Beginning to hate all these slicers....

I have made a bunch of perfect parts, but there are some that start with small support material....and there simply aren't slicers out there that work for these parts. First layer always works but second layer always hits a turbo mode on several sections (makes no difference if you set every speed in it to 20mm/s its still going to do some parts are whatever it feels like I swear. I then decided I would try CURA since some people said they loved it. Good lord what a terrible pile of crap it compiled. At least I now know I hate cura. Anyway, moral of the story...some parts are just a pain to print. Chances are you will just have to redesign them to make them print correctly.

 

I may give it a shot as well. A big part of it was I designed the parts before I ever printed anything....I would have made it a lot differently now.

 

Whenever I use support material the support is too close to the desired part and sticks too much. Is there a way of telling the slicer to move the support further away from the desired print?

 

I always try to orient a piece so I don't have to use raft material. I almost always use a brim though.

But this lightsaber piece I'm printing for my husband just does not have any good way of orienting it so I can have a nice stable print without overhangs. So I'm printing using rafts for the first time since I first started printing months ago. Every time before I've tried printing with a raft I'd get a mess that would be impossible to separate But I've learned alot since then so *fingers crossed*.

Billm, do you mean move the support further away from the real part? As in physical x/y distance? Or further away as in Z distance?

If you look at slic3r's support material setting, "Raft layers" is the number of layers you want the raft to be, but "Interface layers" is also super important! I didn't quite understand, but you want a good number of interface layers from your raft. So from the bottom up, you have bed | raft | interface layers | object. The interface layers gives you a good place you can cut through between the raft and the object.

I need to play with both "Pattern Spacing" and "Interface Pattern Spacing". I think if that spacing is too close you get a fused raft/interface with the object. But you want them close enough to support the object during printing

 

CURA has expert settings. If you print something complex, solution is there.
Most of 3d printing problems do not come from design but from the model its self.
If you have 2 cubes next to each other creating a rectangle, then you have a problem with 2 side faces touching each other, thus creating problem.

One of those days ill put a video on youtube explaining what to avoid when modeling for printing.

As of right now, why dont u share ur model with us ? The one u had problems printing with CURA.
I want to see whats wrong with the model, perhaps advise what settings need to be turned ON in CURA to print this model successfully.

 

The problem I have with the support material is in the x-y distance from the model. It is so close that it actually sticks to the model itself. I don't need it to stick to the sides of the model when the sides are 90 deg vertical. When you look at the code representation layer by layer it shows a small gap from the model but when it prints it is so close that it is attached in many places to the sides. I would like the support material to be further away from the vertical sides.

 

Maybe I can get help too! Hope its ok Racegrafix. I did this Sponge Holder in Rhino to learn how to model. It is super basic. In Rhino I just did a polyline and Extruded that under the Solid menu. I think it was Extrude curve to 110mm my desire height. All was good. I check for Naked Edges and there where none! Good right. I took the model to Repetier-Host and Sliced it with Slic3r and it was hollow. Instead of a solid wall I have two walls and its hollow in the center. I uploaded the stl and the 3d files. The one that says Sponge Holder Base is just the polyline I created before extruding. I tried Netfabb but its was the first time I opened that program and it was a little bit confusing. I couldn't slice it there.

 

Algares, I looked at the .stl in Sketchup and the thickness is 2.5mm. I sliced it with Slic3R 1.0.0R3 with a min horizontal and vertical wall thickness of 3 and 100% infill. The result looked fine with four layer thicknesses (two and two). Are you worried that the inner layers will not stick because of a gap?

What is your infill% and wall thickness? Here is one layer of my result:

 

Sorry - I meant six layers thickness (three and three) not four.

 

Hello SteveC thank you for your help! I have my infill at 0.5 and wall thickness is set to 3 vertical shells and 3 horizontals shells.
First Layer. The thickness of the part is supposed to be 2.5mm I printed the part and it came out hollow. Look at the second layer.

Second Layer. Here the image is exactly as the printed part


This is the top view. The center was filled but the remaining part came out hollow.


I will try 100% infill but its going to take forever to print! Next I will upload and actual photo of the printed part.

 

SteveC thank you so much!!! The problem was with Slic3r! I downloaded the latest version
slic3r-osx-uni-1-0-0-RC3.dmg and it worked just like yours! Thanks a lot sir. You made me very happy : )

 

That's good news algares. I suspect that 100% infill will print the same or faster for a part this thin. Those straight line walls print very quickly. Zigzag infill can be pretty slow.

 

SteveC what kind of bed do you have? Is that tape or the bed in blue?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Hi Peter, If you are looking at the "Here is one layer of my result:" image, that is a screen shot from Repetier's gcode visualization screen. On the real printer I just use Aquanet hairspray on the glass .