Printing Miniatures

I have a TAZ 6 and I am looking for the best settings for printing miniatures. I want to get the most detail out of them that I can. They typically are approximately 2" tall.

I have dialed in my filament settings and can print from them, just want more detail out of the prints.

Thanks,

Bernie

Pick up a smaller nozzle setup, then print thinner layers with as much cooling as you can. a 0.2mm nozzle would be ideal, with 0.15mm layer heights if your fillament feed is dialed in enough to handle it. ANY over or underextrusion will be fatal to the model at that resolution though.

Thanks, I will give it a shot.

Trying to find a .2 and all I am seeing is a .3. Any suggestions on where to buy?

You can use the E3DV6 nozzles, This one will work https://www.matterhackers.com/store/printer-accessories/e3d-v6-extra-nozzle-3.00mm-x-25mm-high-resolution

Please note that swapping a nozzle out is not supported and lulzbot states that it will void your extruder warranty if you break it while replacing the nozzle. Also read up on nozzle swap proceedures before you attempt it. It may be best to make a second print head and go that route.

I ended building a second extruder head for my .3 to use for miniatures since I didn’t’ want to screw around with my under warranty stock head. I printed the parts in nGen and got the rest of the parts from either itworks3d.com or the lulzbot official store.

The detail at .3 is pretty darn good, I think at .2 you’ll have more issues with getting supports built up and bridging to make it worthwhile.

What did it cost you to build the 2nd head and can you do a step by step? Or direct me to one?

I didn’t track it too closely, but maybe around $90. I bought multiples of many of the purchased parts for other projects so I’m really just guestimating.

There are a couple minor errors I ran into in the guides (mostly just wrong screw lengths) but you can start with the extruder assembly for the mini (https://ohai.lulzbot.com/project/mini-104-extruder-assembly/mini-v104/), skip to step 11 if you buy a complete hot-end, you’ll only have to attach the wire for the leveling system, and go up to step 25, then you can move over to the TAZ 6 specific stuff.

First is thermal inserts on the mount: https://ohai.lulzbot.com/project/taz6-printed-part-identification-and-preparation-a/taz-6/

Then final extruder assembly: https://ohai.lulzbot.com/project/taz-6-extruder-assembly/taz-6/

It was a lot of fun printing out and putting this all together, and I learned a lot about how this all works. I ended up not being quite as strict on the wire lengths, at first I was worried my thermistor would read a little off but after doing some napkin math on the increase in resistance with wire length it wasn’t worth worrying about.

Also big shout out to itworks3d for having a lot of this stuff pre-pinned, I’m horrible at crimping so it saved me a lot of frustration.

When I get home I’ll post a few pics of figures I’ve printed with my .3

Just realized I had most of the pics on my phone:

Two pics of my constructed print head:

Favorite print to date, to-scale adult silver dragon!

Figures for my party, still working out some z-banding but getting pretty good, the light and being printed in white amplifies the effects a lot. It’s not nearly as visible in person

Thanks :smiley:

This may help for those who want to more about nozzles. It’s Tom from Tom’s 3D

https://youtu.be/tDq1Du9gaWM

Thought I would post my CURA profile I’ve been using here, this is for Polylite PLA with a .3mm nozzle on a stock TAZ 6 print head. Supports are on by default and so far these supports have worked for just about anything i’ve thrown at it, though for some really tricky prints I drop the FR on the printer itself to 75% after the first few layers just to be sure everything comes out well.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/elkazpdf9ihnjvn/PolyLite_PLA_%20Detailed_.03_supports.ini?dl=1