Missing features when sending design to cura

[Anonymous]

Hi I'm a novice and have been slowly learning how to design items to print on my 3D printer. Everything has been going pretty well but now have been stumped by a frustrating problem, I'm printing a key fob for my parents business but when I go to print the body prints fine but the lettering is missing parts or just misses the word altogether. It's a simple rectangle with a 1mm fillet around the edge and a centre diameter circle as a key loop.
I got frustrated and went back to another design I've printed before and was confused to see that some features were missing also???
I uninstalled fusion and reinstalled it but the problem persists????
Fusion has hung up and become unresponsive many times over the last few days, could it be a problem with my laptops ability to run fusion?
I honestly don't know what is happening
Help please

[weshowe]

Cura trims small features. I do not know how, or if, that can be altered, but it bites me too. Text that is too small in height is messy, at a certain point it simply is not printed. I don't think Slic3r deletes small features, but mostly I have been using Simplify3D for my slicing, although that is not freeware.

Try printing your text taller, I mean a greater height for the letters, as specified in the text tool, and you will see it improve, or even appear. Text smaller than about 5 mm or 0.2 in. will not give great results (that number was from trial and error, I do not know the exact size at which Cura deletes features).

I use Fusion for my drawings and for 3D printing. It works well for me, even though I am not an expert user by any means. I don't know anything about your crashes, I don't have those issues here, but I am on a desktop with lots of memory and a good graphics card (which not all laptops have, or often they default to the lower power one).

 - Wes

[weshowe]

I did a little more research, which amounts to trying to sort wheat from chaff in the internet. Unofficial sources indicate that features (portions of lettering, for example) smaller than your wall size (which normally should be your nozzle diameter, 0.4 mm here) are just deleted. It may be possible to improve things a little by setting the wall width smaller than the nozzle diameter, I have not tried that myself. Note that while I was printing 5 mm tall text, but the lines that form the letters were 0.6 and 0.75 mm wide. Obviously, I couldn't measure the indistinct and deleted parts, but I assume they were smaller than the 0.4 I have for wall width. One missing element was the dot over a lower-case i character.

I have also tried to change my designs to accommodate the 3D printing capabilities. I use arcs and angles instead of completely unsupported horizontal surfaces. I often design so that an end is down, rather than leaving a long flat surface in the table (it can be a fight to remove those). IDK what you are printing with, I like ABS, and I use a glass plate to print on with some hairspray on it for adhesion. When the print cools to room temp, it pops off easily, and glass cleaner will remove the old hairspray and traces of plastic that remain behind.

Good luck with your efforts, I'll be happy to share anything from my (limited) bag of tricks with you.

 - Wes

[Anonymous]

Thanks folks, that makes a lot of sense.. I went back in and tweaked the settings/nozzles and found it will print the finer details but not with a huge nozzle haha
Well at least I've learned a bit more now