Advise on setting to avoid a "bent" tall 3d print

[yetAnotherUsername 4]

Hi,

Would someone have an idea how to print the attached stl so that it would not bend (see attached pictures)? It is a half of a tapered cone (a helix antenna reflector). I try to print it without support because the surface quality is really important (and dual extrusion with PVA is always messy on the S5 I am using). The attached stl is meshed with low "resolution" to reduce the file size for posting here.

Half_cone_3.81_low_res (Meshed).stl

Edited November 13, 2020 by yetAnotherUsername

[gr5 2,003]

Are you printing these in the orientation in the first photo?  I assume so.

 

So one solution is to use PVA and rotate 90 degrees.  I know you say PVA is messy but it works so well despite the mess.  That's probably the best solution.

 

The problem you are having I believe is related to air temperature being different at different altitudes.  So you could turn off the heated bed and use blue tape instead.  It's important that you remove the waxy non stick substance with a little bit of isopropyl alcohol.  Just a few seconds of rubbing with a tissue.  You only have to cover the area where your print will be and hopefully active leveling will figure the rest out.

 

Adding support would also help..  In CAD you could add some towers to the right of the print in the first photo and connect them to the part evern cm or so.  This should keep the part from wobbling.  

 

Also leave the doors open while you print and maybe even add a desk fan.  This is PLA, right?

 

Also I recommend you choose engineering mode profile, and use a thicker layer height 0.2 should be fine - compared to the error in warping of your part, 0.2 layer height is vanishingly small.

 

But by far the easiest is to rotate 90 degrees and us pva support which will keep everything in place (like those towers I mentioned).

[yetAnotherUsername 4]

Thanks for your suggestions gr5.

I've tried it (no bed heating, 0.2 layer height, open doors and an extraction fan in the plexi hood), but unfortunately the results seems to be similar (see attached picture).

The material (both black and white prints) is Innofil3D Pro1 (a tough PLA), but I had similar results previously with Ultimaker's tough PLA.

 

We just bought an external humidity controlling spool box and will use it along with a new (well, an old but never unpacked) roll of Ultimaker PVA and try to print with support. Or... I will just add "fins" on the "bottom side" of the cone to act as a permanent support for horizontal printing...

Edited November 19, 2020 by yetAnotherUsername