Frosted Detail & Frosted Ultra Detail Design Rules

Our Frosted Detail and Ultra Detail material are capable of producing highly detailed items as well as items with thin walls and wires. Along with that though, we need to be careful of making the structures too thin to prevent breakage. We've done some tests into different material structures, our tests result in the following guideline.

Types of Design Features

The following represent commonly referenced design features that we will discuss in the design rules.


Walls Supported	Walls Unsupported	Wires Supported	Wires Unsupported	Wires Supporting

Simple Design Rules

Here are some simple guidelines to follow to ensure your items are printable. If you want to push the boundary more, check out the more Nuanced Guidelines below. That section gives you an idea of how to make more delicate structures that stand up to the forces of gravity and international shipping.

	Frosted Detail	Frosted Ultra Detail
Escape holes for hollow parts	two holes, each min 2mm in diameter (smaller escape holes will print, but the model will likely have residue)
Supported Walls	minimum 0.5 mm	minimum 0.3 mm
Unsupported Walls	minimum 0.6 mm	minimum 0.6 mm
Supported Wires	minimum 0.6 mm	minimum 0.6 mm
Unsupported Wires	minimum 0.8 mm	minimum 0.8 mm
Supporting Wires	minimum 1 mm	minimum 1 mm
Minimum detail thickness	0.2 mm	0.1 mm
Interlocking parts	accepted, gap between parts must be at least 0.1 mm	accepted, gap between parts must be at least 0.05 mm
Bounding box	298 x 185 x 203mm	127 x 178 x 152mm
Shrinkage	expect shrinkage around 0.001-0.002 inch (0.025-0.05 mm) per inch (25.4 mm)	expect shrinkage around 0.001-0.002 inch (0.025-0.05 mm) per inch (25.4 mm)
Price	$5.00 startup + $2.39/cm3	$5.00 startup + $3.49/cm3

Standard physics applies to all materials, so if you make a part thin, it will not be as strong as if you make a part thick, if you have a long unsupported span, make it thicker or use engineering type structures to ensure the span is supported (think bridges), filleted corners and smooth transitions are stronger and less prone to breakage than abrupt changes in thickness and hard angles.

Nuanced Design Rules

Supported Walls

< 0.3mm wall thickness: not allowed
0.3mm-0.6mm: keep wall dimensions under 50x50mm
0.6mm: ok with all tests

These boxes are made of supported walls. The box on the left has walls of 0.3mm thick. The box on the right has walls of 0.6mm thick. As you can see, the middle box (50x50mm) broke due to pressure when 0.3mm thick. The larger box (100x100mm) warped and eventually broke when 0.3mm thick. All boxes survived when 0.6mm thick. Thus, we recommend supported walls to be 0.6mm thick for larger structures (above 50x50mm sized walls), and 0.3mm thick for smaller structures (under 50x50mm sized walls).

Unsupported Walls

< 0.3mm wall thickness: not allowed
0.3mm-0.6mm: keep wall dimensions under 30x30mm
0.6mm-??: keep under 50x50mm

The above are models of just flaps of flat sheets. The model on top is made of sheets of FUD at 0.6mm thick, the model below is made of sheets of FUD at 0.3 mm thick. You can see both models started to warp once the walls get big enough. Based on these tests, we conclude that for models in the 0.3-0.6mm wall thickness range, to keep free standing walls under 30x30mm. For walls of 0.6mm thickness, try to keep your free standing walls under 50x50mm.

Supported Wires

< 0.3mm thickness: not allowed
0.3mm-0.6mm wire thickness: keep under 10mm wire length
0.6mm-1mm: keep under 50mm length
1mm+: should be fine at anything length

In the figure above, we tested wires that were supported on either side. Based on this test, we derived the ranges above. To be safe, keep supported wires greater than 0.6mm thickness. Basically, the thinner your wires are, the shorter they should be to prevent warping or broken wires.

Unsupported Wires

< 0.3mm thickness: not allowed
0.3mm-0.6mm wire thickness: keep under 6mm wire length
0.6mm-1mm: keep under 18mm
1mm-2mm: keep under 40mm
2mm+: should be ok at any lengths

In the figure above, we tested wires that were unsupported, or freestanding. Based on this test, we derived the ranges above. To be safe, keep supported wires greater than 0.8mm thickness. Basically, the thinner your wires are, the shorter they should be to prevent warping or broken wires.

Supporting Wires

< 0.5mm thickness: not allowed
0.5mm-0.8mm wire thickness: should support minimal weight
0.8mm-1mm wire thickness: should be under 3mm wire length
1mm+: should be ok

We got wires of different thickness, supported at either end. These wires are 8mm long. We then hung a 100 gram weight on the wires. The idea is that while shipping and handling, it can be reasonably expected that the wires will receive shocks of up to 100 grams from either side. The wire at 0.5mm thickness (on the right) started to bend and exhibit signs of weakness. The wire at 0.35mm thickness (on the left) exhibited extreme signs of weaknesses and actually broke during the process. Hence, we recommend that supporting wires not be more than 0.5mm thick.