Too high res for FDM?

[jorwex]

A coworker if mine asked for an Eiffel Tower print and I started looking on Thingyverse. There are a bunch on there, many not suited for FDM printers. I've only clicked "Print" 4 or 5 times I. Pronterface and have no idea what I'm doing with the slicer -- just barely starting to learn how to anticipate what is going to work and not work. (Last night slic3r barfed while generating gcode, but I didn't know the file was incomplete until the print was over. I don't think I'll make that mistake anymore). 

Anyway, my question: If not for the comments and photos of people's SL printers on the Thingyverse pages, how would a newb such as myself be able to identify that a given model is too intricate for my FDM printer? 

Thanks again everyone 

--
Jordan W

[Elliot]

That's an interesting question. It would depend on a number of things, I think:

* layer resolution that you're printing
* overhang angles
* bridging distances
* nozzle size

I printed a fairly high-resolution grooved pulley (for doing a
filament pulley system) with ~0.6mm grooves with my 0.5mm nozzle, but
the only way that it was possible was by printing it with .1mm layers.
Anything higher than that and it turned out as a blob of plastic due
to overhangs and lack of resolution. So far, I've found that the
lower the layer height, the steeper the angle of overhang you can do.
Keep in mind that the lower you go in layer height, the better tuned
your e-steps need to be.

As a side note, it helps to preview the gcode generated. You can
preview the gcode in a number of ways:

* using cura, you can view the layers
* using pronterface, load the gcode and view the layers
* using http://gcode.ws load the gcode and view the layers

As another side note, Cura has an interesting view that can warn you
about overhangs that are too steep. I think you an even tell it what
you think is too steep.

Hopefully that was helpful.

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[jorwex]

That was helpful. I was looking at Pronterface's gcode preview after my print ended early when I realized what went wrong. 

So I need to acquire the skill of eyeballing a model and deciding if its features are too complicated. I probably just need to try things and fail. 

Thanks again Elliot. 

--
Jordan W