Hey there,
I’m exited about the LowRider and playing with the idea of making one myself.
Concerning the FDM prints I would make them on my trusty Prusa Mk3s with
PLA-CF, but some more question marks:
…
I usually print my stuff with a 0.8 nozzle for the main reason it gives me tougher infill structures. As commonly tested, the most tough layer-height thereby will be given with 0.4mm.
Any experience with these settings anyone?
(just asking to make sure…)
Would you guys recommend the same infill settings, right?
How about outer walls (“vertical shell”)
and
how about top/bottom layer thickness (“solid layers”)
…
Prusas are good printers. .8 nozzles may be a bit too big for these parts.
The parts are not just functional parts, they’re very carefully designed with special internal features like “Bridging hints”, which an be wrecked by using too many and too thick of walls.
Generally, the guidance would be to follow Ryan’s print instructions and not try to “do better” by ignoring them.
PLA-CF isn’t recommended, from memory, because it’s less rigid than just plain PLA due to being a modified PLA. I believe the strongly recommended option for most builds is regular PLA, not PLA+ or PLA Pro or anything like that. This is sometimes not clear when looking at 3rd party testing because what we’re after isn’t necessarily ‘strength’, it’s rigidity. The issue isn’t parts breaking, it’s them deforming under load. Most material testing I’ve seen isn’t particularly well set up to adequately reflect that.
As above, I wouldn’t try to do too much better, there’s a solid chance you can make stuff worse by breaking the bridging hints or making overhang performance worse leading to poor fitment, higher chance of warping etc. Some of those changes will definitely make a strong part but there are a lot of parts where the improvement from making a part stronger will be dramatically offset by having a part potentially print worse.