![]() ![]() RE: General advice on adding to the forum! Let's try answering your questions.įirst of all, if there's any possibility to avoid using supports, try that first. Many thanks in advance for any advice and inputs. If supports are not required, being able to shorten the overall duration to such an extent would be very useful since there are several dozens of various buildings to be printed. The other option is to add support by safety, but this adds 2 more hours to the print duration. Scaling the model down is not possible though since it would change the physical constraints, and the result could not be extrapolated safely. I could of course run a test print, but since the estimated duration is 5 hours, I'd prefer not having to wait for 4 hours before observing that it cannot be done this way. But there are surely limits for this being possible and I have not yet found indications about them. I've read here and there that the printer is able to do without by "drawing ropes" in the air, a bit like spiders do, and then print the subsequent layers on top of them. By default the slicer produces this kind of result:Ĭan such a model be printed as is or do I have to manually activate the supports generation, which results into this when done: To spare some material (and hopefully printing time), the buildings are designed as hollowed volumes. Their dimensions are in the range of 10 to 20 cm: I have to print 1/100 scale schematic buildings with sloped or flat roofs. Am I supposed to decide by myself when supports are required, or is the slicer able to detect this and activate their generation without manual intervention? The "Generate support material" in unchecked by default in the print settings. I'm a total newbie WRT 3D printing and would need some enlightenment about support material. ![]() Lots of tricks like these that you'll pick up as you go to significantly reduce "dumb" slicer supports. After printing it is trivial to cut out the single layer of plastic to open the hole and that is a lot less waste, particularly if the actual shape to are dealing with is large. However, you can add a 1 layer "hymen" that closes the hole because it can be a bridge (what bobstro describes above). (A screw hole for a a screw inserted from the bottom.) The slicer will want to create supports to handle the "floating" ledge that the screw top will sit on. Another example of a well known trick to avoid supports happens for shapes like counter bores that need to be printed upside down. This often works for protrusions that are there to support something on top of them later but where the lower part of the protrusion is not seen (think a tab to support a circuit board off the bottom of a case). For example, if you have a vertical wall that has a block sticking out from it, sometimes you can make the bottom of the block actually an angle that is printable. (The 45 number comes from the safe assumption that you can certainly do that if half the new strand is over the previous one but you can actually do better.) As to avoiding support (always a good thing) also think about designing in support like features that allow avoiding slicer supports. Essentially for that case the outermost strand on each layer is partially on the previous outermost layer strand and partially over air. I find that I can print out angling walls at quite a bit steeper than 45deg - generally up to 60, so long as the wall they are a part of is reasonably thick. They tend to dangle and be stringy in appearance. The extrusions are round in cross section which yields poor adhesion due to less contact surface. The downside to both bridges and extreme overhangs is that, because they are printed on air, there is no layer beneath to squish against. We are tossing our rope horizontally into space and hoping it will hang there. Because of the angle, additional layers must build stop the preceding layers before there a bridge foundation to build on. The printer attempts to print an extrusion out literally into thin air, then just leave it there hanging. The problem with angled overhangs is that they are not flat. Think of it as tossing a rope across a chasm, but the flight path must be perfectly flat. Once a few strands of bridging is built up, additional layers can be added on top. A single, continuous strand of molten filament can be pulled across surpringly wide gaps so long as the nozzle can maintain that delicate tension to keep it intact. If a gap can be spanned by a single extrusion, it can be bridged. ![]()
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