Friday 27 January 2017

Print quality 0.2mm vs 0.1mm

I've just spent the last few hours printing the Dwarf miniature and tweaking the print settings and 3D model.

Print Settings for all prints
Extruder Temperature: 200c
Bed Temperature: 60c
Infill: 10%
Support Fill Amount: 15%
Adhesion type: Brim

Skelleton
Yesterday I modeled and printed the skeleton miniature. For a first try, I was pretty impressed, but the scaling was a lot more difficult then I had original thought. In this case, he was too thin and small. In comparison to the original miniature, the only resemblance would be the pose, and even then it is not entirely accurate - granted, the references I found for this piece were not excellent.

First print
  • Layer height 0.1mm
  • Came out too small
  • Had to print the sythe separately



Dwarf 
I chose this particular piece to attempt first because the anatomy is not nearly as difficult as that of a normal humans, and also is considerably smaller, so less material to work with. All in all, I was very pleased with the resulsts.

First print
  • Layer height 0.1mm
  • Came out too small
  • Issues slicing beard and axe handle.
  • Layer height was great, but took about 40 minutes to print.




Second Print

  • Layer height increased 0.2mm
  • Enlarged the model
  • Tweaked the base
  • Tweaked the beard
  • Added belt buckle and satchel

Third Print


  • Layer height reduced back to 0.1mm
  • Tweaked axe handle.

2nd print (left) , 3rd print (right)

Observations
The increased layer height really helped produce a much faster print, but the quality suffered significantly. I'd be tempted to try a 0.2mm layer height at a slower print speed though, as counter-intuitive as that seems. The 0.1mm layer height produced a much smoother miniature with sharper lines / details, with one draw back: significantly more stringing between the support structures and the piece.

Now, there are two settings I've been tweaking to reduce stringing, retraction and heat. Retraction is when the printer literally retracts the filament back in to itself (i've configured a retraction distance of 5mm and a speed of 100mm) when the printer head is moving from one point to another and not needing to print. In either case, I'm satisfied with the 3rd print, it will simply require a bit more work sanding, but will try to adjust these settings for the next miniature: printing at 195c and 10mm retraction distance.

Example of the stringing



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