When printing a small object, especially a small and tall object, the printer may print so quickly that successive layers are deposited while lower layers are still hot and malleable, resulting in a “smooshed” or “melted” effect on the print: a less than optimal print outcome.
Achieving more cooling of the small-in-area layers will improve the print quality. Simply slowing down the overall print speed is unlikely to be a solution by itself when printing a small object, as while slower print speed means more time before depositing the next layer, it also means that the hot extruder remains near the (small area of) previously extruded material, slowing down its cooling. Under “PRINT SETTINGS”, “ADVANCED”, “Cool”, the “Minimal Layer Time” setting can be used to cause a delay between layers extruded “too quickly” – but so that the hot extruder head does not linger for too long near the previously extruded material (keeping it warm, preventing cooling), some additional adjustment of “Cooling Minimal Feedrate” and “Cooling Head Lift” is advisable. Another approach to achieve additional cooling of layers is via a fan: for a printer (such as a Polar3D printer) without a built-in print cooling fan, point a small fan at the build plate, to speed up the cooling process, so that even small, quickly-printed layers get cool before the printer gets to the next layer. Or if your printer includes a built-in print cooling fan, ensure that it is set to operate for maximum cooling; see especially the fan speed settings under “PRINT SETTINGS”, “ADVANCED”, “Cool”.
However, the most successful approach is often to simply print multiple objects simultaneously: the time the printer spends moving to another section of the build plate, and then printing a layer of another object, is likely to suffice to let the first object’s layer cool.
See Section 10.2.5 for a discussion of adding an object or objects to the build plate, when you realize ahead of time that you’d like to print multiple copies of an object or multiple objects at once. Or see Section 10.5.4 for a discussion of merging separately submitted print jobs – if you are a printer manager, even merging jobs submitted by different Polar Cloud members!