Transcript:
Can you get finer detail on your 3d prints with a smaller nozzle on your hot end? Well, we’re gonna try it out and today is filament. Friday filament Fridays brought you every week by these patreon supporters, most printers, including the under three, come with a standard 0.4 millimeter nozzle. That’s the whole size of the nozzle itself, but you can get different sizes. You can get all the way down 2.2 and up to one millimeter just about anywhere, in fact. I bought a variety pack that goes from 0.2 to 1 millimeter for my under 3 on Amazoncom. I’ll put a link to it in description below. If you want to do the same, it’s got multiple sizes and at least two of each, but the point four gives me plenty of extra because I replace nozzles from time to time they just get old. I wanted a simple print with fine detail to test the two nozzles. I found this coin on Thingiverse by using the cost and you can customize it in Thingiverse customizer. I changed the top line to fill in my Friday, the next line to nozzle test and then remove the ones in the back and this left me a nice STL file to download and test the nozzles with. I also want to try out two different Slicers. Cura, which is a free versus simplify 3d for printing fine detail like lettering’s on this coin, so let’s try out both. Then we’ll print it and compare. Here’s the coin loaded at a cure 3.6 now what I’m gonna do is make two different profiles, one with a 0.4 nozzle using the Machine settings as you can see here, then I’m gonna make a second one with the same settings except a 0.2 nozzle once. I’ve got those now. I’m going to use the fine setting within Keira. They gave me a 0.1 layer height and by default That’s a 0.8 wall thickness now that I should have lowered to 0.4 That was a screw-up 20% infill 205° see 30 millimeters per second. I wanted it to print slow and I sliced it and then I looked at the layer view, and when I did, I could see that Outer wall was really thin, but the lettering looked really good here and the viewer, so I was worried about the outer wall, and then I deeper into the advanced settings, and it said line with a point four, so I said let it go and here’s the result. The outer wall did not print those default settings didn’t work. I could obviously improve this with some better settings, but now let’s see what default 0.2 looks like. I selected the zero to profile all the same settings, and it gave me a language or 0.2 to match the nozzle. And so I sliced that I looked at the layer view, and now I could see that that outer ring was multiple circles because of the nozzle being smaller and the letters just seemed crisper. So now I need to print it and the first thing I need to do is heat up the nozzle, so I could change it, so I just went to prepare. Preheat PLA and then let it heat up to 185 once it was heated up. I manually pushed some filament through the nozzle until it came out. And then once I saw some coming out, then I yanked it back So now I have pretty clear path to the nozzle. I pulled off that excess and then used a six millimeter socket on a ratchet to loosen it up And then by hand, I finished taking the nozzle out. Now this gets a little warm, but if you do it quick, it’s not a problem. Let me show you trick how to clean the nozzle. At least how I do it. I let it cool a little bit, and then I grab it with some side cutters and then grab the nozzle with the pliers and I pulled it too slowly, and it’ll totally clean out the nozzle. You’ll feel a little bump at the end as a final piece comes out, It’s a perfectly clean nozzle Now. Now I can store it away so now. Let’s put the 0.2 nozzle in place. This thing was still heated up. You should probably should let this cool down, but I did it so quick. I just put it in place and then hand tightened it with the socket again. It’s a six millimeter socket. Then I just slightly tightened it with the ratchet. And finally I pushed through some filament until I saw a little bit. Come out the nozzle and I could feel it was a little harder to come out because this was a 0.2 nozzle. And when I pull this off, you can see how much thinner it is. So now I printed the coin and here’s the result. This looks so much better. The wall is good. The letters are crisp, just could look at the comparison between to the zero point to definitely did a better job. The next step was a try simplified through D. So I loaded in the file. I chose my cat profile that I did. From a few videos ago. Zero point four nozzle layer height of 0.12 with these settings speed, Thirty millimeters per second and I did use the Advanced Settings for allow single wall Extrusion. You have to do this to get any kind of decent print. How to simplify 3d and here’s the result. Now it’s showing that the Fs are actually piece. It’s bridging. I don’t know why, and the AME looks kind of merged together. The outer ring is definitely one swipe all the way around, so I’m curious if that’s going to print, and here’s the result, it did print the outer ring, but the lettering is just awful. The am and II can’t even tell what that is. The Fs looks like Peas, so now let’s try the 0.2 so I made the same profile, but with a 0.2 nozzle as you can see right here. Everything else is the same and so. I sliced it and it showed the Fs. It showed the letters. It looks so much better. The outer ring was more than one loop and here’s the print. Now the top layer is still a little thin, but the lettering looks really good. The outer ring looks really good so once again. A 0.2 nozzle does a way better job than the 0.4 but now let’s compare Cura to simplify 3d and I would actually say simplify 3d was worse than Keira. Keira came out a lot better, and that’s a free slicer. So let I want to compare all four of them and here they are clearly. A 0.2 nozzle helps, but of the bunch chura, at a 0.2 stock settings is the best of the bunch. I’m sure I could work in that Keira profile and get to 0.42 print better than what it did with the missing walls, but clearly the 0.2 nozzle prints really nice both in Keira and simplify 3d so it’s worth making the change to that nozzle for really fine detail and this does have very thin letters and a very thin outer wall. So to me based in a simple test, it’s worth it. The nozzles come in a little plastic case with individual bags for each size now. If you want to print a nice case for it, consider this. I designed this in Tinkercad. It was for a filament Friday project a while ago for electronic components, But these would fit in it nicely and you could print this on the under three. So that’s it for this week. If you want to try this, there should be a video popping up right over here. You can click on out to take you right to it. If you want to help support the channel, follow them on the patreon at that link if nothing else clicking that chep logo and subscribe. I’ll see you next time right here. The filament Friday.