Printing a very very small part

Hello,

it would be nice, if somebody can help me please. I am trying to print a very small and thin part for a collegue, but I am not able to do this. Attached you can find the .STL-file. I think PLA would be the best material. Is it possible to print such a small part? If so, how can I do this?

Kind regards,

Sven

hi Treito,

due to the finest resolution is 0.125mm the heigth of your object should be
a multiplication by this value. your object is 0.2mm high. if you set slicer
the right way you can print it with one layer, but this wont be very stiff.

the nozzle diameter is 0.5mm so the width messurements schould be
a multiplication of this value: 0.5mm, 1mm, 1.5mm, 2mm ....
at least in theory.

i got multiple suggestions for you:
- redimension your object
- adjust it with a cutter/knife
- dont print this object change your material choice to GrauPappe (carton)
and use a cutter, will take you 5 minutes

kind regards Moritz

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I just tried printing it, after setting layer height in slic3r to 0.1mm. This is how it turned out:



The end parts are detached. How thick are the side walls in the model? It might need to be printed with a 0.3mm nozzle if they are very thin.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

Thanks for testing it. This looks a little bit better than my tries. The side walls should be 0.5mm. Silly question, but have you been able to remove the part in one piece? What kind of filament did you use? I had much more problems with PLA filament (yellow/ transparent) from synergy, I do not know why.
Which version of Slic3r did you use?

Yes I was able to remove the part in one piece, apart from the two isolated islands at the end. I printed direct on glass, which has the advantage that parts are easily removed once the glass has cooled. Of course, at only 0.2mm thick, it is very flexible and flimsy.

I've found previously that slic3r doesn't like the wall thickness to be less than 2 extrusion widths, unless you are printing very simple shapes such as hollow prisms with no junctions. So to get 0.5mm walls, you really need 0.25mm extrusion width. If an increase to 0.6mm is acceptable, you could use a 0.3mm nozzle.

As an experiment, I pretended to slic3r that my 0.5mm nozzle was only 0.25mm and re-sliced it. I also used the web controls to print at half speed. The result looks surprisingly good:



Some of the walls are a bit thicker than they should be - which is hardly surprising - but at least they are all present this time.

PS - after 15 minutes in the ice box, it came off in one piece too:



However, the walls are about 1mm thick. So you do need a smaller nozzle.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/24/2014 06:52PM by dc42.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

Hello,

after nearly one year I managed it to print it roughly acceptable.I used Cura 15.02.1 with a layer height of 0.1mm and a print speed of 20mm/s. Material was PLA.