51 minutes ago, Brulti said:when I print files found online from Thingiverse and such
My experience is that there are a lot of none working files on Thingiverse and I gave up to print such files if not really needed. Also, files with a lot of makes don't fit every time. I don't know why people are able to print such files successfully, but I tried some on all my 3 printers and got similar none working results.
So normally I design my on models and then I do it like yellowshark and give them a tolerance about 300 microns. For screws, I use the thread function in Fusion360 which works great and self-designed screws and holes work perfectly.
I often thought that there must be something wrong with my printers, but there is everything ok, it is just the model which has problems and there are a lot of them on such platforms.
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yellowshark 153
I will assume there is nothing really wrong with your printer and that is has decent dimensional accuracy, i.e. a maximum tolerance of 100 microns.
So firstly, your screw/bolts and the screw holes in the lid and box. These are circles; circles never print accurately; 3D printers do not prints circles they print straight lines; so a circle is made up of very many small straight lines and it is the method used to print them that causes the dimensional error. Now if you have two holes, a screw and a screw hole you might expect them to have the same error and therefore fit, but as you see this is not always the case; what hidden law of physics is acting there I have no idea. Mine are normally smaller and if I am printing a hole for a steel bolt to go through I will normally start with the diameter of the hole modelled as bolt diameter + 300 microns. But this will not always work first time so yes it is somewhat suck and see but with some experience you can get it spot on pretty quickly.
The box/lid alignment really should not be a problem; at the worst a quick file on a print defect in the wrong place should do the job. If the designer has a) designed with wall widths of 400 microns and b) left a100-200 micron (gap between the two mating surfaces) and c) you are doing nothing silly with your nozzle width and wall width, then it should fit.
In my experience which is predominantly PLA based, PLA is fine
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Brulti 177
You're pointing out something that I knew but forgot and should have checked: whether the designer did leave a bit of a gap between screw and hole, or lid and box. I'll give a look at some of the stl I downloaded online to check this.
Also, lid/box alignment is sometimes important and annoying when it doesn't match. I downloaded and printed a point counter for a game, better than writing and erasing on a sheet of paper or a dry erase board, and the misalignment is big enough that the arrows on both sides of the number wheels are not aligned when all the pieces of the counter are properly tightened. It makes reading the score a bit difficult since you don't read the same number depending on which arrow you're looking at... 🤔
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