I’m struggling with making small fidgets for my nephew. I’ve dried the filament. Silk is kind of brittle. Will it hold up?
How small are we talking about? A few mm? Id so try using a .2mm nozzle.
Silk and matte are less strong than regular PLA.
That being said, fidgets should be fine as long as the design gives it some meat.
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So I am your basic plug and play kind of guy. I just want to get to the end result. 3D printing is not that kind of thing. That being said, and be sure to call me out on it, but good results are in the details, the very thing I don’t care about. But I’m learning. So I took a model of a fidget and wanted to make it bigger. I used the scale tab. I am quite new to this but am I correct in assuming NOT everything can be enlarged this way? Failure after failure until I went back to the original. That looks really good. I did end up drying the silk that was fresh out of the packaging and that helped.
One thing I have noticed on this community is everyone wants success. Giving advice. Taking criticism. Just very helpful. Even to the clueless, such as myself.
A lot of “flexi” type fidgets rely on specifics tolerances to make them printable. Things like those internal chain links being having a clearance on top of 0.20 - 0.40, so that the bottom surface acts like a support, without having to use a support. The initial “snap it apart to get it started” thing. When you scale a thing up, those clearances also multiply, and now maybe that air gap is too big and unprintable.
If you want more specific advice we’d need to see the model / link / 3mf
Silk and matte are not as tough as basic PLA but you can adjust setting to help. For fidgit spinners you should be fine with standard BL settings. I’ve made various toy like and functional prints with BL Silk PLA and all are fine.
Silk can take on moisture sooner than standard pla but drying it solves that.
Do you have a photo of the toy you want to make? That would be help though you should be fine regardless.
For impact resistance - resistance to a short, sharp strike - and easy printing, get a “tough” PLA. Most PLA+ qualifies, as does Bambu Basic. However, i recently experimented with Bambu PLA Tough+ and found it to have very high impact resistance.
PETG has good flexibility, but it’s a little soft for joints. It can wear down fast. But it would great for things that are supposed to bend slightly.