How to Make Hollow 3D Prints

By Joel Dare - Updated June 15, 2026 - Written May 27, 2026

I’ve been designing hollow 3D prints the hard way.

What I learned is that you can design a solid object and then use the slicer to set a wall count or thickness, while setting top count, bottom count, and infill all to zero.

The result is a hollow tube in the shape of your design.

I use OpenSCAD to design a lot of my projects for 3D Printing.

This time I was designing a nozzle for my Kobalt 24v High Volume Air Inflator.

I wanted it to be hollow.

First, I designed the object as a solid shape. Here’s the original design in OpenSCAD.

Normaly, I’d design another, smaller shape, and use that shape as a “cutter” to cut out of void in the other shape. But, this time, I decided to use the slicer to force the shape to be hollow.

I had to calculate and plan the inside diameter (ID). My 3D printer has a 0.4mm nozzle and each wall is 0.4mm thick while each layer is 0.2mm tall. So, 3 layers is a 1.2mm wall (on each side). If I want a 10mm ID then I need to add 1.2mm for each side, making the size 12.4mm.

Later I needed to create a tube. I needed a an outside diameter (OD) of 16.5mm and a length of 20mm. That’s just one cylinder in OpenSCAD.

cylinder(20, d=16.5, $fn=128);

Then I loaded up Cura and used the following settings:

That’s it, it prints a cylinder with no top, no bottom, and no infill with a wall thickness of 1.2mm (3 walls of 0.4mm each).

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