Continuing on from the question regarding minimum wall thickness that can be successfully 3D Printed
As you can see both test pieces printed perfectly. I was careful with the removal of the support material during both the water jet cleaning and when finishing off the cleaning with the small brush. I guess the main reason for having to be careful with the thinner wall sections (0.3mm to 0.6mm) was due to the fact that the gap that exists between walls were only 5mm, so sometimes when accessing the inner side walls with the brush I would have to slightly push the other wall away. If this had been a container or the walls were more exposed, then I don’t think I would have needed to exercise as much caution. All in all, the demonstration proved that even the 0.3mm wall sections were still flexible and strong enough so that they did not break.
This was the case for both the plaque that had the walls at 90 degrees to the base and the test plaque that had the walls at an angle of 3 degrees from vertical.
Now for the numbers. Let us see exactly what dimensions we managed to achieve on each set of plaques.
Wall Thickness Actual Thickness Actual Thickness
as per CAD for 90° to the base for 87° to the base
0.30mm 0.45mm 0.43mm
0.40mm 0.48mm 0.48mm
0.50mm 0.54mm 0.55mm
0.60mm 0.56mm 0.55mm
0.70mm 0.66mm 0.67mm
0.80mm 0.76mm 0.77mm
0.90mm 0.85mm 0.86mm
1.00mm 0.98mm 0.98mm
I think it is fair to say that the overall accuracy is pretty good, with the best accuracies coming in the range of wall thicknesses above 0.5mm. But still wall thickness of 0.3mm and 0.4mm is possible.
Obviously, the overall size of the wall will play a part on how stable the whole structure is. Our experiment here at NeraTek was only conducted on walls having a height of 10mm.
If you are designing and intending to produce a part with a wall height greater than 10mm, it might be worthwhile having a test piece produced to see how it will (a) 3D Print and (b) how structurally sound it is, you can always 3DPrint a local section of your model to achieve this.
I hope you find this information helpful. Please visit our web page www.neratek.com and keep an eye out for our next Design / 3D print blog, we will be looking at diameter holes and posts in our next design tips for 3D Printing of parts.
Please feel free to contact me at +353 89 704 4508 or by e-mail des@neratek.com
