Hole/Contour in wall creates inlayed walls

Bambu Lab Software Bambu Studio
1

Hi guys!

I’ve just received my A1 on saturday and I’m really new to everything regarding 3D printing.

Therefore I’m also very new to BambuStudio. I already created and printed some models which worked like a charm but now an issue I can’t solve is driving me nuts.

I want to build a piggy bank. I already created the shape and everything based on a SVG file in Illustrator. Making the object hollow with no infill density also worked very well.

But I’m not able to create a slot for the coins nor a hole into the pedestal where the piggy bank is standing on.

I tried everything:

  • Negative part
  • Mesh Boolean
  • Exporting the body as stl, importing that to TinkerCAD, making a hole, exporting as stl and re-importing into Bambu.

I assume that there is some weird setting which I don’t understand that causes this issue.

This is what the assembly currently looks like.
I also tried union all parts as mesh boolean so I just have one big body and then using negative part or mesh boolean to create the slots - didn’t work as well.

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Now the negative part at the top looks like that:

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But in the slicer the result would be:

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He’s also building a more supportive layer at layer 36 to “hold” the walls of the slot that has been created.

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At the end I just want to cut out a small piece at the top - and a circle at the bottom - of the hollow object so I can drop coins in there and get them out through the hole at the bottom.

I found no solution looking through the forum or YouTube so I had to create a new topic for that.

2

Welcome to the community.

I just answered a related question here on hollow objects and the term Manifold in 3D printing terms. Here is the links if you are interested. Wrong geometry after slicing, why? - #6 by Olias

To answer your question. You’re trying to use the slicer as CAD. As you’ve discovered, the slicer really doesn’t do a great job at this function. If I understand your request, you want to do a simple cut out. But instead, you combined two geometries as one. The slicer will treat these as two solid objects and “slice” around the geometries which is what you are seeing here.

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Ideally to work around this, you would want to do this in CAD. However, if you don’t have access to the CAD model, here’s what you might try:

  1. Make a copy of the original model
  2. Add a solid body(rectangle for the slot)
  3. Scale the second model with the rectangle to a smaller size(95%)

  • Merge it into an assembly with the master model.

  • Modify the second model type into a negative model using the model tab.

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  • Center the second model so that it is in between the first model. Since it is the same shape but smaller, it will act as a cutout for the primary shape because it is the same shape but negative.

Here’s an example of what they will look like.

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Sphere with Slot example.3mf (72.8 KB)

I will be the first one to say however, that although this is doable, it is the worst possible approach but remember, you asked. :wink: The best way is via CAD.

3 Likes
3

Hi @Olias,

thanks for your reply and the insights and the provided 3mf file!

I tried that workaround in BambuStudio which was somehow not working because the slightly smaller shape peeks out at some ends if I move it to the center or however I position it. Seems like its a too complex figure for that Bambu-Hack - unfortunately!

I quickly tried some CADs like Fusion 360, Blender or FreeCAD and all of them are pretty overwhelming for absolute beginners :smiley:

So I assume I’ll just 3D print the entire object as hollow print without the cut outs and then get a sharp knife and a drill because I’m getting some serious aggressions here :joy:

Just kidding, I do really appreciate your support on this one, but I honestly have - right now - no more projects in mind which need that kind of adjustments so I might consider giving one of the above mentioned tools another just at another time :smiley: