Extremely small printing issues

Items i purchased the Form 1+ to print are very small. On some when starting the print the PreForm software automatically sizes the item much larger. That’s not something I want, I need my items to remain exactly what I send in size. It interesting that one item was very small 7/8"x3/16"x3/4" and PreForm had no issue with that. One I just start is much larger X5 and PreForm had issues with that one.

Second issue comes from the first, is one way to get around this issue to make a tree of sorts with multiple items attached?

So, basically this is a two part question: How do I stop PreForm from scaling my print objects and second what’s the best way to print very small items to also counter PreForm from thinking the parts are too small?

  • Walt

Just a though, as I don’t know the workings of the software but you may be the victim of auto units selection. stl files are rather dumb and unit-less, so most software will try and guess what units you are using by assuming that your item is a sensible size. i.e. if it is 100 units long, and you are printing on a small printer it would be normal to assume it is in mm. if it were 3 units long, it would assume it was in inches, as printing something 3mm long wouldn’t be normal, but 3" would.
You can obviously put a scale figure in to undo this, but as to how you stop it, I don’t know.

Always size your STLs in the metric system (millimeters to be exact) and you shouldn’t have any issues.

That could be the answer. The first attempt I did it in inches and it shrank it to about a rice grain in PreForm. Second time I changed the part dimensions to millimeters and it size correctly. Constant leaning curve. Thanks Ante

  • Walt

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