What is the thinnest layer height?

I am printing with a .35mm J head and a 1.75mm ABS. Print time be damned, what is the smallest layer bight I could expect? Could I push it past .1mm? .05mm? Anyone out there work this small?

It really depends on how precise you bed leveling, linear rails, and extrusion is, ive gone as low as 0.05mm before, im sure you can go lower, however, if you do go lower, measure the width of your extrusion then set the extrusion width to that in your slicer, this will make your print less likely to warp and do other wierd things because of the low layer height.

You can go to 0.004mm if you wish. You will not get very good prints, but you can set it there.....

In most cases there is no advantage to going below 1/2 your nozzle diameter. That would be 0.175 mm. Remember that it needs to be an integer number of Z steps to get equal layers each time.

Quote
uncle_bob
In most cases there is no advantage to going below 1/2 your nozzle diameter. That would be 0.175 mm. Remember that it needs to be an integer number of Z steps to get equal layers each time.

I would completely disagree. I would never recommend to print above 1/2 of your extrusion diameter in height. Printing below 1/2 means stronger layer bonds, lower volume per second = lower back pressure = less blobs, less hole shrinkage from the rounded extrusions edge, better curves on the Z axis of prints.

To the OP the calculator in my signature uses your E steps per mm and nozzle diameter to determine the lowest layer height and accompanying extrusion width that you will get good results with. It uses the volume of plastic per step to determine the minimum layer height. If you use it be sure to use the intermediate or higher since the basic is for Tantillus only.

If you want to know more about how the calculator works just let me know.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/30/2013 03:53PM by Sublime.

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Hehe... So, if you want to go with a combined recommendation (from both uncle_bob and sublime), set your step to .5 * nozzle diameter, then you can tweak a little bit to either side of that, until you find what you prefer.