SoliForum - 3D Printing Community — My first week with the Solidoodle 3

Re: My first week with the Solidoodle 3

2013-10-21T18:00:12Z

diyengineer wrote:

ysb wrote:
downeym wrote:
....The nozzle is 0.35mm in diameter, ....

beware with this.. last version of solidoodle use a 0.4mm nozzle instead of the older 0.35mm...

At what serial number did this switch occur? I just bought mine a week ago, so im guessing i have a .4mm nozzle? would have been nice to know since they still advertise .35mm on the website under the solidoodle 3....
anyone else with a new solidoodle confirm this?

Fixed.

Re: My first week with the Solidoodle 3

2013-10-21T11:01:23Z

Hazer wrote:

Yup/ Anything in the past 4 months is definitely 0.4mm .

Thanks Hazer.

Re: My first week with the Solidoodle 3

2013-10-21T10:50:11Z

Yup/ Anything in the past 4 months is definitely 0.4mm .

Re: My first week with the Solidoodle 3

2013-10-21T10:12:30Z

ysb wrote:

downeym wrote:
....The nozzle is 0.35mm in diameter, ....

beware with this.. last version of solidoodle use a 0.4mm nozzle instead of the older 0.35mm...

At what serial number did this switch occur? I just bought mine a week ago, so im guessing i have a .4mm nozzle? would have been nice to know since they still advertise .35mm on the website under the solidoodle 3....

anyone else with a new solidoodle confirm this?

Re: My first week with the Solidoodle 3

2013-10-02T19:47:24Z

I would just let Slic3r handle the extrusion width automatically.. just make sure the nozzle diameter is set correctly for your setup. It will do the math for you.

As far as layer thicknesses go, I am not saying that less than 0.3mm is worse... its just harder. printing at 0.3mm is relatlive easy and you dont have to worry too much about your settings. Trying to get smaller slices means you really have to start optimizing temperature, speed, cooling and a bunch of other things to get really nice prints.

Thats always the challenge, right? how small and how much detail can I get? People are printing at 0.1mm with the larger nozzles. Many look REALLY good. I personally find that printing ABS at 0.3mm with acetone vapor smoothing looks just as good as if I did it at 0.1mm and its a lot easier and faster.

There is no 1 correct answer. Please dont misunderstand me.

Re: My first week with the Solidoodle 3

2013-10-02T19:35:18Z

ok, that makes sense, i have my widths set to 140% of all my layer heights for differing resolutions. So this is incorrect? should i be using the same width from .4 to .1 layer heights? or do experienced users even really use .1mm settings anymore? seeing as .3 is technically the optimal?

Re: My first week with the Solidoodle 3

2013-10-02T17:12:54Z

the 1.4 number is not a hard and fast rule.. in fact, I don't even remember where I first read it, but my experience has been that it seems to be a good guideline.

The 1.4 ratio is just a guideline that says you can only squash the bead so much before it start looking sloppy. In other words, why cant you use a 0.4mm diameter nozzle to print in 0.01mm layer heights? You can, but the layers are so squashed, you are no longer layout out a uniform and controllable bead anymore.

Its just saying that for a 0.4mm nozzle, the optimal layer height would be 0.4mm/1.4=0.29mm. This is why you see so many things printed with 0.3mm layer heights. you can go smaller, but with diminishing returns.

Re: My first week with the Solidoodle 3

2013-10-02T16:31:07Z

alright, so this is maybe something that i missed, but what should your bead width be set to? where does the 1.4 ratio come into play? i though it was 1.4 times the layer height for with width, is it actually to do with the nozzle diameter? through setup on soliwiki the nozzle diameter never came up...

Re: My first week with the Solidoodle 3

2013-09-27T22:37:08Z

Claghorn wrote:

So how would you tell what diameter you have? Extrude some plastic into space and measure the diameter with calipers, perhaps?

If you got your printer May 2013 or later then it probably has the .40 nozzle, SD made mention of the change on about the 21st of April 2013

Otherwise the best way to check would be get some test wire of the appropriate sizes and see what fits.

Re: My first week with the Solidoodle 3

2013-09-27T20:35:28Z

Claghorn wrote:

So how would you tell what diameter you have? Extrude some plastic into space and measure the diameter with calipers, perhaps?

that might give you a rough idea, yes. just beware that the plastic "rebounds" a bit after it passes through the nozzle. so it might not be exactly .35/.4 etc

Re: My first week with the Solidoodle 3

2013-09-27T13:33:05Z

So how would you tell what diameter you have? Extrude some plastic into space and measure the diameter with calipers, perhaps?

Re: My first week with the Solidoodle 3

2013-09-27T12:55:47Z

ah... good to know...

Re: My first week with the Solidoodle 3

2013-09-27T11:41:06Z

downeym wrote:

....The nozzle is 0.35mm in diameter, ....

beware with this.. last version of solidoodle use a 0.4mm nozzle instead of the older 0.35mm...

Re: My first week with the Solidoodle 3

2013-09-26T22:43:50Z

That is part of the fun to me... I like tweaking the hardware and software as long as I see improvements.

Re: My first week with the Solidoodle 3

2013-09-26T22:29:31Z

Not at all, I definitely appreciate it!

My formal education is in science but now I am a technical artist so the "nitty gritty" is where I thrive. There are so many variables to tweak with this printer and good guidelines are really the only way to reduce the inevitable trial and error.

Thanks!