Impressive results! Thanks

Impressive results!

Thanks for posting these alongside with the detailed explanations.

You printed these flat on the print-bed right? Do you notice a significant difference with the "ironing" feature on/off?

This is PLA right? If yes, then surface quality for a flat-printed item looks impressive (due to ironing I presume).

I am tempted to install the 0.25 nozzle on mine, and even more, to get a prusa mini and get the 0.25 on it and keep my MK3S with the stock 0.4 nozzle for the larger pieces.

Was the wall printed flat

Was the wall printed flat (Horizontal) on the bed or Standing (vertical)? 

   if so have you tried to print one in each of those planes?  Unlike a Resin 3D printer,  Speed should not be based on the Z axis of the print only.   Curiosity on my part.

What model printer etc?  I see Prusa - Prusa MK3S

What do you use to glue your model?  What works best for life/forever bond?

Layer height?  Did you square it with a matching height of .25?

 I print at .04mm Layer height (Z axis) to match my pixel size of 47.25um or .04725mm not fully square, but it is close and works best with the resin I use at this time.  Good all round speed and quality.

Not sure how you think when printing with PLA, but working with 3D Resin is like building with Legos and each pixel square/block is 1 post Lego Brick if you think of your build plate as the big green Lego mat on build off that you have a better understanding of how your prints are built.

Side note,  this is the same way I would teach people how transistors are built on your base silicone wafers at intel with the green lego mat and lego bricks to build up your transistor.  Building Computer Chips is the same as building on a Lego mat it is basically done in the Z axis.  Much in the same way a 3D printer works.

Diffusion, Litho, Etch, Thin Film, Diffusion, Litho, Etch, Thin Film, but that is the basics with a few minor/major steps in the middle.

I have also become a big fan of the 0.25mm nozzle

Just downloaded 2.3.0 to give ironing a try.   There is a great video that describes how the feature works.  Thanks for posting this.   

Regards,

Jerry

Details

Thanks all, for the comments. For clarifications:

I printed these flat on the build plate, using a smooth-steel PEI sheet on my Prusa MK3S, using PLA. When designing any part, I have a set build orientation in mind, which oftentimes means that it is unable to be built in any other way. In this case, the gas meter would be hanging off into the void if I tried to print the wall vertically. I really just wanted to try the ironing feature, which wouldn't be possible if I printed this vertically.

There is a significant change of quality when printing with ironing on vs. off. Having it off isn't bad by any stretch of the imagination, but there are very noticeable printer lines present. This is part of the reason I haven't really wanted to print any flat surfaces for HO scale, as the horizontal lines all but ruin the finish of the part. In times where I have needed a flat surface, I preferred to print the walls vertically, as the 0.05 mm layer lines gave a decent-enough finish.

With the advent of ironing, I'm now starting to update the build orientation of building materials:

• Flat surfaces, (flat steel sheets): print horizontally--single wall laid down on the build plate. Print the walls separately, glue together with clear Gorilla Glue.
• Horizontal Siding (Vinyl or Wood): print vertically with fine layer heights, as the small angles developed make ironing useless. Print each floor of a building as one singular print.
• Brick/stone: Print horizontally, singular walls at a time. Do not iron, it welds the bricks together, hiding the mortar.
• Corrugated sheets (galvanized grain bins): print vertically, like with siding. Ironing is useless, and the corrugation looks better at a finer layer height (0.05 mm) than with a finer tip (0.25 mm).
• Stud walls (unfinished house): Print horizontally, no ironing, fine tip (0.25 mm) only. Build singular walls at a time, glue together.

These aren't any actual rules, just rules of thumb that I've found works best on building structures on an FDM printer.

Better prints

Juxen,

Sure looks like they have improved on PLA printing. Those prints look excellent.

My decision on going with a resin printer is that I can print the gas meter in better detail and build the wall from plastic or wood. I do see where modelers would be interested in printing the whole wall or building in a one print instead using individual items to make the building. There are many paths one can take to get to the end result.

By the looks of your prints it would seem possible now to use a PLA printer to make a master pattern to use in making an RTV mold to cast several items fast, such as block or brick walls. I'm of the opinion that this is one of the advantages of using either a resin printer or PLA printer.

Bernd

Bernd

SLA/resin printing is infinitely better than PLA in small details, but I also want the ability to create (I won't demean the term "scratchbuilding" by pressing Start on the printer) custom buildings, cheaply and quickly.

For instance, this version of my grandfather's boyhood home (redundant now, but forgot to grab a picture of the new version) took about 6-8 hours to measure in real life, about 4-8 hours to design in Fusion 360, but only 16 hours to print, and cost about $1.50. There was something that I wanted to change on it, so I made a new version.

If I were to create molds for future use, I'd prefer to use a resin printer; the fine detail will pay out better on a mold. Some good, large curves can be made on an FDM printer after filling and sanding.

WOW

That is one nice print. I can see where that is a big plus. I'm really impressed.

Bernd

Ironing...

I did try ironing Juxen and the results are VERY promising! So thanks for the suggestion.

Quick question, how do you get around extruder heat problems/skipping when ironing large surfaces? Do you adjust the ironing settings?

Absolutely...

...easily a noticeably visible improvement.

Consumer grade 3D printing is getting to the "almost like injection styrene" point.

Andre

What a fantastic result!

What a fantastic result! Juxen, your work is getting me excited about getting a 3D printer.

Thanks!

Yannis, what sort of filament are you running? The Hatchbox filaments and Prusa printers typically don't need to be adjusted, and simply work from the word "go" on ironing. I've used Push Plastic, though, and that requires several speed changes, which basically means its own material profile in PrusaSlicer. I've been noticing different qualities from different filament makers, so I try to stick with one or the other for certain settings (Hatchbox is a good all-rounder for detail, Push Plastic is good for 0.4 mm nozzles and outdoor prints, etc.).

Filament....

Hi Juxen, first of all thanks for the reply!

I am using Prusament PLA. I am now experimenting with different settings for the ironing feature (PrusaSlicer 2.3.0), with the stock 0.4mm nozzle. Ambient temp is around 24C. I will also try the new monotonic top layer infill on it's own to see how things go. I will look into the filament you mentioned and see about local availability.

Are you using stock ironing settings? I guess the 0.4mm example you posted is with ironing "on" right?

Yeah

I'm using the stock ironing settings, and have used ironing on both 0.4 and 0.25 nozzles.

My test iron tile

I whipped up simple a test tile in Fusion 360 and sliced it in Cura 4.8.0. After the 13th try, and a total recalibration of the machine, this is the best my Ender 3 v2 can come up with:

Notice the diagonal separating the top left and the bottom right hand side? The top left is ironed smooth as silk while the printer makes its final pass across. The bottom right hand side? Still shows some minor bumpy lines.

The change in ironing result coincides with the change in direction in which the machine performs the ironing step. It starts in the corner A then follows B to F, with the arrows showing the direction of motion filling the tile, which is perpendicular to the ironing 'strokes' motion.

As I said earlier, I totally recalibrated the machine, tightened belts, ensured there was no slop anywhere, yet it still this problem. I'm going to change the orientation of the cube and see if that is going to make the problem follow the change in direction or not. I'm theorizing it will not follow. My hunch is that the tip of my nozzle isn't 100% flat anymore so in the direction of D through F some of the  PLA leaks from under the nozzle. The bottom right hand side of the nozzle is likely ever so slightly further from the print than the top left hand side of the nozzle causing the ripples. I can't think of any other reasons. Takers on other theories?

Settings used:

Hatchbox - PLA
Extrusion Temp = 200C
Bed Heat = 55C
Standard quality of 0.2mm layer height
Enable Iron = Yes
Iron Only Top Layer = Yes
Ironing Pattern = ZigZag
Ironing Line Sacing = 0.1mm
Ironing Flow = 5%
Ironing Speed = 16.6667mm/s
Ironing Acceleration = 500mm/s²

Slicer

I think PrusaSlicer has an option now to allow the top layer to go in only one direction, as well as iron. Maybe two other tests might be beneficial here: One without the Y at all (flat top), and one with the Y raised (maybe 0.25 mm above the surrounding area)?

Orientation Changes and a Flat Tile

I did a 90 degree rotated and a 180 degree rotated version of the "Y" test tile. I also did create a flat tile. I doubt the raised Y test tile would react differently than the existing Y test tiles, so I haven't done that one (yet).

The results:

• top left tile is the original 13th try (A)
• top right tile is 90 degree rotated (B)
• bottom left tile is 180 degree rotated (C)
• bottom right tile is the flat tile (D)

Tile B had the ironing fill direction as a "single pass" from bottom right to top left. It left tiny ripples.
Tile C had the ironing fill direction as two passes: first bottom right towards the top left and halfway moved to the top left corner and started ironing to the bottom right. First part had ripples, second part was smooth.
Tile D had the ironing fill direction as a "single pass" from top left to bottom right and left a complete smooth surface.

Looking at the amount of "flash" on the flat tile, I might need to see if the ironing flow needs to be reduced even more. The 3 new tiles were already printed with a 4% flow versus a 5% flow of the original 13th tile.

PS: This is all printed with the stock 0.4mm Ender3 MK8 nozzle.

PPS: Juxen, if you want me to move this to it's own thread, please let me know. I didn't intend to hijack your thread about smaller nozzles giving finer details with my ironing test issues.

Yaron

No, it's not a problem at all!

I can definitely tell the improvement on B and D. C's looking pretty rough there. If it does help, I'm using Prusa Slicer, which is possibly why it's going differently for me; I know that Cura came out with ironing long before Prusa did, but Prusa created theirs to match their printers.

I agree as well, I think your flow rate may be a little excessive; you've got kind of like an inverse elephant's foot going on. Is there a way on Cura to possibly raise your nozzle slightly (0.01 mm or so?) and to reduce the flowrate?

Further Tests

So some very helpful fellow recently released a hopper on  Thingiverse, which looks to be based off of an Ortner 5-bay hopper. The "kit" is basically like an old shake-the-box kit, and basically comes as complete, sans weights, wheels, and couplers.

I downloaded the STL, and put it onto my slicer. Stats can be found below, but a few things to point out: 1) Cost is about $0.97 in filament and 2) It takes about 40 hours per car, bringing the basic cost to about $1.37 per car, including electricity.

As an aside, I prefer to put a raft on the smaller-nozzle prints. Helps them adhere better to the bed.

I printed one out last week, and I primed some of the car sides with Krylon. No sanding or filing, these are the pictures that resulted:

Not bad quality for a $1.50 freight car. With paint, decals, couplers, wheels, weights, and loads, I imagine you could have a finished cost of $6-$7 per car. It's definitely a doable way of creating a dimensionally-accurate unit train.

Next test

Juxen, I can change the flow rate easily in Cura as an ironing parameter. The Z axis change I can accomplish in gcode post processing. In fact I have to postprocess the gcode file by adding a G92 Exxx.xxxx command, where the xxx.xxxx is the new filament extrusion offset skipping 5mm ahead or I end up with a big blob at the start of the ironing run.

I'll make a few new test runs tomorrow based on the suggestions and report back.

Hopper car: now that looks good. Did you use your 0.25mm nozzle for that?

Yaron

1) Ah, okay. Sounds good.

2) Yeah, that was 0.25 mm, 0.05 mm layer height. Trying to see (with ironing) about the upper limit of how good a flat surface like this can look on an FDM.

Reading with interest!

Lots of good info Juxen and Yaron here.

I am wondering if anyone experiences any under-extrusion issues post ironing. As I said, i tried a couple of brands of PLA and on large-ish flat pieces i am getting extruder clicking (ie blockage due to heat creep issues post ironing). Increasing the ironing flow rate did not improve things for me as far as i can tell. MK3S stock printer.

Juxen, have you tried ironing with 0.15 to 0.2 layer heights? This is where i get the clicking.

Heat creep after ironing

I haven't ironed anything larger than these tiles yet, so haven't had to deal with heat creep. But from a theoretical point of view my approach would be to play with the extruder temperature during ironing first: go as low as your filament allows.

My second option would be to add extruder temperature gcode at strategic places during ironing to temporarily reduce the temperature below what your filament can handle, run a few ironing lines and then bring the extruder temperature back up to minimum. Basically perform "poor man PWM" on the extruder heating block to help lower the temp more than the fan can.

A third option is to add gcode that moves the nozzle to an X-Y position after ironing where you could dump some filament quickly under low temperature before returning to the normal X-Y location and continue extruding hoping to have brought the block temperature down.

Interesting results

Hi,

first of all, thank you for the side-by-side comparison. The difference between nozzle sizes is unexpected, but promising

While my Monoprice Mini Delta is definitely on the lower end of the market and is by today's standards a very old model, I tend to get results that are in between your 0.40 and 0.25mm results. With the 0.4mm nozzle. From my interpretation of the photos. I'll attribute that to the fact that Deltas are somewhat different

Ironing - I only tried that once, on a laid-down wall (like you). The brick structure came out great, in fact it was just a bit too smooth. It did look better for the face of the steel wall for the harbor (see bottom right behind the boat). 

For both the deck of the boat and the top of the container, I decided that it looks better with some "structure". Please take my word that it looks better in person than on the camera. By the way, this is 1:160 and the slicer (Cura) is set to "fast" or "normal", not to "fine".

Obviously the crane is not painted, however it can grab and release the container. It can also move the container around, controlled by the sewing thread from behind. So much for the print quality I get

As for fine details, some of them are at the limit of what I have so far managed to print. I guess I'd do well with one printer with a 0.4 nozzle for structures and rough work and a second one with a .2 nozzle for the details. Or a resin printer for the details. But then I'm happy with having one printer that works nicely.

The artifacts on the "Y" test tiles are not pretty. On my printer, I tend to have some issues when one of the belts is not tight enough. But as you have a XYZ printer, I cannot even guess.

Have fun and stay healthy

Yannis

Yannis: I haven't tried ironing above 0.05 mm and 0.10 mm layer heights. I'd imagine that Prusa Slicer would compensate for that, but possibly not. I know that version 2.3.0 allows for you to manipulate layer heights at certain layers; maybe setting the top layers to 0.05 or 0.10 mm might help, or dialing down the feed rate of your filament. There's a company that I've been using (Push Plastic) that has had issues on my mostly stock MK3S. For the most part, following their advice, I reduced the feed rate to 3200 mm/min, retraction to 1.5 mm, and kept a hotend of 215° C throughout the print, which seems to have solved most of the clogging issues. It makes most prints take a bit longer, but the jams and clogs have about finished.