I’ve had this issue before but never thought too much of it until now as I am printing a pretty small object and the seam matters.
I painted a Verticle seam from top to bottom. When I slice it, the seam is still all over the place.
I am using layer height 0.12mm and Arache walls as it’s a thin object. Any tips?
I see a couple of problems with the model that could make the slicer behave this way.
Also, verify that you don’t have the seam position set incorrectly. Click to zoom in and open in new browser to see all the details.
I see two possible options here…
Last but not least: Do have the scarf seam active ?
If so than try to turn it off.
Cheers, I played around with settings suggested. In doing so I noticed that I had arachne walls enabled, this was because using classic walls I got a error message that I have empty layers.
The option was to slice the bottom or enable support. Slicing the bottom did not work (it was already flat).
I thought the model was too small so I tried with arachne walls which got rid of the error messages and sliced the model. But the seam is all messed up.
Using classic walls and support enabled produces a nice seam. Not sure why it thinks there are empty layers though.
This was supposed to be a cap for a pencil to remind people that its 2025 soon and not 2024.
Thanks for sharing the additional insights. Arachne causing this issue makes total sense now that I think about it. Clearly the slicer is struggling with where to place the walls and the seam artifacts are an undesirable by-product.
BTW: I noticed that you are at 0.20 layer height. Have you tried going all the way down to 0.08? I would be curious if this changes the slicer behavior.
What you’re experiencing now is similar to the brick wall I hit early on when I switched from using third-party printing services and 3D printers at my public library to owning my own printer. I was frustrated that no printing service could meet my expectations—until I learned, as the famous fictional detective Dirty Harry once said, “A man’s got to know his limitations.” In my case, I realized I was expecting too much from the technology itself when trying to print very small items. 0.4mm isn’t just a guideline, it’s physics!!! 
In the end, unless you want to try a 0.20 nozzle and lower layer heights, you may not be able to achieve the results you’re looking for. I haven’t experimented with 0.20 nozzles myself because all the reviews I’ve read suggest they don’t offer significant improvements in resolution, but they do increase print time considerably.
The empty layers message is often puzzling to me too. Perhaps others have some insight. To quote a famous pirate:
By that, I mean that empty layers, to me, mean… well… gaps between layers. However, whenever I get this message, I can often get the slicer to comply by simply moving the model 0.1mm in the X-Y plane. This forces a reset, and the model can be sliced again.
It’s bizarre behavior, yes, but not one that has interfered with my printing often enough to report it here as a mystery or a bug.
Interesting about how you get the slicer to comply by moving the model around. I’ll have to try that for sure.
Yes I’ve tried going to lower layer height, right down to 0.08 but it doesn’t change anything. I guess I have reached the limitation due to the thin walls but I’m okay with it. At least I know why now. 
I did some quick and dirty preview tests…
With (conical) objects that have walls that are very thin the slicer does struggle a lot.
But it really goes down the drain after adding some basic text or other features on the surface.
What I could observe on my end:
Depending on the font used and by how much letters are protruding there WILL be empty regions.
Simply because the features start to print in mid air.
Supports do address part of the problem but not the issue of layer lines not having enough overlap to produce a good print.
I found two possible ways to minimise the impact:
First is by increasing the wall width.
With the standard settings I was not able to get a good enough slice.
But once the walls were increased to 0.65 for inner and 0.6 for outer walls the gaps between layer lines disappeared.
Does not mean it would be an ideal bond but still…
The second one I wasn’t sure how to get it done quickly in Studio, so I abused my modelling software instead.
A bit against what one would usually do…
I created a simple cone with a wall thickness of only 0.42mm - the standard outer wall width.
The added text however went onto the surface as a solid.
Means it increased the wall thickness - by 0.45mm for the inner wall width.
This resulted in one wall for the cone but an added one for where the text was.
Did not look right (enough)…
What made it look acceptable was to add the text with a chamfer.
So instead of having straight walls for the extruded part, these sides were all angled.
This allowed the slicer to follow those contours without having to print in mid air.
Might be a bit of overkill for a pencil cap though…
That makes sense about printing in the air for the text. Chamfer should have been the go. I’ve done that on another project where I wanted to avoid using supports. I was probably a bit hasty with this model. I also found if I was to print this using 2 filaments (one for the text) I would have a crazy amount of filament changes so I’ll think of something else. maybe print in two parts or have the text horizontal around the cap.
Been having this same issue with painting seams. They really don’t follow the painted areas, tried messing with various methods and all generate different results and don’t follow the painted areas. It used to work.
