nozzle

[Ovdl]

What is the smallest nozzle for the mk8 extruder??
And is it possible that i make a 0.1/0.15 mm nozzle myself for my printer.
I mean, i can make one,but will it extrude pla??
To print smaller and more detail on prints?

thanks for answer!
regards,
Otto

[Mark]

0.3mm is the smallest we have. And don't know 0.1-0.15mm one is easy to clog or not.

[hodgepodgerama2]

The smallest practical extruder nozzles are about .2mm and you can buy those on eBay if you want. But the smaller the nozzle, the slower you have to go to avoid backpressure and filament stripping or stepper skipping.

Remember, the size of the nozzle is not necessarily what determines how fine the detail is. It is generally the size of the horizontal and vertical steps of the printer. You can, with a really, well tuned printer, generate a .1mm Z-step (layer) that should provide excellent detail with a .3mm nozzle. A .3mm nozzle in that case would be laying down a .1mm thick strip that is .4-.6 mm wide, which you need for adhesion. The X and Y axis are also capable of stepping in .1mm increments if really well calibrated. Unfortunately, in practice, very few printers are capable of that kind of accuracy and those that can are expensive commercial units for now.

Typically, the width of a strip is about 150%-220% of the nozzles diameter. This is where the diameter comes in to play. A .1mm nozzle would only produce a .2mm strip. Not only would that be a challenge layer-adherence-wise, but to make something thick enough to avoid puting your thumb through accidentally, you would need to put down several walls. Having to put down several walls kind of defeats the purpose of having a small nozzle, doesn't it?

I'll just give once sentence to the idea that any filament impurities are more likely to jam smaller heads than larger ones so you can count of having more jams.

And lastly, there's back pressure. A .5mm nozzle can support more than twice the filament flow rate of a .4mm nozzle, which can support more than twice the flow rate of a .3mm nozzle, which can support twice the flow rate of a .2mm nozzle, etc. So if you do the math....a .1 mm nozzle would operate at...what...about 8-10 mm/minute or less (I think) without stripping something and the same "slow down for better quality" rules would apply so cut that in half: 5mm or less of filament a minute, at least for outer walls. 1000 mm of filament isn't a lot. But a tiny 1000 mm-of-filament item would take 3 hours to complete.

OK, one last thought. That last paragraph was a bit of a WAG on my part. I could be way off. Try this. Just tell your slicer you are using a .1mm nozzle and have it calculate out some common objects. Go to thingiverse and get Beethoven's bust, for example, or use something you are currently having a granularity issue with. If it can handle the small nozzle, it will take forever to calculate the slice but it should estimate for you how long the job will take. If you think you have the patience for the answer provided, go buy a couple of .2mm nozzles on eBay and try them.

I hope that was helpful.

Thanks,

Scott
Hodgepodgerama

[Ovdl]

Hello,

after much experiments i keep to the 0.3mm nozzle!!
It produces sufficient details on my prints.
And as mentioned above,the speed drops to much when gonig smaller on nozzle.

thanks!!