I am dipping my toes into 3D modeling and was tinkering (hehe) in TinkerCAD and made a little card holder for business cards as a newbie project. The rectangle base shape would be easy to print but I want to also cut out shapes from the front, which leads to either crazy amounts of supports when lying the model on the long side or frazzled cutouts when trying vertically…
Any hints on how to best position this model to not print lots of wasted support or get better quality cut-out for text?
If you rotate it upright, you won’t need any support at all. The only thing you might need is a brim.
I have no idea why you’re getting poor quality. That’s actually the perfect position. Maybe try reducing the print speed. Perhaps your model is corrupted and you need to click on “fix model.”
Of course, you could also upload the 3mf file, then we could take a better look at it.
I also don’t understand why there is support; it’s not necessary, is it? Is your model defective?
The orientation you call “Vertical” is the correct orientation.
If you reduce the depth of the inset text (or relief, I can’t tell from the picture resolution) so that it is a little less than the width of the nozzle, you won’t need the supports.
If you make the text flush with the surface, but with a different color filament (assuming you have an AMS or two-head printer) you won’t need the supports.
Thanks for your feedback! I agree, vertical on the short-side was also my instinct but BL Studio warned about “floating regions” and thus I turned support on…but then removing those after printing leads to frazzled edges
The model is not defective, at least there is no option “Fix” as in your screenshot when I right click the object.
So should I just ignore the warning and print w/o support?
@RocketSled Yes, inset or 2-color would be my plan B but actually the text is completely cut-out from the material (you should be able to see the full-res image by clicking on it, no?). That is the main culprit I assume, I just like making it extra challenging on myself
Update after drafting this response: I turned supports off and the brim was auto-generated, let’s see after it cooked
The option is always available. Right-click on the model in your object overview, then select it. However, as I said, if you upload the 3MF file, we can give you more specific advice.
This would need to be checked and cannot be answered in general terms. The 3D model would need to be examined more closely. It may be that you made a mistake when exporting from TinkerCAD.
Upright is the most printable. Tip it on that left edge (with supports) with all the open areas facing up for strongest.
If the text sticks out enough to need support, make it stick out less gentle slopes like a .2 or .3mm depth will print perfectly. 2 color is also a darn good idea for this thing, but is only going to be fast if your printer platform is h2d/h2c.
You could choose a different font. One that’s all “right angles” would possibly let you get away with bridging and no supports. If you’re tunneling all the way through, the font you’re using now won’t work for any letters that have internal regions like A, B, D, O, P, Q, and R. You’ll need a “stencil” type font for that. Like this overly-stylized (the S and L could be completely solid) stencil font:
Since I opted for “learning by doing”, I went ahead and flipped that thing upside down, cut out a little tree and went for it. The result, well, leaves to be desired…
Apart from the obvious gravitational challenge and way too small details for the cut-out, I wonder where this “gradient” in the material comes from (not the color, it is PLA silk filament, but the surface kind of “thinning” out towards the left)?
I suspect the fan blowing on it from the right side, could that be? Also the filament I chose is also not fully dry despite spending the night in the AMS Pro heating care…tough nut to crack eh?
Thanks again for your insights, helps me learn a lot!
Have you adjusted the settings? The standard PLA Silk profiles stored in Bambu Studio are insufficient. You have to adjust them yourself, depending on the manufacturer.
PLA Silk in particular requires specific settings, which are usually slower printing speeds.
For Bambu Filament, for example.
Yes, that could be a reason, especially with such large surfaces.
Thanks for the link @RetroSharky ! I tuned down the speeds as per the article (though sidenote: I was printing already at 50% “silent” mode on the P2S with the results seen in my previous screenshots).
But most importantly, I went for a slightly different approach: I simply cut the model in 2 parts and glued them together - I guess I could slice it more elegantly but ultimately it came out as I wanted it to be. So instead of fiddling around with a sub-optimal architectural challenge, this worked for me (as long as you don’t mind the super glue fingerprints ) Thank you all for your inputs!
PS: If anyone could hint me how to get the surface of the pedestal cleaner would be much appreciated…filament is calibrated, I might have to re-print with the lower speeds though
) Thank you all for your inputs!
