# An Overview of Material Extrusion Troubleshooting
## 2 General Strategies to Achieve High Quality Parts
### Infill Pattern and Density  
The right percentage of infill reduces the amount of print time and material usage, but this needs to be balanced with the overall strength of the part that is required. The infill pattern and infill density influence the mechanical performance of printed parts. In general, the mechanical performance of the printed part reduces when the infill density is lower. Slicing software such as Slic3r PE by Prusa Research offers end-users with up to 13 types of infill patterns as shown in Figure 3. The infill density can be set between a value of 0% and 100%, with 0% being hollow and 100% as being completely solid. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c} \hline \hline
**Material Type** & **Filament Material** & **Nozzale Temperature (\({}^{\circ}\)C)** & **Build Platform Temperature (\({}^{\circ}\)C)** & **Fan Power (\%)** & **Heated Chamber** & **Ref.** \\ \hline Commodity & ABS & 230–250 & 90–95 & 0 & N/A & [40] \\  & HIPS & 230–250 & 90–105 & N/A & N/A & [41] \\  & PP & 235–255 & 100 & 0 & Yes & [42] \\  & PLA & 180–210 & Room–45 & 100 & N/A & [40] \\  & PLA Plus+ & 220–240 & 45 & 100 & N/A & [40] \\ Engineering & PETG & 220–245 & 70–80 & As needed & N/A & [40] \\  & PETG HT100 & 250–280 & 100–110 & 0 & Yes & [42] \\  & ASA & 230–250 & 90–100 & 10 & & [40] \\  & PMMA & 245–255 & 100 & 10–20 & & [40] \\  & PA6 Low warp & 250–270 & 85–100 & 0 & No & [42] \\  & PA6 Neat & 240–270 & 80–100 & 0 & Yes & [42] \\  & Nylon & 255–275 & 100–110 & 0 & & [40] \\  & Nylon Plus & 255–275 & 100–110 & 0 & & [40] \\  & PC & 300 and above & 100 and above & 0 & & [40] \\  & POM & 190–205 & 120 & N/A & N/A & [43] \\  & PA12 & 255–270 & 100 & N/A & N/A & [44] \\ Composites & PLA Carbon & 185–215 & Room–45 & As needed & N/A & [42] \\  & PLA Wood & 190–210 & Room–45 & As needed & N/A & [42] \\  & PET CF15 & 220–240 & 40–60 & As needed & No & [42] \\  & PA6 CF15 & 235–260 & 80–100 & 0 & No & [42] \\  & PA6 CfK10 & 235–260 & 80–100 & 0 & Yes & [42] \\  & Carbonyte & 260–275 & 110–115 & 0 & & [40] \\ Flexible & Flexible PLA & 240–250 & 30–60 & 100 & & [40] \\  & PETG FX 120 & 240–260 & 80 & As needed & No & [42] \\  & TPU & 210–240 & 20–70 & As needed & & [40] \\  & TPC & 230–250 & 0–30 & N/A & N/A & [45] \\ Support & HIPS & 230–240 & 95–105 & 0 & & [40] \\  & PVA & 190–210 & None–45 & As needed & & [40] \\  & BVOH & 190–210 & 80–100 & N/A & N/A & [46] \\ High performance & PEEK & 360–400 & 120 & 0 & Yes & [47] \\  & PPSU & 360–400 & 140 or more & 0 & Yes & [48] \\  & PEI & 355–390 & 120–160 & 0 & Yes & [49] \\  & PVDF & 230–240 & 75–90 & 0 & No & [50] \\  & PEKK & 320–360 & 110–140 & N/A & N/A & [51] \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 3: Material temperature comparison. The common infill percentage used is 20%, enough to support flat ceilings with most thermoplastics. A 40% infill is usually sufficient to provide good mechanical strength, while 80% can be used to generate a tighter filled model for higher strength by using more material. [20]. The higher infill density generally provides better mechanical properties, although the choice of infill pattern can also make a difference. For example, the tensile properties of ABS have been investigated on printed specimens with 100% rectilinear, honeycomb and concentric infill patterns and it was observed that the rectilinear patterns provide the best results with the strongest parts, followed by the concentric pattern and the honeycomb pattern. When the density is reduced, a better tensile strength was observed with the honeycomb pattern for ABS specimens [52]. Similar results have been reported for PLA with tensile specimens filled to 10%; at this low infill, the linear pattern had the highest maximum strength, followed by hexagonal, and diagonal patterns. However, the elongation at break of the linear and diagonal was not significantly different and the hexagonal infill was significantly lower [53].