SLICING

Slicing your model determines the results you can expect from a polycarbonate printed part. While its good to use our recommended test procedure to create a polycarbonate printing profile dialled into your specific printer, different geometries will need some further tuning to achieve the best results.

The more specific a process can be, the better the results will be, this often results in printing profiles dedicated to printing one part, or one type of part, determining these settings will come with experience. 9 times out of 10, a polycarbonate printing profile will produce acceptable parts, to create your own polycarbonate 3D printing profile view our recommended testing procedure.

Our recommended slicing software is Simplify 3D, offering the widest range of parameters and processes that can help manipulate your 3D model into a code that the printer can understand. Compatible with almost every machine, this powerful software has a nice interface with easy to change settings effecting the printed part.

Strength

By far the biggest factor of determining strength is the amount of shells/perimeters a 3D printed part has. This number is multiplied by the nozzle diameter to reach the final wall thickness. For example, if you are printing with a 0.5mm nozzle, 5 perimeters will produce a wall thickness of 2.5mm.

Infill

While infill can increase the strength of a printed part it is not as critical as the number of perimeters. So if the strength to weight ratio of a part is important, increase the perimeters before the infill. The infill patterns will effect the speed of your prints more than the strength, so a fast infill pattern such as rectilinear is the best option for most applications.

Retraction

As polycarbonate filaments display good hardness when compared to other materials, the speed and distance of retraction can be increased without adversely effecting your printed part. A distance between 2-5mm produces good results for polycarbonate and a quick retraction in a range of 100m/s -150mm/s will decrease oozing of material during travel movements.