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Printing with different nozzle sizes

Posted: Wed Jun 24, 2015 8:49 am
by jheikkila54
Hey Guys,

I have been using Simplify3D for about a week now and love it, especially 3.0 over 2.2.2. I would like to speed up my print times however using different nozzle sizes. I have read other posts from various forums and appears that it is a fairly common topic. What I would like to know is if I use a .2 nozzle for finer detail on the perimeters and a .8 nozzle for infill, will I not be able to print .05 or even .1 layer heights anymore? Is there a way to setup Simplify to print the infil at .3 layer height and the perimeters at .1 or .05? Any thoughts or experience in setting up dual extruders to do this would be great!

Re: Printing with different nozzle sizes

Posted: Wed Jun 24, 2015 7:42 pm
by jheikkila54
I tried making 3 processes:

Process 1 - print brim and first layer at layer height of .3 with the .8 nozzle and end at layer height of .3

Process 2 - print the perimeter, top, and bottom layers at 3 loops, 0% infill, and to start at layer height of .3, printing at .1 layer res with .3 nozzle

Process 3 - print the perimeter, top, and bottom layers at 0 loops, 15% infill, and to start at layer height of .3, printing at .4 layer res with .8 nozzle

Doing this crashes S3D. Any thoughts or other ideas.

Re: Printing with different nozzle sizes

Posted: Wed Jun 24, 2015 8:30 pm
by JoeJ
If you are using auto extrusion width, than it's as easy as changing the nozzle diameter on the Extruders tab for each different extruder. If you're using manual extrusion widths, then you'll have to change that value manually.

As for printing at different layer heights, that is also possible. For example, you could print 3 outline perimeters at 0.1mm layer heights and then one single thick infill layer at 0.3mm. To do this, set your layer height to 0.1mm and then click on the Infill tab and change it to say "Print sparse infill every 3 layers". That way it prints 3 perimeter layers for each single infill layer. The software takes care of the rest :D

Re: Printing with different nozzle sizes

Posted: Thu Jun 25, 2015 8:09 am
by jheikkila54
Excellent, Thank you so much! this changed the print time of a 26 hour print to 17 hours!

Re: Printing with different nozzle sizes

Posted: Thu Jun 25, 2015 11:41 am
by Rebekah_harper
I run a 0.2mm nozzle with a 0.4mm nozzle.

I tend to use one process printing at a layer height of 0.1, perimeter with 0.2 and then the rest with the 0.4 printing every 2 layers.