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Hi, I print boxes with 2mm thick walls for electronics and pour them with epoxy. Many of them leak mostly from the bottom and some places in the sides. I am using simplify3d slicer with mostly default settings. How do I make the walls more solid?? I have infill set at 100%. temp 220/60 petg
Thanks
Assuming you created the 3d model yourself, create 40x40mm square that is 2 layers tall (whatever layer height you are using.
Print the square and measure the thickness, it should be within .02mm of the model height. If it is taller you need to reduce your Z offset. If it is the proper height, examine it with a jeweler loop or USB microscope. you should not see gaps between the plastic. Measure your filament in several placed along a 1 meter length, take the average diameter and enter that into the box for filament diameter on the S3D Other Tab. Reprint and examine. If still spaces increase extrusion multiplier by .2 and retry. Never change more than one setting at a time without testing. Also temp seems a bit low, 235C works best with my printer with PETG but every printer is different.
Good luck and welcome to the art and science of 3d printing
the thing with simplify 3d that is confusing is that 100% infill DOES NOT MAKE A SOLID PRINT.
Logically it should - but then logically, when creating a bridged layer on a cylinder, it should not start in the centre in empty space, but at the edges and build out - and it always starts in the centre - so logic and simplify3d's slicing algorithms rarely go together..
To get a completely solid and water tight print from simplify3d, you have to select the option that creates a solid layer of infill for every layer.
I'll post a pic when I get back on the workshop computer.
But it's at the bottom of the 'infill' option page.
And you can select to print a 'solid' layer every 5 or ten or 20 etc leyers or for every single layer.
I've made screw on 'bases' for bottles to provide drinking water for birds that can only be watertight with the solid layer option on for every layer.
I also use it to mnake standard prints stronger by printing a solid layer every 10 or 20 layers.
It does use alot more material - but it does make things properly watertight :-)
Also to help make a square box watertight you want to remove a rounded cube from the interior (minkowski) rather than a standard sharp angled cube. This will give you more material at the areas where leaks are more likely to occue: at the junctions of horizontal and vertical areas. By rounded all the sharp edges with a minkowski operation - you increase the material at these junctions and that will help enormously with the watertightness.
Umm - just realised I'm assuming you are using openscad - if you are not, then the above 'minkowski' blather won't make any sense at all :-)
But the rounded edges is still the way to go - no matter how your cad program generates them :-)
Hi and thanks, I am using Inventor 2020 so a little different, I can put a small radius on inside corners, I assume that is what you mean. I chose every layer solid and for 4 boxes it added 25 inches of filament and 14 minutes to the 17 hour print time. All dimensions remain the same so that filament went somewhere!! I will do some testing and report. The previous boxes you could see many points of light when backlighting with a 9000 lumen flashlight. Yes, incredibly bright.
Thanks, Tom
I am a bit confused. If I print a part with 100% infill what is the point of a solid layer 100% infill is solid as it gets as far as I can see. Can the OP post a factory file from S3D? File > save factory file. Do this when you have everything set up as you want it to print so we can see all the setting and the model.
If you are seeing light you are under extruded..
With S3D it turns out that infill is what it does with large solid areas. It leaves open parts which it fills with honeycomb or whatever you spec. I use 100% infill for mounting tabs so the small bolt will not crush the tab. But that does not apply to the bottom of a 3 x 4 inch box which 'looks' like it is solid but really is not solid enough to be liquid tight. That is where it is needed to tell it to print a solid layer. And since my box is 2mm or 5 layers thick I can easily see through it with a bright light. It looks like a starry night. I printed with each layer set as solid and tested it with alcohol and after 20 minutes it did not leak.
@airscapes: As i said - simplify3d does not treat 100% infill as 'solid'.
For solid layers you need to select the ''solid diaphragm every 'x' layers' box.
I did not write the software :-)
It does not make sense to me either - but that's what you do.
@tombauer - you're welcome.
That must be a feature of the upgraded version 4.01 it is solid as can be depending of course on the size of the extrusion width and the model.. big nozzle little space can = holes... The other question I had for the OP is now many shells do you have? He says light looks like stars.. that is either very very under extruded or there are no shells .. I have a box with 2 walls (.8mm walls) that has one tiny leak in the bottom corner other than that water tight.. it was not made to holding water but it does.. almost ;-)
Back to the 100 infill I make a part I sell that printed 100% infill and i can tell you it is solid and the infill layers an not different than the top and bottom layers.. if there is a visual difference when you are printing, you may have the infill extrusion width not set to 100% or the infill overlap not set to 15-25%
Simplify3d has always done this - well from version 2 onwards anway.
this is 100% infill:
Attachment 15153
And this is with solid diaphragm every 1 layer ticked:
Attachment 15154
These settings for both - just 'solid diaphragm NOT ticked for the first image.
Attachment 15155
Are you perhaps getting infill mixed up with layers and shells ?
That must be one of those bug features of 4.1 in 4.01 solid layer does not need to be checked to achieve 100% infill. However, this would explain the OPs issues.. I am sooo glad I did not update S3D.. If Prusa would just get the supports to work as well or better than S3D I would be using that full time.
I SEE the difference, I have never had print every infill angle on every layer checked. uncheck that and infill percentage will work as one would expect!
Resin printing would give you a solid, I rarely succeeded in watertight prints with FDM, but with Resin it's solid, so when I need waterproof, I do resin.