Printing small pieces

I'm able to print large objects (>25mm) easily, but I always have issues with anything smaller than that. What I see happen on every print is a little bit of dribble out the hot end, that then gets smudged around as the print starts. I print a perimeter with a minimum lenght 10 mm, because typically by that time the time has cleaned itself off, and it printing nicely.

However, when printing small pieces, the area is so small that the are lots of little strings of platics goop that cross over the print area. This then gathers on the hot end on the next time around and just makes a goopy mess. If I'm careful, I can use a stick and pull those small hair like filaments away from the print area and get the print start. I just have to keep the little filament strans away.

I'm looking for ideas on how to solve this problem. Since I don't have the issue on large pieces I was thinking that maybe a piece of custom Gcode in the front if each print to go over on one side and print long strips to clean the head nicely, some kind of test structure, then move over to the small part.

I've also thought of just adding in a part that does this, then set Slic3r to print each part completely before moving to the next part. Not sure I can make sure it prints the test structure first, hopefully since it will only be one layer think it would do that.

Any other ideas?

How do you print small pieces?

david

Plate them up with larger pieces, or print many at once. Or, if you must print a few small parts, turn up the number of loops in the skirt so the extruder is primed before starting on the part.

That is what I do, but as the skirt just goes in a circly around the part, it drags the small strings across the print area.

Check this out

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Sounds like your temperature is too high, you can add a start g-code to extrude more filament before the actual print on small parts.

Thanks, that helps a lot. I used the calculator and it did help. I ended up both slowing down and dropping the hot end temp.

david

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JerseyGirl
Check this out

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