Hi all, I have a project for university. The aim is to make a model printable in steel with a min. wall thickness and less material as possible. What is the min. hole size to hollow a model? I did not find any information about it. Could you please help me ? cheers
Turtles Are Cool's model Inquisitive Dragon was supposed to be hollow with 1mm dia drain holes, but he couldn't find them on the print - go with what your head says, the worst that will happen is the model will get rejected and you need to make them a bit bigger.
I just had a part built in stainless steel that was to have several 1mm dia holes in it but the holes were filled in. They showed up on the surface as 1mm depressions but didn't go whole way through part. I'll just drill holes out (but be careful if you do same...steel "bites" quite a bit and I snapped a 1mm drill bit off in part fairly quickly
Drilling 1mm holes is likely to be extremely frustrating for you in the SS material. Only carbide tooling has any chance of doing this job. Carbide bits are expensive and brittle. I would suggest you forget about hand drilling. Hold work in a vise and use a drill press! The best bits are the flat blade type, not conventional spiral bits. FYI, for tapping holes, carbide is also a must. A better long term solution would be to enlarge the holes on your next model. 1.5mm should be a safe bet. -G