Questions about support layers/material

Does anyone have some pointers or links to help with this sort of thing? My few initial attempts to use models that require this were, well, not good

I am sure it is something I am mis-setting Repeteir somewhere.

 

This:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Reprap/comments/1hukpw/slic3r_099_raft_issues_printing_beneath_my_actual/

seems like what I was seeing, I will have to try the suggestions there and see if it does actually help. (to summarize it appears as though I need to manually adjust the Z start to account for raft layers).

 

this may be a bug in slic3r. If I may what material are you using and why raft I really have yet to find a good time to use them.

They are used mainly get a flat layer to adhere to the bed with small spokes attaching it to the print thus holding the print down. If you are using PLA and you can't get your print to stick then I think something else is incorrect as PLA sticks well if other things are set correctly.

The bad part about rafts is that they do not allow for a very nice finish

TBH I do not know of many robo people using rafts on a regular basis and especially so for PLA prints

ABS maybe but if you can't get PLA to stick I think you may have other setup issues.

 

I was really more concerned with support layers where the model is not touching the base/ground.

 

Is there not a way to have these support material/layers auto-generated? More of a Repetier question than a Robo 3D one

The raft layers I can see are less useful (although there is that Repetier bug there if you think you need them--so be careful).

 

yes there is a setting in slic3r that sets them to either on or off and gives you patterns you can set and scale and everything they wont show in the slicer but are in the gcode