I’m sure that anything I come up with is old news. I’m just the last person in the world to stumble across it. On the off-chance that there’s anyone out there, probably a noob, who also hasn’t stumbled across this, here’s a way to use the benefit of a support without the ugly outcome.
This sectional view shows what I want to print and I need it to print it in this orientation. As you can see, the printer would do just fine until it reached layer X and then gravity would ruin the print no matter how good you were at dialing in bridging settings (at least that’s been my experience).
So I printed what I call a buck. It’s just a cylinder that can be dropped in with a pause at layer X. Then resume printing. Then I knock out the buck. To protect against the buck becoming stuck, one could design in a hole for a wood screw which would be used to pry it out. But it really doesn’t need to be that tight to work.
It should work on any shape as long as there’s no undercutting.
