shell thickness you want, because they're significantly offset from each other (often by as much or more than the whole 2D wall width) at each successive layer. Using excessively many walls will solve this, but wastes a lot of print time and material. Using more top layers is the easiest fix I know. I find that 5 top layers at 0.2 layer height pretty much always gives solid curved tops, even with spherical top shape. The only way that might fail is if you have really low infill and they all "sink in" rather than bonding properly.

Of course these gaps could also be caused by underextrusion or misplaced extrusion. Check instructions for enabling and calibrating Linear Advance/Pressure Advance on your printer for one of the big ingredients in fixing top gaps and related extrusion inaccuracy problems.


---

