- Products should have a minimal wall thickness of 1mm Take care when scaling models that the wall thickness is not reduced to below 1mm
- Circular shapes acquire ‘flats’. This is may be useful where holes are required in which things must fit
- Make sure you select the correct printer type when outputting
- The selection of an appropriate chord length when exporting from Pro/DESKTOP to STL effects facet or step details. In Pro/ENGINEER set 0.00 in the dialogue box and the software will select the most suitable chord length
- Grain direction (the way the product is printed) will effect whether it is stiff, or more springy
- Just because Pro/DESKTOP can create a 3D model does not mean CatalystEX can create the correct slices – sometimes exporting as a STEP file and re-importing to Pro/DESKTOP corrects the model
- Rounding of features cannot be done where material changes direction and has a radius of 0.5mm.
- You cannot send whole assemblies to the 3D printer - send separate parts or it will create one fused product.
- Wear on the platen effects adhesion of builds. The plastic gets shiny during the removal of parts.
- Clearing out support material is very hard or impossible in complex parts, for example internal threads.
- The build orientation effects the amount of support material and the build time.
- Hollow objects may be better built with the hollow upwards, otherwise it will be filled with support material
Source: cadinschools.org