Introduction

Abide787 · Post by **Abide787** » Wed Mar 25, 2015 11:21 am

I would like to say hello to everyone. After a TON of research, reading reviews, looking at price points, going to different printer forums I chose the M2. Setup was a breeze and I started printing in far less than an hour (much to my surprise). Since this is my first 3D printer I have a lot to learn.

I'm particularly interested in printing out medallions about the size of a half dollar I design (with Celtic knot work designs) and printing parts for kinetic sculpture ideas. Love reading all the posts here and am enjoying the community. I'm sure I will be asking lots of questions.

Sadly I'm off to work down here in sunny Florida instead of figuring out how to get even greater detail from my prints!

Bratag · Post by **Bratag** » Wed Mar 25, 2015 5:08 pm

Welcome to the forums and to the joys of owning an M2. I've only owned mine for a little over a month and love it. These forums have been a constant source of information and tips so my suggestion is read the tips and tricks section about levelling your bed and calibrating the extrusion multiplier. Both will give you better prints.

ednisley · Post by **ednisley** » Wed Mar 25, 2015 7:13 pm

Abide787 wrote:printing out medallions about the size of a half dollar

Doing work of that scale will require considerable attention to detail. The M2 produces excellent and consistent results, but your designs must work within the printer's physical limitations.

The smallest detail you can successfully print will be 0.8 mm wide: two adjacent threads, each about 0.4 mm wide. Although it's possible to print single-thread features only 0.4 mm wide, convincing the slicer to actually produce that level of detail may require some effort. That's true of any fused-filament 3D printer, not just the M2.

Jereywolf's necklace medallion may give you some idea of the ultimate resolution:
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2080#p10208

Watching those little dots emerge surprised me, but ... there they were!

Bratag · Post by **Bratag** » Wed Mar 25, 2015 7:50 pm

You could of course go for a smaller nozzle. The smaller the nozzle the thinner the wall, the more detail you technically can print. However as a rule the smaller the nozzle the more tweaking you will need to do with bed height tuning and leveling - small details = bigger issues when things are off.

I am currently printing a vorpal blade which has a great deal of detail in the blade and handle. At default settings for a .4mm nozzle I lose quite a lot of it. I am going to give it another shot tonight with my .25 mm nozzle and will post a comparison when/if I get a successful print.

Abide787 · Post by **Abide787** » Wed Mar 25, 2015 8:51 pm

Ednisley, I'm slowly learning the ins and outs, I read your suggestion to set things at 1500 speed settings. I still have quite a bit to learn but it's only been 4 days... (yeah I like learning how to tweek things!) and have several medallions I can work with.

Bratag, I actually went ahead and purchased the .25mm nozzle but I'm going to become very experienced with the .35mm nozzle first. Please do post a comparison, I would love to see it!

Ya'll this is just such a blast.

Jules · Post by **Jules** » Wed Mar 25, 2015 11:14 pm

Hey great, another brand-newbie! I'm a recent first timer too!

If you get a chance you can get a ton of information by reading back through a month or two's worth of forum posts - these guys really know their stuff!

Have fun gettin' jiggy with it! I'm about 3 weeks in, and I'm so hooked!

Bratag · Post by **Bratag** » Thu Mar 26, 2015 6:30 am

Here are the first results - 25mm on top - 40mm on bottom. You can see that a lot more detail was picked out on the 25mm. It also healed a few holes that were in the 40mm owing to the slicer being unable to squeeze an infil into the small area.

If I print again I will probably do more than 4 top/bottom layers. With a very fine nozzle its sometimes hard to get a nice solid surface - especially with the way this slices ... very strange.

I will say - your print bed had better be VERY level for this and I would not recommend this on a lesser built printer. Very small infil = very large shake.

Now I need to print the handle in bronze and we will have a finished weapon.

Abide787 · Post by **Abide787** » Thu Mar 26, 2015 1:20 pm

Bratag, I would say those are amazing results! Is that PLA or ABS? If your using S3D could you shoot me the settings you used? I down loaded a simple medallion from Thingverse yesterday and experimented with sizing the object. I was able to get down to a size less than a dime where the cross on the medallion still showed. I was quite surprised that the detail came out with the .35 nozzle!

Hopefully I'll be able to upload a picture of the "button" today.

Bratag · Post by **Bratag** » Thu Mar 26, 2015 7:00 pm

Silver PLA. ABS and I have a hate hate relationship and I much prefer PET+ for those parts that need higher heat tolerance and strength with flexibility - my extruder etc are all printed in PET+).

I am at work right now but will share my FFF when I get home. Basically I print a little hotter, have the bed a little warmer (I want the small parts to lay down on the first layer and a little extra heat helps.) I print the first layer at 100% instead of my normal 90% and I drop that first layer speed - WAY down. The overall speed I drop by about 25%. Its a longer print but little parts need that slower speed.

jdacal · Post by **jdacal** » Thu Mar 26, 2015 7:29 pm

Nice pictures, huge difference! Thanks for sharing them.

Introduction

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