Fine mesh Chainmail

This is the smallest and drapiest chainmail I have been able to print reliably so far. It is the same as the chainmail in https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2611564 printed at 56% size an a few tweeks to keep it from sticking together.

See video at: https://youtu.be/i20ylD4Nh9E

Getting this to stick to the bed is critical. There are over 2000 pads on the full size STL and they all have to stick. I have had the best luck with bookbinder PVA glue. It grips well and remains tacky for days. It tends to move out of the way on the first layer so you can get a mirror finish when using a glass bed. It lets go fairly easily with warm water and a single edge razor.

May 28, 2021: I fixed a bug in the scad file

I used Cura to do the slicing (the stand alone version, not the embedded one). It has many more settings and does a good job of not running over pads it already printed.

I found it was important to fine tune the retraction settings. With no retraction the stringing hopelessly sticks the links together. Set retraction to be enabled under all conditions (the default is to skip short jumps). Also set the retraction length to something like 0.5mm (default is 6.5mm). This greatly increases the speed and reduces the chances of jamming the extruder.

First print the test pillar STL and get the settings right so the there is minimal stringing and fusing. Next print the small hex pattern and make sure that goes well. It will take about 1 hour. If that works you can try the full bed version which takes about 14 hours.

If you want to create a different size of shape pattern use the"fast_pattern" program. Avoid rendering very large patterns since OpenSCAD will crash. Make a pattern of 150 links or less and join multiples in the slicer (Cura). The precise X and Y spacing to use is ECHOed to the console in "fast_pattern". This only works with square/rectangle patterns.

If you want to mess with the link design that program is also included. It is quicker to only render a single link and pattern that with "fast_pattern". Better yet, decimate the single link with Blender to create a low-poly version. This can reduce the size of the STL file by 20x to 50x and greatly speed things up. This is fairly easy and there are Youtube videos on using decimate in Blender.

March 2, 2019 Fixed some bugs in "fast_pattern.scad"
July 25, 2020 Thingiverse Customizer seems to be broken at least for this design.
You have to install OpenSCAD and run its customizer.

May 28, 2021: I fixed a fatal bug in the chain mail scad file that only shows up in the latest versions of OpenSCAD.