Wall thicknesses

[mendip_discovery]

Somthing I have yet to get my head around is wall thicknesses.

So I have a 0.4mm nozzle. So I assume I want wall thicknesses of 0.4mm or multiples of 0.4mm as the printer can't print a 0.3mm or a 0.5mm. Is it as simple as that?

[ataradov]

You can have walls that are not multiple of the nozzle size and it will try to under extrude. The result would depend on the printer and the wall printing order setting (inside first or outside first). Generally don't worry about the exact sizing unless you have specific issues printing.

You can also download the slicer software and see in the simulation what it is going to do.

[thm_w]

Prior to Cura 5, you'd want to optimize wall thickness to your *line width* setting. Which may be the nozzle size or may not.

Now it doesn't really matter, just set your line width to 110-150% of nozzle width, depending on your preference, and the slicer will vary the line width to a lower number to get a good connection.
As ataradov says, preview the slice to see if it looks ok.

[ataradov]

I tried in Prussa slicer and it does not visually show lower extrusion rate in the preview, it just shows the integer number of passes, but in the resulting g-coge you can see varying extrusion rate.

[Whales]

I tried in Prussa slicer and it does not visually show lower extrusion rate in the preview, it just shows the integer number of passes, but in the resulting g-coge you can see varying extrusion rate.

Prusaslicer can do this, the UI is different to the rest of the program so it's easy to miss.

1. Slice the part
2. Look for the "Legend" semi-transparent black and orange UI that overlays the 3D view
3. Change "feature type" to "width" or "volumetric flow rate" (the former is probably more useful because it's not affected by XY speed)

The 3d view will now colour-code the sliced lines.

[ataradov]

Yeas, I have not looked for this setting, since I assumed it would be the most useful default view,  so I likely missed it. I'll experiment with this, but the default view works fine and shows everything you really need to see.

In any case, it just works in practice and there is no need to worry about it in designs.

[mendip_discovery]

Sadly I have a Cetus3D printer, it's got a nice dual nozel setup but though it was part of the kickstarter the support for other slicers is limited and very bodged so it's just not worth it. So I am stuck with thier slicer and I have had a few moments with trying to print thin walls. Thanks for the advice I will make up a test and see how it goes.

[ataradov]

If that printer takes g-code, it should be possible to use any slicer. Slicers support generic printers with custom g-code before and after the print. This code you can take from any g-code generated by the original software.

I have some goofy Tina2 printer, which is only officially supported by their hacked up outdated version of Cura. In practice I was bale to make it work with recent versions of the Prussia slicer.

[thm_w]

There is a profile right on their site: https://www.cetus3d.com/product/cetus2-cura-profile/
Whether it works or not I don't know.

[sleemanj]

I use a default extrusion thickness of 1.15x the nozzle, and when designing parts, I like to design for wall thicknesses some multiple of that (typically I use a 1.0mm nozzle so just a single 1.15mm wall is fine).

If you have not designed the part, then as others have said both modern Cura and modern Prusa Slicer will do their best to make it work by using variable extrusion width as required, in fact they use the same (Cura developed) code called Arachne to do it.  The beauty of open source in action.

I would strongly recommend working out how to get Prusa Slicer or Cura configured to be able to use with your printer, you'll have a much better time of it I am sure, as long as you can get gcode onto the printer, it's just a matter of configuration twiddling.