that part does not look like an STL printer part but a part from a Stratasys printer (or that type) that extrudes plastic through a modeling tip.

Is that part plastic or the actual laser / light cured resin of an STL machine? STLs, unless the machine is very cheap that is being used or very old, have much higher resolutions that what your part shows. The plastic extruder types give results that look just like the pictures you posted.

The first image (the close up) is what is drawing me to that conclusion. In my former career we had several machines that we used in-house and that looks just like the plastic extruded technology from Stratasys.

Are the red parts the cured resin but just painted? If so, the resolution on the machine that was used is pretty bad. A good machine and 30 seconds with high grit sand paper will make the cured resin parts smooth like a baby's bottom.

Hi Brendan, yes as others mention above the kind of layering effect that you're seeing there is a part of the printing process, there isn't anything you would do about that in the STL file generation itself.

If you've seen smoother prints from the same machine previously, it could be possible that the machine needs to be recalibrated or that there was some kind of post processing done on the smoother parts that you saw, like sanding, tumble polishing, acetone dip, stuff like that. You might want to ask him about what process he used on the smoother parts that you saw so that you could get the same thing done on your parts too.

It's really cool to see your model manifested in physical form!

- Michael