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Printing Very Small Items

Discussion in 'Troubleshooting' started by Garnet, Jul 24, 2014.

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  1. Garnet

    Garnet Member

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    Hi, I have a part with a very small end point or tip (cylindrical shape, 5mm diameter x 8mm height) that melted in my last attempt.

    I'm going to experiment with slowing the extruder and/or blowing a fan on the print when it gets to the small part. Does anyone have any experience with printing items this small and have any suggestions?

    Also, can I slow the print down for just the small part, or only for the entire print?

    Thanks.
     
    #1 Garnet, Jul 24, 2014
  2. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    Depends. Some of the software lets you control things more than others.

    Not sure which software/slicer you are using.
     
    #2 mark tomlinson, Jul 24, 2014
  3. Garnet

    Garnet Member

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    Repetier.
     
    #3 Garnet, Jul 24, 2014
  4. Garnet

    Garnet Member

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    For anyone wondering...I slowed down the extruder to 20mm/s, which made a little difference and I set up a regular house fan and turned it on just during the very small part of the print. I watched the extruder temperature on Repetier and turned the fan on and off to keep it around 170-190. And the print came out very well. I tried another one and didn't get to the fan quickly enough and it melted, so needs a bit of luck or practice.
     
    #4 Garnet, Jul 25, 2014
  5. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    I think with repetier you can only control the speed for the entire print. Other slicers do allow you to control it for layer ranges.

    My best luck for small parts with repetier was to lower the layer size (from .2 to .1 for example) and slow it down to a crawl.

    I know @tesseract experimented with tiny stuff (and tiny layers).
     
    #5 mark tomlinson, Jul 26, 2014
  6. Garnet

    Garnet Member

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    I'll experiment with that, thanks.
     
    #6 Garnet, Jul 26, 2014
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