Getting Started with OrcaSlicer
OrcaSlicer's settings are organised into three main areas: Print Settings (layer height, speed, infill, supports), Filament Settings (temperature, cooling, retraction), and Printer Settings (bed size, nozzle diameter, motion limits). Most users spend nearly all their time in Print Settings — Filament and Printer settings are usually set once when you configure your printer and filament profiles.
The most important thing to understand about OrcaSlicer's settings hierarchy: profile settings are the baseline, and overrides are per-print. When you select a filament profile (e.g. "eSUN PLA Pro 0.4mm nozzle"), it sets reasonable defaults for temperature, cooling, and retraction. You can then adjust individual settings for a specific print without changing the underlying profile. This approach prevents the common mistake of tuning one print and forgetting to reset settings for the next.
Run OrcaSlicer's calibration suite before changing any settings. Go to Calibration in the menu bar. Run Flow Rate, then Pressure Advance, in that order. These two calibrations have more impact on print quality than any individual setting change.
Quality Settings
Layer height
Layer height is the most impactful quality setting. Thinner layers produce smoother surfaces and more detail; thicker layers print faster but look rougher. For a 0.4mm nozzle, the practical range is 0.1mm (detail) to 0.32mm (fast draft). 0.2mm is the standard for everyday printing — it balances quality and speed well for most applications.
Variable layer height (available in OrcaSlicer's layer preview) lets you mix layer heights within a single print — thin layers at the top for quality, thick layers in the body for speed. This is worth enabling for tall objects with complex top geometry and simple lower sections.
Line width
Line width (also called extrusion width) controls how wide each extruded line is. The default of 100% of nozzle diameter (0.4mm for a 0.4mm nozzle) works well for most prints. Increasing to 110–120% of nozzle diameter makes the walls thicker and stronger per pass, which is useful for functional parts. Decreasing to 90% produces sharper edges but risks under-extrusion.
Top and bottom layers
Top and bottom solid layers close the print surface over infill. Too few and you see the infill pattern through the top surface. Too many wastes filament. 4–5 layers is the right range for 0.2mm layer height. If you're printing at 0.1mm, increase to 6–8 layers to get the same physical thickness.
The minimum top/bottom thickness should be at least 0.8mm regardless of layer height. Divide 0.8 by your layer height to get the minimum number of layers — at 0.2mm that's 4 layers, at 0.1mm that's 8.
Speed Settings
OrcaSlicer separates speed settings by feature type — perimeter speed, infill speed, travel speed, first layer speed, and so on. This granularity is useful but overwhelming. The most practical approach is to set a global speed and then adjust specific features that need to be different.
Outer wall speed is the most important speed setting for quality. The outer wall is the visible face of your print. Slowing it down gives the filament more time to deposit cleanly, reducing ringing (ripple artifacts at direction changes) and improving surface finish. Everything else — inner walls, infill — can be faster because you don't see it.
Acceleration
OrcaSlicer exposes acceleration settings separately from speed. High speed with low acceleration means the printer never actually reaches full speed — it spends most of its time accelerating and decelerating. High acceleration with input shaping enabled (available on Klipper-based printers and Bambu machines) allows the printer to change direction fast without ringing artifacts. For Marlin-based printers without input shaping, keep acceleration conservative: 2000–3000mm/s² for outer walls, 4000–5000mm/s² for infill.
Infill Settings
Infill percentage
Infill percentage controls how solid the interior of a print is. More infill = stronger, heavier, slower. The common mistake is using too much infill. For most functional prints, 15–20% infill is sufficient. Parts that need genuine structural strength rarely benefit from more than 40% — beyond that, increasing wall count is more effective per gram of filament.
| Use case | Infill % | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Display models, figures | 5–10% | Enough to support top layers, minimal weight |
| General functional parts | 15–20% | Standard for most everyday prints |
| Mechanical parts, brackets | 25–40% | Higher strength, noticeably heavier |
| Maximum strength | 40–60% | Beyond this, wall count matters more |
| Fully solid | 100% | Almost never needed — use for gaskets, nozzle wipers |
Infill pattern
OrcaSlicer offers many infill patterns. For most prints, gyroid is the best choice — it's strong in all directions (isotropic), prints without retractions between features (fast), and looks visually appealing through translucent walls. Grid is simple and strong for flat-loaded parts. Lightning infill drastically reduces print time for display models that don't need internal strength.
Walls and Shells
Wall count (perimeter count) has more impact on part strength than infill percentage. 3 walls is the standard minimum for functional parts; 4 walls is better for anything load-bearing. For display models, 2 walls is sufficient. Beyond 4 walls, you're adding weight and time with diminishing strength returns — at that point, increasing infill makes more sense.
The outer wall is always printed first in OrcaSlicer (you can change this, but the default is correct). The outer wall controls surface quality; the inner walls fill volume and provide strength. Seam placement — where OrcaSlicer closes the loop on each perimeter — can be set to Nearest, Aligned, or Back. Aligned produces a visible but predictable seam; Nearest scatters it randomly; Back hides it on the rear face of the model if you orient parts deliberately.
Support Settings
OrcaSlicer uses tree supports by default, which grow organically from the build plate rather than building directly under every overhang. Tree supports use significantly less material, are faster to remove, and leave better surface quality on the supported face than traditional normal supports.
Support painting (accessible via the brush icon in OrcaSlicer's toolbar) lets you manually add or block supports on specific faces. Use it to force supports where the auto-detection misses a critical overhang, or to block supports inside cavities where they'd be impossible to remove.
OrcaSlicer's Built-In Calibration Tools
This is OrcaSlicer's single biggest advantage over Cura. The calibration suite, accessible from the Calibration menu, covers every major parameter that affects print quality. Run these in order when you set up a new printer or a new filament.
Flow rate calibration
Flow rate (extrusion multiplier) controls how much filament is pushed per unit of distance. If it's too high, you get over-extrusion — walls that bulge, top surfaces that look bumpy, poor dimensional accuracy. Too low and you get gaps between lines and weak layer adhesion.
OrcaSlicer's flow rate calibration prints two passes: a coarse test to find the right ballpark, then a fine test to narrow in precisely. The test generates a flat square with different flow rates on each section. Measure the wall thickness with calipers and enter the result — OrcaSlicer calculates the correction automatically.
Pressure advance calibration
Pressure advance compensates for the elastic lag in the filament path between the extruder and nozzle. Without it, corners are over-extruded (blobby) at the start and under-extruded at the end of each line. With a correctly calibrated pressure advance value, corners are clean and consistent.
The OrcaSlicer PA calibration prints a tower with different PA values on each section. Look for the section where corners are sharpest without bulging. Note the value and enter it in your filament profile. Different filaments need different values — softer materials like TPU typically need higher PA than rigid PLA.
Temperature tower
The temperature tower prints a single model at different temperatures — typically stepping down 5°C every 5mm from top to bottom. Examine the result for: stringing between features (lower temperature = less stringing), layer adhesion (higher temperature = stronger layers), and surface finish (usually best in the middle of the range). Set your printing temperature to the section that best balances all three for your specific filament brand.
Retraction calibration
OrcaSlicer's retraction test prints a series of towers with different retraction distances. Look for the distance where stringing between the towers disappears — that's your optimal retraction. Confirm it doesn't cause under-extrusion after retraction by checking the surface of the towers at that distance. See also our stringing fix guide for material-specific retraction values.
Recommended Profiles by Material
The most common OrcaSlicer mistake is jumping straight into settings without running the calibration suite. Flow rate and pressure advance calibration take 45 minutes total and have more impact on print quality than any individual setting change. Do those first.
After calibration, the settings that move the needle most: outer wall speed (slower = better surface quality), layer height (lower = more detail), wall count (more = stronger parts), and infill pattern (gyroid for most things). Everything else is fine-tuning.
Resist the urge to change many settings at once. Change one thing, print the same test model, compare. You'll understand your printer far better this way — and when something goes wrong, you'll know exactly what caused it.