Missing elements in print

I am looking for advice. I am new to printing in 3D. Most of my development involves OpenSCAD and Cura on the Lulzbot Mini.

While I am generally having good results, I am encountering a strange issue. I am attempting to make a medallion from a logo. The logo was exported from Inkscape. The text was added in OpenSCAD.

I have fixed some geometry issues on the page edge elements so that OpenSCAD successfully compiles and exports successfully. Cura (21.03) imports and displays all elements fine. The print fails.

Thanks.

(Image screen capture from OpenSCAD)


(Image screen capture from Cura)

(Image photo of printed medallion)

Your details are too small for the 0.5mm nozzle. In cura, change the view mode to “layers” and move through the slices. You’ll notice all the stuff missing in the print won’t show up in the sliced version.

You have two options:

  1. Scale the part bigger so the details are bigger, or in cad make the small details bigger leaving the medallion the same size.

or

  1. Buy and install a smaller diameter nozzle.

You can see the nozzle change fixing the issue by changing the nozzle diameter in cura from 0.5 to, say, 0.2. Then go back to the layer view and all your details should be there…assuming they’re bigger than 0.2mm wide.

-Jim

Jim is right.

Jim,

Thank you for your clear explanation.

I’m going to try making the details thicker (x/y) to solve the detail issue. A nozzle solution might be a future thing to pursue. I think I’m too new to 3D printing to mess with the parts of my two-month-old Mini.

Thanks,
–Algot

Hi

I’m going to try making the details thicker (x/y) to solve the detail issue.

When you are making the details x/y thicker, pay particular to letters and such so that at their thinnest part
are at your nozzle diameter. Whenever I do a project involving !involving an existing font, the font is
a little bit too fancy and when scaled, they need to be scaled larger than a person would think.
I end up modifying the font I use quite extensively.
When doing small raised letters etc. it can be quite tedius.
Good luck with your endevour, don’t give up on it. When you get it right, it will make you smile!

One other option is instead of having the letter protrude outwards, you can have them embossed INWARD into the medal. The nozzle is then building up plastic around the letters as opposed to printing the thin letters themselves. It may not work perfectly, but it would probably work better.

Hope this helps! Good luck!