Results 1 to 7 of 7
-
05-24-2014, 07:50 AM #1
- Join Date
- Feb 2014
- Posts
- 40
PLA Wall Thickness... what's a good size?
Can someone recommend what a good wall thickness is on prints using PLA? I'm printing stuff like vases, and mostly display items. Is 1/8" good or can I make it even lower? Is there a formula to use to determine which wall thickness would work best on a certain sized print? How am I supposed to know?
-
05-24-2014, 11:05 AM #2
- Join Date
- Sep 2013
- Location
- New Jersey, USA
- Posts
- 494
For really small parts of an project 1mm should be ok. For medium to larger areas 2mm should be the thickness of your walls. That's a general rule of thumb I use when printing, and it usually works out great for me.
-
05-24-2014, 11:47 PM #3
Larry,
Would you use those values for ABS as well?
OME
-
05-26-2014, 07:56 AM #4
- Join Date
- Apr 2014
- Posts
- 23
1mm works well on PLA for me quite a bit. I don't usually print with ABS. Would that work too? I have had to scrap prints in the past due to bad judgement on wall thickness, but now I think I have the system down pat. It's not any system I can really write on paper, its more of a judgment type thing I think.
-
05-26-2014, 10:18 PM #5
- Join Date
- Mar 2014
- Posts
- 223
I have printed relatively large parts down to 0.25mm wall thickness in PLA, so it's more a matter of how much strength you need to decide the thickness. For example as a test I printed a spiral vase with 0.3mm wall thickness and it works perfectly well as a pencil holder.
-
05-27-2014, 02:33 PM #6
- Join Date
- Apr 2014
- Location
- Netherlands
- Posts
- 76
For some vases I used 0.4 mm (the size of my hot-end opening) this works really well if you use a spiral motion to print.
For all other work I mostly use 0.5 mm, I tried 1 mm but I didn't have the feeling the parts became more strong so I don't see the need for it really.
-
06-03-2014, 04:06 AM #7
- Join Date
- Mar 2014
- Posts
- 223
One thing I have in my wish list is a slicing software that could do variable thickness perimeters, that would automatically determine the optimum width of a perimeter so that it either completely fills the gap between an exterior and interior wall or leaves enough space for it to be infilled.
The later versions of Slic3r, IIRC, have variable width linear infill for thin gaps, so fingers crossed for one day seen variable width perimeters.
Ender 3v2 poor printing quality
10-28-2024, 09:08 AM in Tips, Tricks and Tech Help