On today's episode I'm gonna print really tiny on an Ender 3 and I'll
show you a setting at Cura for getting more detail from a zero point four
nozzle right here on filament friday. filament friday is
brought to you by these patreon supporters. I found this curse of the
Black Pearl coin on Thingiverse and I wanted to print it out. I shrunk it down
to like 50% of the original size which made these thin walls really thin and
the teeth and around the mouth I knew this would probably be a problem. But I
was gonna try it at a 0.4 nozzle 25% infill with my magic 0.2 layer
height and just as I suspected the mouth was missing parts the ring around the
skull was completely gone and in some of the curls around the edges were missing
pieces. Actually it did a better job than I initially thought when I printed. It
did not look bad but those details are missing. Then I remembered there's a
print thin wall setting. Its for models which are horizontally thinner than the
nozzle size. So you just enable that And reslice. And when I did that all the
mouth appeared, the ring around the skull appeared although it looked just a
little bit sketchy, but it's there and then the details on loops actually
looked better too. And here's the print it looks a lot better. Now the print
itself doesn't look any better but the details are there. In fact it prints a
little bit rougher. So then I decided, why don't I just change the line width
to0. The line width is what the slicer tries to produce coming out of the
nozzle. So it should match the nozzle but you can actually go a little bit smaller.
So I went down to a 0.3 and when I sliced it, it printed all that detail but
it didn't look a whole lot different because I still had the thin wall
setting on. So some of the detail was a little bit thicker but not a major
difference. Then I decided to go all the way and adjust it down to 0.2. Now Cura
goes orange here to tell me that this is like a violation. It's it's not what they
recommend. But when I sliced it the wall around the
skeleton was much thicker. Some of the detail looked better so I decided to just
print it and see what happened. Now the print is kind of rough so the flow isn't
right but it did print all that detail just kind of like this slicer said it
would. So then I figured I'd just go all the way and change the nozzle so I'm
gonna try a 0.3 nozzles first.
Within cura from the drop-down menu i chose a 0.3 nozzle and then changed all
the line widths to match and then when I sliced it. It looked like to 0.3 I did
before but now maybe it'll print different with an actual 0.3 nozzle. So
this one I decided to print even though I didn't print it before and this is the
way it looked. Not too bad I wouldn't say this is great because I don't have the
flow settings right for a point 3 nozzle. Then I decided to go 0.2 and the point 2
layer height is now a warning with a point 2 nozzle which is right. But slicer
wise it looked as good as the 0.4 with that thin wall setting. But what about
the actual print quality so I printed it and here's the result. And I can tell you
the flow is terrible. Here it's looking worse so my profile is not working with
the smaller nozzles. I would have to adjust everything again. And then just
for fun I brought in a benchy and I shrunk it down to 25% of its original
size so it's really really small. And since I had the 0.2 nozzle, even though
it's not flowing right I decided just print 1 using that and then I'm gonna
use a 0.4 nozzle and follow it up. Now I thought the slicer would tell me you
know parts of it aren't gonna print but it looked like the whole thing would
print. So then I made a profile with the 0.4 as well. Everything 0.4. Thin-wall and
sliced that. Now this looks a little rougher than the 0.2 but the smoke stack
looks rougher. There's parts of it that just are, I don't know, sketchy. But it's
gonna be fun to compare these two prints. The two and see how they come out.
I honestly was thinking these would look like absolute garbage I was shocked
how good they looked. Now granted these aren't great prints but
look at this compared to a size of an American dime. They're smaller and they
both printed. 0.4 on the left and 0.2 on the right. Neither is a great print but I'm
amazed how good these are. They're smaller or about the same size as the
nozzle that printed them and compared to a regular sized benchy they're like
grandchildren. So this was a lot of fun and I'm really shocked how good it
printed. After trying out that setting I'm
really impressed with how well a 0.4 nozzle prints on an Ender 3. And in
fact I did not think these benchies would come out when I started this. I thought
I'd actually get blobs. To get this much detail from a 0.4 nozzle on Ender 3,
I'm really impressed. In fact you could print your own monopoly pieces
with this and they'd be acceptable. Now I know I didn't show you how to get really
good prints with a 0.2 nozzle but the fact is I tried a lot of different
settings. I even tried other people's profiles and I couldn't get much better
than I was getting with the 0.40 and that thin-wall setting. So if I need better
prints than this I'd probably go with one of those low-cost resin printers. You
can get one of those for about three to four hundred dollars. And it'll print a
lot better than this. But for most jobs where I have to print a little gear a little
knob or something or just some fine detail? The zero point four nozzle with