Problems with printing 0.5 mm features

[subnoize]

Hello!

I create a cylinder object 25 mm x 25 mm. I set the shells to 1 and the infill to 0% and the Extrusion Width is 0.50 mm. When I print using my Taz 6 I get a pretty print using PLA. The walls are really thin but the layers are uniform and there are no pits, holes or blobs of plastic on it. The surface quality is really good and the object is surprisingly sturdy and there is no warping.

I go and make the same object but now I purposely make it's walls 0.5 mm thick and I get this melted looking thing. It will do these crazy back and forth movements across the 0.5 mm walls like its trying infill it or something and it leaves big blobs of plastic everywhere.

What is going on here?

I have to print some really thin walled objects and I know the dern printer can do it. Now why does Simplify3D keep making a mess of it? Is there a button somewhere that will turn off the "I'm smarter than you" features and just print what is there?

Thanks,

--jb


**Note: I have reduced the extrusion width and I still get terrible surface quality. I should get as pretty a print as I do when printing with a single shell and no infill.

[arhi]

number of thin wall threads on the forum ...

as for your particular issue, did you try vase mode?

[subnoize]

number of thin wall threads on the forum ...

as for your particular issue, did you try vase mode?

I could be terribly wrong but I didn't see any other posts that applied.

As to vase mode, I used the cylinders because it was simple to show the problem. In truth the actual object requires multiple print profiles which for whatever reason does not work with vase mode.

I will try to search again and see what i can pull up in past threads. Some times my searching terms arent exactly the best and i get poor results.

[wirlybird]

A couple things to check. What is the actual thickness of the wall on the part's drawing? You will want to try to set your extrusion width as a multiple of the wall thickness. So, if the wall is 1.6MM thick then .5 does not divide into it.
For instance I had a part with a 1mm wall and I was using .4 width. It printed the wall fine but left a gap between the shells. When I redid my part to a thickens of 1.2 then the .4 would go into it 3 times and gave me 2 shells and some infill.
May not be your issue but with thin walls it's something to think about.

Hello!

I create a cylinder object 25 mm x 25 mm. I set the shells to 1 and the infill to 0% and the Extrusion Width is 0.50 mm. When I print using my Taz 6 I get a pretty print using PLA. The walls are really thin but the layers are uniform and there are no pits, holes or blobs of plastic on it. The surface quality is really good and the object is surprisingly sturdy and there is no warping.

I go and make the same object but now I purposely make it's walls 0.5 mm thick and I get this melted looking thing. It will do these crazy back and forth movements across the 0.5 mm walls like its trying infill it or something and it leaves big blobs of plastic everywhere.

What is going on here?

I have to print some really thin walled objects and I know the dern printer can do it. Now why does Simplify3D keep making a mess of it? Is there a button somewhere that will turn off the "I'm smarter than you" features and just print what is there?

Thanks,

--jb


**Note: I have reduced the extrusion width and I still get terrible surface quality. I should get as pretty a print as I do when printing with a single shell and no infill.

[subnoize]

A couple things to check. What is the actual thickness of the wall on the part's drawing? You will want to try to set your extrusion width as a multiple of the wall thickness. So, if the wall is 1.6MM thick then .5 does not divide into it.
For instance I had a part with a 1mm wall and I was using .4 width. It printed the wall fine but left a gap between the shells. When I redid my part to a thickens of 1.2 then the .4 would go into it 3 times and gave me 2 shells and some infill.
May not be your issue but with thin walls it's something to think about.

I understand that. Thanks for the input though. It still doesn't explain why Simplify3D doesn't want to print walls at 0.5 mm. Again, if you set the shells to 1 and the extrusion width is 0.5 mm and you set the infill to 0 it works and surface quality is great. Now I try to make a object with 0.5 mm thick and it starts doing like an artist does during the quick sketch. Many rapid and short strokes that results in blobs of plastic.

[dkightley]

What you are experiencing her is THE thin wall issue that S3D has...that is the slicer prevents slicing when the thickness of the wall is less than the width of the extrusion.......as detailed in many threads. Here's one as a "for instance": viewtopic.php?f=9&t=6136&p=26619&hilit=thin+wall#p26619

What you are seeing is the slicer managing to print a very short section of wall...then not printing because its too narrow...then printing as its just about wide enough.....and round the loop, etc. The result is a "morse code" effect!! Bear in mind that the inside and outside cylinder walls are not perfect circles...they are a series of straight lines, and the distance between them will be seen as varying very slightly....sometimes 0.5, sometimes 0.49999, sometimes 0.50001....or something like that!

Change the extrusion width to 0.49....and the preview will show a difference.

Bottom line.......redesign the tube so the wall is slightly thicker and the slicer will produce continuous extrusions.

If you don't like this answer, then I suggest you do two things....add a comment to the below thread....and complain like hell to S3D support about them not listening to users on here!

viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3471

[CompoundCarl]

If you want to print the hollow cylinder as a single extrusion, then just go to the Advanced tab and enable the "merge all outlines into a single solid model" option. Then you can either enable vase mode, or just manually set the top/bottom solid layers to 0 and infill to 0% as well. That prints a perfect single outline wall without any other changes.

[subnoize]

If you don't like this answer, then I suggest you do two things....add a comment to the below thread....and complain like hell to S3D support about them not listening to users on here!

viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3471

I see! I might have too. Very frustrating. Thin plastic parts are more real world than thick parts are.

[subnoize]

If you want to print the hollow cylinder as a single extrusion, then just go to the Advanced tab and enable the "merge all outlines into a single solid model" option. Then you can either enable vase mode, or just manually set the top/bottom solid layers to 0 and infill to 0% as well. That prints a perfect single outline wall without any other changes.

I tried this approach and the problem is the thin 0.5 mm wall expands out to 3 mm at the top. Another design is where the vast majority of the model if 0.5 mm with 1 mm ribs to strengthen it.

Thanks for the input thought.