Part 2.2

Continuation of Experimentation

After spending a lot of time experimenting with different print settings I settled on a nozzle size of 0.8mm, for the next steps of experimentation. I did this to increase the print time, but still to retain detail which I lost when using a 1mm nozzle. Depending on the type point size required I would adjust the nozzle size, for example, with type below 120pt or 30mm I would use 0.4mm, and with type over 480pt or 120mm, I would recommend a 1mm nozzle. Now having a firmer grasp on the print settings I continued in trying to achieve a printable piece of movable type.

Comments

3D Print

Details of Print

Result

3. I was very happy with the next tests, they felt solid and the print time was massively shorter, cutting down the print time to a 1/4 of the last test and an incredible 1/20 of the first test, that alone is a huge improvement. What I was not so happy with was the inconsistencies on the last layer of the print, it was having an impact on how the letterpress print came out. These inconsistencies are hard to deal with in the print settings, so I started to use a sander to remove material on the top layer. This involves post-processing of the type which I wanted to avoid. This I will go into further after this section.

Print time: 31 mins
Weight: 22g
Nozzle: 0.8mm
Print Height: 5mm
Layers: 5

4. I started to get very consistent prints when I found the sweet spots of the print settings. The most important settings were the line width and height and crucially the speed of the print. I found that with a 0.8mm nozzle, the perfect setting was 1mm in width and 0.6mm in height. What I found with the speed was that the slower the better, I kept having a lot of bad prints with bad layers. When I adjusted the speed to 40-50mms rather than 80mms. The other finding I found which made a huge difference was ‘ironing’, this is a function that at the end of the print drags the hot nozzle across the print, essentially ironing out any inconsistencies on the last layer.

Print time: 25 mins
Weight: 20g
Nozzle: 0.8mm
Print Height: 5mm
Layers: 5