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Difficulty printing at 0.02mm layer height

Discussion in 'Troubleshooting' started by SolS, May 30, 2018.

  1. SolS

    SolS New Member

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    Hello everybody. The R2 is advertised as being able to print at 0.02mm layer height. Normally I print at 0.1mm, but I was trying to print a small piece with very fine detail and the detail wouldn't show at 0.1mm. When I tried printing at 0.02mm, the print had some issues:

    RR2_0.02l_01.JPG
    RR2_0.02l_02.JPG

    As you can see there's a strange texture on the surface, there's holes in the top, and the corners are... out of alignment? (The print on the left is at 0.1mm layer height without the fine texture, the print on the right is at 0.02mm with the fine texture).

    I'm hoping this is something that can be solved by changing the print settings. I'm using Cura to slice. I used pretty much the standard Robo print settings; I don't remember if my infill was 20% or 100% (sorry), and I have minimum layer time at 15 seconds. Does anyone have any idea what could be wrong, or what settings I need to change?
     
  2. WheresWaldo

    WheresWaldo Volunteer ( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)
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    Simple things to try, go slower, much slower, reduce temperature a little. Did I mention that you need to go slower?
     
  3. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    Speed must be reduced linear with the layer height so whatever speed you use for 0.2 layers, divide that by 10 for 0.02 layers.
    There is no "free lunch" ;) Always a trade off.
     
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  4. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    Frankly if this is something you really need to use then swap the nozzle to a smaller one. Best quality is with layer height between 30%-60% of the nozzle diameter so go with a smaller nozzle for better results too. You still have to reduce speed regardless of the nozzle.
     
  5. SolS

    SolS New Member

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    Thanks for the tips guys. I'm actually waiting on a smaller nozzle at the moment, in the meantime I'll try reducing the print speed.
     
  6. drbanks

    drbanks Active Member

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    Interesting topic.

    What sort of issues can one anticipate when trying a radically smaller nozzle? You've already mentioned print speed...
     
  7. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    That is the most pressing one.
    Flow rate is reduced so speed must be reduced.
    You may get into other things that need adjustments/tweaks like fine-tuning temperatures and perhaps retraction, but those will be minor if you need to change anything at all. Assuming you have everything set well for a given filament swapping to a smaller nozzle is mostly about slowing down the print speeds to account for the restriction in flow.

    Reverse is true on larger nozzles and this is one reason why the volcano adapter is such a good idea on prints that don't need real fine details. Flow rate increases which means speed can typically increase and even if print speed stayed exactly the same you are pumping out more plastic on each pass so things finish sooner. Rather the reverse of the small nozzles :) where you are putting down a lot less plastic each pass (but you can control the detail better).

    For 90% of what we print we use the volcano E3D machine (0.8mm nozzle) and the rest we use a small nozzle detail printer (0.25mm nozzle) and if it is physically small as well there is a good chance it is happening on the C2. For those rare large, but higher detail jobs we have an R1 with a 0.3 nozzle that takes a really long time to print :) Days... Even on the small nozzles we have never needed to go below 0.05 (which is slow enough already)
     
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  8. daniel871

    daniel871 Well-Known Member

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    You should also consider just how "flat" your build plate is when trying to print super-thin layers; probably one of the rare instances where printing a raft might be justified if you have an older build-plate that is either no longer perfectly flat or which shipped with out-of-spec glass (since it'll put down thick base layers followed by thin layers to flatten the top of the raft, then your actual print starts on top of that).
     
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