Cura Questions - Nozzle Diameter VS Line Width

Hello folks and welcome. I am TechNiverous. Today we are taking another Kira question from our comment section. If you'd like to ask a question go ahead and leave it down below and we'll make you your own video answer. Hey folks, TechNiverous here. Today we have another Kira question. This one not necessarily strictly for Kira but it applies to Kira and we're gonna take a look at it right now. So this is Ramo Llama and they're asking I want simply a recommendation or a video that properly explains the up Slash downsides of extrusion width. What are the benefits to go below the diameter or above the diameter, etc? Thank you in great videos. Well, thank you We appreciate the thumbs up and we will jump over to Kira right now and I will explain a few things So the whole setup with 3d printing in the FDM side of things where you're using the extrusion process Is very very easy to get going with and it seems pretty intuitive I mean you would assume that you would just take your nozzle size and plug it in In fact, my line width in my profile does match my nozzle diameter however, if you were to take a Really really fancy digital calipers and measure just one of those lines. You would find that it isn't exactly 0.4 millimeters wide and the reason for that is as it comes out of the extruder as it extrudes out of that 0.4 millimeter diameter hole it begins to expand as soon as it touches the air So it's immediately larger when it comes out than that 0.4 So to compensate for this most slicers now Kira doesn't do this It sticks with 100% but most slicers will increase that to 120% So at 0.4 you're looking at somewhere between 0.4 4 and 0.48 To get the actual correct extrusion amount the right line width now You don't want to tell the slicer to slice at a line width that is less than your diameter Because it will leave gaps in the print and the print won't work properly at all Plus the the extruder is not actually capable of printing at less than its diameter now this is something that is controlled a lot by flow rate and the tents the fact that the filament is constantly being pulled and adhering so There is if you take a look at like Kira Kira arachne There are ways to control the diameter at different parts of the print And that's how they use that process by pushing less filament through the parts that they want to be thinner while they're moving at the same Speed I don't know if any of that is making sense, but basically what I'm saying is With the line width you don't want to go less than 100% of your diameter size because it's gonna cause a lot of print issues If you want to push less filaments I definitely recommend checking out arachne because it adjusts your line width based on the geometry and will basically save you quite a bit of plastic in the long run because it prints details in fine corners a little bit better and Things like that so This video though is about line width. I'm kind of going off on a tangent So you can increase the line width up to about one hundred and fifty percent So you could print on a point four millimeter nozzle with a point six line width setting and you would get a decent Print it is gonna be a little bit over extruded in some places But for the most part that model is going to be fully functional and work Well and the reason for that is because Kira does do the calculating itself to make sure that the actual plastic doesn't exceed the parameters of the model that you're printing so either way You're gonna get really really close to the same shape In some cases where you have really fine holes and things like that you might have some issues so if you're curious about changing your line width what I recommend is doing a regular print of a Calibration cube at point four millimeters and then try one at point four and one at point four eight And compare the differences if you see any one of those that looks better to you than the other Then that's what you want to grab now. I brought this up because if you use slicer or Simplify 3d it automatically turns your line width into 100% of the diameter of the extrusion Kira doesn't do that Kira does a nice job of making the lines nice and even either way and my models always come out nice But I have played around with it a little bit and I can tell you that at like point four four That's the sweet spot for getting high detail and really good accuracy without too much extra filament ending up in places Basically you are free to leave that at a hundred percent Kira works well that way but you can increase it I recommend sticking to around 110 120 percent not going up all the way to that 150 But you definitely don't want to go below that percentage because it's generally not gonna work out nearly as well for you And you're gonna end up with some under extrusion. So that is gonna be it for this video guys I hope it was helpful to you. Leave your Kira questions in the comments down below. I love making these videos This is number 30 in the playlist. So we have quite a few of them I'll put the playlist up above as usual and you can check it out. See some of the other people's questions Please please please leave a like on this video. Don't forget to smash that subscribe button and we will see you in the next one Stick around guys. I got another YouTube recommended video for you right here And if you haven't already subscribe subscribe subscribe, make sure that you smash that like button. We'll see you in the next one tech neighbors out