So, I realized something…. I noticed that the Hyrel head wasn’t performing quite the same way on small details on some of my prints that some of my other printers did. I realized that the biggest reason for this was a difference in nozzle size. My Hyrel head had a .5mm nozzle mounted on it! While I was definitely able to tweak settings to remove the layer gaps and underextrusion (turns out I had some further parameters to specify on my M721 and M722 instructions!), a support distance from the part of .1mm was too close (the support stuck to the part). Also, some of the finer details didn’t have a nice surface finish and looked rather coarse. I realized that my other printers had a .4mm nozzle instead of a .5, so I’m working to change that!
Had some problems with the .35mm nozzle that Hyrel has though: it clogged pretty fast! I’m not sure whether I was trying to extrude too much plastic for a given pulse of the stepper motor or not, but my plan is to unclog it and try again! Stay tuned. I’m hoping that this will make my prints look a lot nicer!
John (aka The Mad Printer)
The Mad Printer 