I want to print a functional part but the creator of the STL says I need a 0.4mm nozzle and if I don’t the print might not be functional. I have a 0.5mm nozzle on my Taz Workhorse will that work? I need a tight tolerance fit for this part.
IMO, the answer is “it depends”. Sometimes “need a 0.4 nozzle” is “tested with a 0.4 nozzle” or “designed for a 0.4 nozzle”.
I have printed numerous objects with moveable parts (or joints) using a 0.5mm nozzle. Some of them said they were designed for a 0.4mm nozzle and some didn’t specify. In some cases, there were two .stl files, one with the complete object and one with a test “joint”. I’ve also had a few failures.
Sometimes you can tweak slicer parameters to “fix” an object that doesn’t function. Without some details, all I can say is try it.
There is not much difference between the 2 sizes.
First. Try printing it as you normally would.
If that doesn’t work out, There is a couple of other things to try.
Assuming you are using Cura-LE 3.6.37.
And 2 walls.
The first thing to try is just turning on “Print Thin Walls”.
Print Setting | Shell | Print Thin Walls | [enable]
And change the wall thickness to 0.8mm.
Print Settings | Shell | Wall Thickness | [0.8 mm]
If that is still binding, combine that with changing the extruded lines width.
Change all in the Quality section that are set at 0.5mm to 0.4mm.
e.g. Print Settings | Quality | Line Width | [0.4 mm]
I printed multiple sets of Voron parts with a 0.5n, seems to work fine. If everything else on your printer is working right, then it should be good.
That usually means they designed the wall thickness to use that size. If you use a different size nozzle make sure it will print right. For example it may cause it to overlap with a larger nozzle or create a internal gap in the wall.