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I recently leveled my bed on my Monoprice Select Mini v2 and tried printing this object with family:

Pentagonal Hexacontahedron Bracelet by mathgrrl - Thingiverse

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:288182

The symptoms were as follows:

  • the print footings did not stick to the bed
  • during the print some of the footings looked misshapen
  • Eventually everything lost cohesion and looked like a mess of silly string
  • the insulating tape on the heating block started to come off

Immediately after the insulating tape came off we aborted the print.

Here are the steps we followed to convert, slice and print the object.

  • We loaded the STL file into Ultimaker Cura 4.8.0, using a preset in the wizard for the Monoprice Select Mini v2
  • We opened the STL for the small bracelet, chose ‘Slice’, and copied the resulting .gcode to a microSD.
  • We popped the SD into the printer, preheated the nozzle and extruded a small amount of PLA (we used the PLA for a demo print of a cat hours earlier and it worked great for the demo)
  • We went to print and chose the .gcode for the small bracelet and let it start to operate.
  • The heating settings for the bracelet .gcode from Cura were a bit different different than those used for the demo cat .gcode that came with the machine. Both had the nozzle heated to 190 °C. The bed heating setting for the bracelet was 5 degrees hotter than the cat at 65 °C.

Any tips are appreciated. I don’t know what happened or if it possible to print this object successfully with the Monoprice Select Mini v2.

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    $\begingroup$ That print is very delicate and tricky. I suggest to use: Brim & support. But the tape is a machine-manner, not one of the print $\endgroup$
    – Trish
    Commented Nov 29, 2020 at 22:58
  • $\begingroup$ I'm replacing the tape. I'll read up on 'Brim' & 'Support'. Is this what you were talking about? Brim: all3dp.com/2/3d-printing-brim-when-should-you-use-it | Support: could not find. Send a link with docs for what you mean by 'Support'? $\endgroup$
    – David West
    Commented Nov 30, 2020 at 20:52
  • $\begingroup$ the tape on the printhead is usually Kepton and holds some sort of insulating pad. Fiberglass or rockwool or something similar. $\endgroup$
    – Trish
    Commented Nov 30, 2020 at 22:23

1 Answer 1

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The print is extremely challenging, as it has a lot of thin diameter items growing up, a lot of overhangs and a rather small surface to hold to the bed. So you need a Brim and support:

As OP found, a Brim is a setting that adds extra material in the first layer around the print to increase adhesion.

Support Structures are to give an overhang something to rest upon. Removing them can be tricky, but they make some things printable at all. Like this bracelet. You'll have to finetune your settings, best by learning with less complex models first or mimicking the settings of others that made the bracelet.

The thin vertical parts can make the print fail nevertheless - you can possibly fix some of the vertical adhesion issues by printing slower. If these parts are too thin, you might be unable to print them at all with a 0.4 mm nozzle! As a rule of thumb, it is really tricky to print pillars slimmer than 2.5 nozzle diameters and almost impossible to print them nicely under 2 nozzle diameters.

My settings

I print my PLA at 200 °C, the bed at 60 °C, but then again I don't have a glass bed.

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    $\begingroup$ I only print on glass, for PLA I use exactly the same temperatures. But note that temperatures may vary a little from brand to brand, also on application. $\endgroup$
    – 0scar ♦
    Commented Dec 31, 2020 at 9:25

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