I am really happy with my new prints in bambu pla matte finish.
And the 0.2mm nozzle worked perfect for PLA and PETG tested.
The parts look perfect.
I am really happy with my new prints in bambu pla matte finish.
And the 0.2mm nozzle worked perfect for PLA and PETG tested.
The parts look perfect.
Thanks for sharing.
Reports I’ve read stated that the overall a 0.2mm nozzle print quality isn’t worth the extra time it takes to print. I’d like to hear your experience on that and also if you have some metrics to share.
Also, did you perhaps print the same part using the standard 0.4mm nozzle so that we can see a side by side? It’s kind of hard to judge if it’s worth the effort.
Those parts really won’t benefit much from a 0.2 mm nozzle. The only reason to use a 0.2 mm nozzle is if you have very small details which your print doesn’t have. You could probably get the same quality with a 0.4 mm nozzle. If you are on about the quality of the layer lines then you can reduce the layer height of the 0.4 mm nozzle and it will have the same effect.
With objects like yours, using a 0.2 mm nozzle only adds printing time or you end up with a weak print if you used a low number of walls or top and bottom surfaces. With a 0.4 mm nozzle, 3 walls will be 1.2 mm thick, but with a 0.2 mm nozzle 3 walls is only 0.6 mm thick.
I will add a 0.4mm nozzle print later but i don’t know if 0.1mm layer height is good for this. I printed a lot of parts before using 0.16mm layer height snd they were ok. But in this case the details were printed better and the wall looks like solid not having layers.
Print time is double yes but it’s worth.
For bigger parts maybe not necessary.
I would also agree with the others who have said the model you printed saw zero benefits from a smaller nozzle. Looking forward to seeing a side by side with the same model printed on a .4
The print time for a 0.2 mm nozzle should be closer to 4x the print time of a 0.4 mm nozzle. If it is only half then you kept the number of walls the same which as I explained above means that your print is weaker.
Halving the nozzle diameter also generally means you have to reduce the layer height, 0.2 mm nozzle with 0.1 mm layers keeps the same proportion as a 0.4 mm nozzle with 0.2 mm layer height. The halving of layer height doubles the print time.
Then you have the walls, if you want the same physical thickness of walls you have to double the number of walls, 3 walls at 0.4 mm is 1.2 mm but 3 walls at 0.2 mm is only 0.6 mm, so to get the same 1.2 mm thick walls you need 6 walls, which again roughly doubles the print time. So combining thinner layers and keeping the same wall thickness it results in a 4x increase in time.
If you don’t increase the number of walls and top or bottom layers then your part will be significantly weaker than when printed with the same settings with a 0.4 mm nozzle. This is the reason why most slicers have the option to set wall thickness and top and bottom thickness as a distance rather than number of walls or layers.
Similarly if you aren’t flow rate limited then a 0.8 mm nozzle with 0.4 mm thick layers will take a quarter of the time of a 0.4 mm nozzle with 0.2 mm layers assuming the wall thickness remains the same.
First of all the benefits are you receive more details and the surface in z direction is really smooth.
The top surface quality is improved too.
I increased the wall loops plus top and bottom layers so part has same strength.
Print time increased from 12 Minutes to 27minutes per part finally it’s not 4 times longer.
I print 20 parts at the same time.
This got me kind of curious. I have a .2 nozzle which I’ve only used a couple of times just to play with. Got me wondering if it might be useful for something functional.
Many of my functional parts are threaded for M3 screws, either by heat set inserts, tapping the threads into the plastic, or capturing an M3 nut. Probably not really all that useful, but I figured there might be a use case to be able to print threads that fine.
For my test, I made a 10mm cube with countersunk M3 threads in Freecad. I then did a section cut so I could see the internal threads when I printed.
I printed using both my .4 nozzle and my .2 nozzle, keeping the standard settings, only changing the infill to adaptive cubic and layer heights of .1 and .05. .4 defaults to 2 wall loops and .2 defaults to 4 wall loops. The results show that the .2 nozzle measurements were more accurate and print times a bit slower.
Tests | X Measurement | Y Measurement | Z Measurement | Print Time |
---|---|---|---|---|
.4 nozzle - .1mm layer height | 9.97mm | 9.94mm | 10.05mm | 14m 38s |
.4 nozzle - .05 layer height | 9.95mm | 9.92mm | 10.02mm | 28m 39s |
.2 nozzle - .1mm layer height | 10mm | 10mm | 10.04mm | 15m 54s |
.2 nozzle - .05 layer height | 9.98mm | 9.97mm | 10.06mm | 30m 43s |
Visually the prints are almost the same in quality. It can be hard to tell which is which at first glance, you have to look for the sharper corners to tell which one is the .2 nozzle print. Here’s a picture of .05 layer height prints, .4 on the left and .2 on the right.
The threads came out surprisingly nice.Trying to thread a screw in was a bit tight, but I expected that since I hadn’t fine tuned anything from the default profile. Visually the threads look identical with the .2 being slight easier to thread in the screw. I tried taking a picture of the threads with my cell phone through a jewelers loupe and they turned out well enough to see layer details. The first picture is the .4 threads at a .05mm layer height and the second picture is of the .2 thread at a .05mm layer height.
So my final thoughts are that it probably isn’t worth using the .2 nozzle, as you can get some pretty serious detail out of the .4. If you are looking for some extreme accuracy, then maybe the .2 is a better option. I’ll save my .2 for whenever I’m printing a model/figure that needs some fine details.
Awesome work my friend and thanks for sharing.
The surface in Z direction being better is due to the lower layer height, not the nozzle size.
The top surface shouldn’t be much better either, especially if you have ironing switched on.
Are you looking at total time or actual print time, if it is total time then you can take roughly 6 minutes off, so 6 minutes vs 21 minutes, almost a 4x increase.
Physically and logically if you have half the layer height and double the wall loops and top or bottom surface then it will take 4x the length of time. That doesn’t take into account print speed though, just about every print will be limited by flow rate, smaller nozzles mean higher speed for the same flow rate so prints with a smaller nozzle are less likely to be flow rate limited, hence the linear print speed can be higher which means it might not be a 4x increase.
Conor,
What counts to me personally is the Total time - as originally quoted by mbruch.
Yet your calculation of Print time is still really helpful to me.
In a nutshell, an 0.2mm has least penalty on small workpieces. David