Best Ironing Settings in OrcaSlicer (Smooth Top Surfaces)

Ironing in OrcaSlicer lives in the process settings under the Quality tab, in the Ironing section, and it is off by default. Turn it on by setting an Ironing type, then tune flow and line spacing for the finish you want. Ironing runs a slow, near-zero-extrusion pass back over the top surface to melt and smooth the ridges between lines, which is what gives that flat, polished top face.

Where to find it and how to turn it on

1. Open the Process settings on the left.
2. Go to the Quality tab.
3. In the Ironing section, set Ironing type to enable it. Topmost surface only is the setting you want in most cases.

Setting the ironing type is what switches ironing on. Leave it at "No ironing" and the other ironing fields do nothing.

Best ironing settings to start from

These values are a reliable starting point for PLA and PETG on a 0.4 mm nozzle:

• Ironing type: Topmost surface only
• Ironing flow: around 10 percent
• Ironing line spacing: about 0.1 mm
• Ironing speed: 15 to 30 mm/s

Then adjust by what you see on the top surface. Gaps or a faint striped look mean too little plastic, so raise the ironing flow a couple of points. Ridges, blobbing, or a rough smeared surface mean too much, so lower the flow or widen the line spacing slightly. Slower ironing speed gives a cleaner finish at the cost of time.

When ironing is worth it

Ironing shines on parts with large, visible flat tops: lids, faceplates, coasters, name plates, and anything with text or a logo on the top surface. It does little for organic shapes, parts with no meaningful flat top, or surfaces that get hidden in assembly. Because it adds a slow extra pass, keep it to the topmost surface and turn it off on parts where the top face does not matter. For surface texture that is decorative rather than smooth, see adding texture in Bambu Studio, and for overall throughput the print speed settings interact with how much time ironing adds.

Why this matters for a print farm

Ironing is a per-product decision: it makes sense on a batch of lids and is wasted time on a batch of brackets. At farm scale that judgment has to be baked into each product's profile, not re-decided by an operator every time a job is queued, or you either pay the time penalty everywhere or forget it where it counts.

Printago keeps each product's settings with the product and slices in the cloud with OrcaSlicer or Bambu Studio, so an ironing profile is applied the same way on every machine in the queue without an operator remembering to tick a box. See print farm slicing and how to set up a 3D print farm.