Only thin air remains!

[nigeljh]

hi folks,

printed this part without checking the stl preview ... then wondered where the top loop was ... checking the preview in S3d , using standard PLA/Fine settings for a duplicator 4s ... and for some reason, there is a huge gap between the loop and where it is meant to be connected , so now im not surprised it didnt print!!

Any advice greatly received, as this is the first time i have encountered this in s3d v3 ...just checked and it also seems to happen in s3d v2 .. im mystified !

[BaudR8]

the walls around the loop may be too thin. A good way to see if that's the case is lowering your extrusion width/nozzle size down to something extremely small that you know your printer can't print, but if the print previewer shows the missing piece after lowering those settings, it's most likely due to the wals being too thin. You can try printing that with 1 perimeter, and increased thin wall settings, but if it's a loop, I'm guessing it will have something threaded through it. You will want to redesign it to thicken it or scale it up so that it has higher strength

[nigeljh]

thanks for the reply, much appreciated !

the item itself is an earring, and the top loop afaik should be at least 0.5 mm to 1mm thick i think, so printing at 0.1 per layer should be easily achievable i would think ....
I got the model from instructables, and there seem to be a number of folks who have successfully printed it as here ; http://www.instructables.com/id/3D-Prin ... -Earrings/

I have printed thinner things than that, so im troubled why s3d is struggling on this one really ....

[dkightley]

This is definitely the "thin wall" issue that is well documented on threads on this forum.

The width of the small loop (ie front to back on prints) seems to be okay, as the top part of the loop is trying to print. The issue is with the thickness of the loop on the left & right...and I'm sure its not that far out from being possible to print. Either yourself, or someone who has the CAD skills, need to tweak the internal diameter of the small loop down so that the thickness is just greater than twice your extrusion nozzle diameter.

The only other alternatives are to print using a smaller size nozzle, resize the overall shape, or slice using another package...or wait until S3D is modded to have an option to print thin sections even if the section is thinner than one extrusion width.....provided the Devs decide to do so!!