Printing small objects - Marvin

[thedoble]

Hi folks

I normally print fairly large, functional parts, but as part of signing up to 3dhubs you have to print a tiny 'marvin' figurine. I've been having some problems getting him to turn out properly, here's how it looks:

Print 1: done at my normal settings, 0.1mm layer height

[img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/908 ... 6%20AM.jpg[/img]
[img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/908 ... 7%20AM.jpg[/img]

Print 2: done at a much slower speed, 0.1mm layer height

[img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/908 ... 8%20AM.jpg[/img]
[img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/908 ... 5%20AM.jpg[/img]

Print 3: done at a lower temperature, as slow as the printer will go, and with 2x extra fans, 0.1mm layer height

[img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/908 ... 1%20AM.jpg[/img]
[img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/908 ... 7%20AM.jpg[/img]
[img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/908 ... 7%20AM.jpg[/img]

Print 4: as above, but at 80% flow rate

[img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/908 ... 1%20AM.jpg[/img]
[img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/908 ... 7%20AM.jpg[/img]

As you can see there's a lot of 'blobbing' and what looks like over-extrusion, however there's also small holes appearing at the top of the print.
I'm using a 0.4mm nozzle - do I just need to use a smaller nozzle?

Any other tips on how I could improve this print?

[Xenocrates]

Are you printing with any support at all? That may help with that blobbing/sagging. Also, .1 layer height with a .4 nozzle does seem a little too little.

[thedoble]

No supports here - as part of the instructions they say that the file 'doesn't need supports'.

I'll purchase a smaller nozzle and see if that helps.

[IMBoring25]

Are you printing with any support at all? That may help with that blobbing/sagging. Also, .1 layer height with a .4 nozzle does seem a little too little.

It's supposed to be done without support...It's to demonstrate the quality of your setup, not how creative you are at making things work.

Is this ABS? I did my first Marvin the other day, and it turned out pretty well, but my typical settings are .3mm layers and 40% infill. I watched it print, and there was a great deal of curling on the bottom half. I think the extra time you're allowing may actually be counter-productive because it allows extra time for the curling to happen and then get hit by the nozzle.

There will probably be at least one layer where the base of the body is extruded out into space without any support under it or any attachment to the legs. I manually edited my g-code and removed those, since they're not going to do anything useful anyway and the loose extrudate hanging from the nozzle won't be helpful.

[thedoble]

Thanks, I'm printing with PLA. I'll try a faster print and see if that helps.

[Polygonhell]

The issue with smaller prints is cooling, try printing 3 or 4 of them at the same time, or get more cooling in the part during the print.

[IMBoring25]

PLA likes a fan, but more fan isn't always better.

[thedoble]

Well printing faster seemed to make things slightly worse. I'll try printing 3 at once.

[DavidF]

I know marvin well.... print at 10mm/sec and set a 40 mm fan up to blow across the bed between his legs. .4 mm nozzle is fine
[img]http://i1102.photobucket.com/albums/g446/davidflowers1/Mobile%20Uploads/utf-8BSU1BRzA2NzcuanBn.jpg[/img]

[thedoble]

Wow, those look great!

I have tried printing at 10mm/s with a fan, haven't had much luck. I am trying with 3 of them at once now.

[DGBK]

I know marvin well.... print at 10mm/sec and set a 40 mm fan up to blow across the bed between his legs. .4 mm nozzle is fine

Wow. Those prints are pretty amazing. What filament is that?

[thedoble]

Well it seems better overall, I printed 3 marvin's at once, and of the 3, this one came out the best. The other two had a lot of roughness on the front and I would say were worse than my original attempts.

[img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/908 ... 1%20PM.jpg[/img]

[img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/908 ... 5%20PM.jpg[/img]

[img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/908 ... 7%20PM.jpg[/img]

Any ideas on further improvement? More cooling?

[KAS]

Whatever you do, don't submit your Marvin till it's perfect. It will determine your starting rating for your hub.

I received 4 out of 5 stars for this.

[img]http://i482.photobucket.com/albums/rr18 ... Marvin.png[/img]

[Eaglezsoar]

I know marvin well.... print at 10mm/sec and set a 40 mm fan up to blow across the bed between his legs. .4 mm nozzle is fine
[img]http://i1102.photobucket.com/albums/g446/davidflowers1/Mobile%20Uploads/utf-8BSU1BRzA2NzcuanBn.jpg[/img]

Wow DavidF those are absolutely fantastic. Is that a metal filament or did you plate them? If that is a metallic filament you did one heck of a good job in polishing!

[geneb]

Eagle, I'm pretty sure those are Lost PLA castings.

g.

[DavidF]

yes they are lost pla castings prints were done in color-fabb at .08 mm layers .4 nozzle e3d hot end 185c iirc

[bot]

How much finishing/polishing did you do on the prints pre casting? how much polishing and buffing did the bronze (brass?) require?

[DavidF]

How much finishing/polishing did you do on the prints pre casting? how much polishing and buffing did the bronze (brass?) require?

I dont bother with cleaning up the print at all. Once the print is cast I run them on the buffr with some black emery which cuts very quickly. The small parts take less than a minute to buff up. The large yoda head I did I probably spent 30 min on buffing. For me it is much easier to polish the metal then the print.

[Windshadow]

Whatever you do, don't submit your Marvin till it's perfect. It will determine your starting rating for your hub.

I received 4 out of 5 stars for this.

[img]http://i482.photobucket.com/albums/rr18 ... Marvin.png[/img]

that looks great to me. why are you submitting and to who? is it some sort of contest?

[KAS]

Marvin is a required test print to enable your account on 3Dhubs.com. It's a site that lists your 3d printer to potential customers who are looking to have models printed in their area. So far I've been impressed with how they handle the transactions and payments. Although I'll say that I'm lucky to not have competing printers able to handle the build volume of a Rostock Max.

[Windshadow]

oh ok well when I get to the point of printing near the full area of my build plate let alone full hight I will give it a try
but if they graded that print of yours at 80% where I can see no flaws
Well I have a hell of a lot to learn before I am worthy to list my solid printing services for hire

[thedoble]

Whatever you do, don't submit your Marvin till it's perfect. It will determine your starting rating for your hub.

I received 4 out of 5 stars for this.

[img]http://i482.photobucket.com/albums/rr18 ... Marvin.png[/img]

Could you share your print settings, nozzle size etc? This looks like a step up from what I'm achieving right now.

[Jimustanguitar]

Whatever you do, don't submit your Marvin till it's perfect. It will determine your starting rating for your hub.

I received 4 out of 5 stars for this.

[img]http://i482.photobucket.com/albums/rr18 ... Marvin.png[/img]

Did you take lots of pictures and with enough lighting to see the whole thing? I can't imagine that they dinged you on print quality, that on e looks great!

[KAS]

Whatever you do, don't submit your Marvin till it's perfect. It will determine your starting rating for your hub.

I received 4 out of 5 stars for this.

Did you take lots of pictures and with enough lighting to see the whole thing? I can't imagine that they dinged you on print quality, that on e looks great!

Heck no, didn't realize they were giving it a grade so I submitted that exact picture. I've done 3 orders for the University of Kentucky and received 5/5 on those so my rating is showing 4.9 overall.

Now that I start looking at all my pictures, they all look the same with crappy lighting. Guess it's time to use an actual camera, with some decent lighting.

[thedoble]

So after printing many, many Marvins at a variety of different settings ...

[img]http://i.imgur.com/WaSgOQy.jpg[/img]

I am finally at a point where I'm happy with the result!

[img]http://i.imgur.com/v7gMxOS.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i.imgur.com/IIDp2Ev.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i.imgur.com/ovyedkc.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i.imgur.com/kHyf9CX.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i.imgur.com/3G9PShn.jpg[/img]

The one change that made the biggest improvement was increasing my layer height from 0.1mm to 0.2mm. It seems my 0.4mm nozzle just isn't able to handle printing at 0.1mm. Once I stepped up to 0.2, I was able to set pretty much all my settings back to what I normally use and the print came out just fine.

I have a little more tweaking that I'm going to do, once I'm finished I'll post my settings for anyone who might have the same troubles as me.