Gaps in Thin Walls

[jesspaul 0]

I'm very new to 3D printing, so I'm hoping someone can help me with my problem, or at least give me an idea of what to work on to fix my issue!

 

I'm trying to print what is essentially a cookie cutter, but for use with polymer clay. I want the cutter to be very thin so it will give me a clean and precise cut on the clay. 

 

I tried printing this bat shaped cutter which has 0.2mm thick walls at the top. You can see in the screenshots below in some areas there are gaps in the walls. 

 

I designed the shape in Fusion 360, sliced in Cura, and printed with my Ender 3 Pro. I'm using a 0.2mm nozzle. I printed at 220 degrees, then tried again at 230 degrees, but the prints look identical with gaps in the same places. I also printed a seashell shaped cutter with 0.2mm wall thickness and had the same issue with gaps on some rounded edges.

 

I don't see any gaps or issues in the slicer.

 

 

Is it possible to achieve solid walls at 0.2mm thickness? If so, what settings should I try to change next? I was thinking maybe print speed, but there are so many settings, I wasn't sure what to change or by what increment. 

bat rev2.stl

[geert_2 556]

Have you made the wall thickness an exact multiple of the nozzle diameter? Then export to STL using a fine-setting, so the segments are not too long and don't cut corners too much. But even then there will be places where total thickness is slightly more and where it is slightly less than in your design, due to the straigth lines of the segments. Not sure how the slicer will handle this. And then print rather slow (and cool to prevent overheating the filament in the nozzle), so there is no underextrusion. Before printing the whole model, try cutting out the most critical part and try to optimise that, so you don't waste too much material and time.