Hi Al…It’s been exasperating trying to print 3 simple words of curved text on to the brim of a hat with our Taz 6. I downloaded this .stl file Fire Helmet Keychain by mfritz - Thingiverse (the blank file) into Tinkercad, selected Shape Generator, chose curved text, typed in the 3 words, situated those words on the hat brim, grouped them and exported that as an .stl file. I then opened that .stl file in Cura 3.6.7 and can see those 3 words on the brim and chose Save to File to create the gcode onto an sd card and inserted that sd card into the Taz 6 and it prints the hat with no text. I’ve tried it as 70mm, 60 mm, with 40% infill… nothing works. It will print “straight” text on the brim but not the curved text. Not sure what else to try? Thank you.
Do you have the gcode file, images of what you are getting, or any other information?
The best thing to do is go into Cura and view the print preview to see how it is actually going to print.
If your text is too small, it simply might not print at all, but without seeing the file, or the gcode, it is hard to say.
The way that Cura renders 3d models is separate from the slicing engine. STLs are not “solid” geometry, they’re a bunch of triangles and each triangle has an inside and outside. Sometimes the software used to create the geometry can flip one or more of the sides, so instead of an enclosed (manifold) object, you have sides that is flipped, so a side is a window into the inside. Without being enclosed, there is no volume to the object, so wall thicknesses are all zero.
The visual rendering engine doesn’t need objects to have volume. It just renders each “outside” side of the object as solid, so unless you view from the correct angle to see into the outward-facing “inside” face, it looks fine. But the slicing engine sees that one open side and may just assume that it’s just two-dimensional geometry with no volume, and not generate any toolpaths.
I would guess that when you exported from TinkerCAD, it left out the side touching the hat, so it’s not solid geometry. Which is a bit wierd, since TInkerCAD is generally very good at generating manifold parts.
As McLeach said, if we can get some screenshots of the preview, and possibly even the STL that tinkercad generated, it would help a lot.
Also, you might want to see if you have better luck with CuraLE 4.13.10, which uses a much improved slicing engine that may handle the text better.
LTAZ6_Nakomis Fire Dept Printer McGee - Copy Acaled from 70 mm to 60.gcode (607.5 KB) I’ve uploaded the gcode I created in Cura from the Tinkercad .stl - dies that help? Someone said it would be easier to create this in Bambu and I also tried in the Prusa Slicer but they didn’t produce better results. I have Cura LE 4.13.4 but I haven’t had an extra second the learn it.
Do either of these help? Thank you for all your help!
The STL would help, the GCODE isn’t as useful.
Judging from the apparent size of it being a keychain, the text is far too small to print.
When printing lettering, the smallest I tend to go with it 7mm in character height when using a .5mm nozzle. For a 30mm wide hat like that, you can probably get away with “NFD” only.
Example:
NFD Helmet.stl (86.1 KB)
What’s confusing is I can print the 3 words needed straight across the bring of the hat with no problem. It looks awkward. But, once I select graphic generator and type in the text I then place the text over the brim. This is probably rationale for learning 3D modeling as it seems once I use curved text I would then need to enlarge the brim to fit that text on the brim. If I print that whole hat as 100mm it prints a huge key chain - you couldn’t fit that in your pocket. The 60 mm is a nice size key-chain.
I supplied the gcode to Wrath. Can you see that, too? The text looks good on the brim in Cura but when it prints it won’t print the words and when enlarged only print dots instead of words.
As he mentioned, your text is likely much too small.
There are limits as to what can be printed and small text simply is not possible unless you start going down in nozzle sized. This poses its own issues though.
What you posted was the visual render, not the sliced preview that shows toolpaths, and the visual render will show every tiny detail, but with how tiny that text was, it was below what can be printed.