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Temperature Tower

First thing is to be sure the temperature was changing as you printed it. Keep an eye on the display when printing and be sure the temperature is changing as you go up.

The temperature tower is a small thing and it will let you know how various things are going at different temperatures. Quite often there is not one temperature that is right for all prints. Some prints may be better at a temperature with minimal stringing. Other prints may be better at a temperature that has the best bonds between layers.

One thing many people do not check, it is impossible from a picture, is how well the layers bond. You can snap a tower and it will come apart where the weakest bonds are.

The flat areas in the middle will give you an idea of how well the bridging is. If you have a print with no bridging, ignore this part. If you have a lot of bridging then you might pick a good bridging temp even if other stuff is bad.

There are some slopes that you can use to assess how will it handles overhangs at various temperatures.

Use the pointy bits to evaluate the stringing.

Often you can not pick a single temp. String might be good at one temp and overhangs at another. My print has both pointy bits and overhangs so I will pick a temp where the stringing is not quite the best and where the overhangs are not quite the best, or it could really be important the layers stick together and I will pick that temp and ignore stringing and overhangs.

There is no perfect print and there is no best temperature. The temp tower tells you a bunch about a bunch of parameters in a small and quick print. Use it to evaluate the parts of a potential print and pick a temp. After you print a thing you have to take a look and you may decide the stringing is not bad, let my try it with a slightly changed temp.

You can not look at a STL and figure out all the parameters that will make it the bes. A lot of parameters will be a compromise. There are a lot of parameters. You might add blockers and change parameters for parts of the print. If you want the absolute best thing you can produce it will take you knowing your printer, doing test prints, printing the thing multiple times and trying out changes. You will never get the absolute best print. At some point you look at the thing and say that’s good enough. You could up the temp by 1 degree for that bridge and it might be better, but you give up and it’s close enough.