Anyone tried to make their own support structure for a print instead of letting the slicer do it. I have a design that would require support structure at some places but not everywhere as some place the printer will be able to do the bridge no problem.
If you did what type of support structure pattern did you use?
Thanks.
Have you tried Meshmixer?
@Andre_Courchesne1 yes. At one time, a while back, I was not happy with Slic3r’s placement of support. I opened up my solidworks model and added supports, then printed. It cost a large amount of time as the supports could not be “combined”. If the supports were combined they would not snap off, and ruined the model.
Recently this situation reared it’s ugly head again, purchased simplify 3d. Never have been so happy with supports.
Not sure if it’s applicable to your situation, but this piece has a few supports built into the model for bridging and it worked out pretty well. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:49663
If I remember correctly, Autodesk has an application that allows users to generate custom support structure specifically for 3D printing, which may be useful if you have original files for conversion. Most of their software can be used for free as a student version. Unfortunately I can’t remember what specific application has this feature, but I’m sure a quick search would find it.
I mostly use this technique. I dont like slicer dropping support all over and especially if you need smooth surfaces below support this is the only way to achieve this. I use 0.2 to 0.25mm clearence between support drawn and the model if printing with 0.25 or 0.2 layer height. With ABS and simmilar materials its very easy to separate them afterwards and leaving smooth surface behind its big bonus.
@Matej_Rozman I like this. What type of support pattern do you use ?
I use thin wall boxes/ towers to great effect
@Brook_Drumm Nice, what would you suggest be the optimal distances/size of the ‘towers’ for a @Printrbot Simple (2014 maker version with GT2 belt hack) ?