On a Tweet today it was mentioned that layer height below 0.2mm affects or crushes the shine of glitter filaments on vertical surfaces. It makes sense to me as the printer will spread the filament thin like a knife with peanut butter.  But how does it actually affect the print? How does it affect something like a clear filament? To find out I designed a layer tower. The layer tower essentially starts at a low 0.1mm layer height, and increases 0.05mm every 8 mm as it climbs. I decided to get a little more out of the tower and added different thicknesses to the tower too. The thicknesses help you see if layer height affects transparency.

For the first round of testing, I used Fillamentum Vertigo Galaxy Black, Proto-Pasta Galactic Empire Purple, and 3D Solutech Natural Clear.

Decide for yourself with the pictures below. For the question about glitter I believe there is little difference. If I hold the tower at a specific angle *maybe* I can see a reduction of glitter in the 0.10mm layer height. However I am hard pressed to see any issue at 0.15mm and higher. For the transparency, the larger layer heights appear more transparent which makes sense. Strangely I have a print quality reduction at 0.2mm layers which I will need to explore another day.

 

From bottom to top the layer heights are 0.10mm, 0.15mm, 0.20mm, 0.25mm. From left to right the thickness is 5 lines, 1 line, 3 lines. The gaps in the print is based on the path the slicer selected and printer limitations. The model has no gaps.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.