charles.yates wrote:because a 2mm thick wall in my model was coming out too thick
It's "too thick" only in the sense that you're expecting tighter tolerances from the 3D printing process than it will deliver. You can certainly find a set of machine parameters that will produce
exactly the correct measurements for one particular section of one particular object, but you cannot expect those same settings to produce
exactly the same accuracy for all sections of all models thereafter.
With the mechanical and extrusion parameters set to produce accurate thinwall squares, tedious though that process and those boxes may be, you're in a position to get
consistent results for
all models. Then, knowing how the process works and what tolerances to expect, you can design your parts to fit correctly.
You may find that specific parts require different
slicing parameters for different sections, but those parameters all depend on the accuracy of the machine setup.
Designing the parts first, without considering the tolerances, then sequentially tuning the machine to optimize each part as you print it, will, as you've discovered, require a "monkey at the controls approach to printing", take far longer than you expect, and create a pile of scrap plastic.
At least for me, I'd rather do the tuning
once, then spend the rest of the year cranking out parts that fit and work as expected. The designs all assume that ±0.20 mm tolerance I mentioned. To get tighter tolerances, I'm willing to ream holes, mill surfaces, and hand-finish edges: all operations that can't be done on a 3D printer.
really thought the project was more interesting than the tuning :).
It is, once you understand both what proper machine setup does
and what it cannot do. With those limits in mind, you can get on making everything else you bought the printer to build... and that's what it's all about.