TAZ6 Possible Scaling Issues

Hi all,

Industrial engineering student, new owner of a TAZ6. I am running into what seems to be scaling issues between my modeling software, cura, or the printer. My current toolchain is Fusion 360 export to Cura, then on to the machine. Printing eSUN PETG and Polylite PLA.

I have been trying to tweak the drawings, but it seems there is no scaling issue between Fusion 360 and Cura (I only know how to inspect the outer dimensions). The biggest problem for me is that the thickness error seems to vary with wall thickness. The 1.5mm wall thickness part prints with an actual thickness of 1.56mm, with an outside diameter of 13.73mm(act) vs. 14mm(design) and inside diameter of 10.66mm(act) vs. 11mm(design). The 1mm wall thickness part prints with an actual thickness of 1.16mm with an outer diameter of 12.93mm(act) vs. 13mm(design) and inner diameter of 10.6mm(act) vs. 11mm(design). Is this just normal shrinkage with PETG and PLA or is there a calibration/scaling issue I will have to manually adjust for?

I understand material properties, especially with polymers; if this is a normal effect of printing parts, what has anyone done to adjust for the shrinkage error? Worst case, I am thinking about bulk printing these cups (as a tray) with uniform thickness so that a constant correction factor can be used in Cura to uniformly upscale to accommodate the shrinkage.

Thanks in advance for your input. I don’t want to dive down the rabbit hole on the shrinkage issue before asking the community.

JT

Usually shrink factor is accounted for either in the firmware or in the print profiles for the various materials. PLA tends to shrink much less than ABS for example, but Taz printers were at one point set up to account for ABS shrinkage in the X, Y and Z steps. I’m not sure if that is still the case