ChrisERAU wrote:I ended up with an extrusion multiplier of 0.82. Is that normal?
It is what it is. If you've measured the filament diameter accurately, then the Extrusion Multiplier is the Fudge Factor required to make the actual plastic match the slicer's plans.
The square looked the same as the 0.44 mm thick one
Visually, they're identical, but you've just eliminated 10% of spurious plastic that would overstuff your parts: the slicer assumes that a pair of lines 0.40 mm apart will fit exactly together, with no extra plastic squeezing out around the nozzle. For extremely small parts, there's nowhere to hide the excess.
The wall height for that single square looks good. Now run off a full set to verify the overall platform alignment.
It was fine until 4 mm up
Printing tiny things, particularly tall tiny things with thin layers, in PLA can be a challenge, because it has such a low melting point. In some cases, printing a big sacrificial block of the same height off to one side may help; a clustered set of props may not provide enough cooling time away from the nozzle.
For example: print one prop with 0.25 mm layers and a minimum 15 seconds per layer.
Key word here is "tried"
The secret is to keep track of what happens and be methodical about solutions: more time, more air, more motion, whatever. Don't vary things wildly, because small changes (like 10% too much plastic) will have large effects.
for bigger models with thin pointy tips on top, there needs to be a better solution.
And there is.
Several recent threads discussed Slic3r's modifier meshes and the equivalent S3D feature that let you apply different slicing parameters to different parts of the model. One example:
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=3017
