Not pretty, but it really doesn’t matter as they fit. This was printed with the standard 0.24mm Draft @BBL P1P selection included in Orcaslicer. 15% infill IIRC.
I wanted this to be strong, so switched to the 0.12mm Fine @BBL PIP setting and then blindly set the infill to 100%. Whoa, that’s a friggen mess. The supports were a challenge to remove:
If you don’t need the cavity and want to keep the radius top, I would just fill it in. Go all walls, but 3 walls and ~65% infill will do quite a bit (grid or adaptive cubic).
Personally, I’d probably have it flat on the “top” and make the top be the new bottom to print upon and remove the need for supports, providing a nice “shoulder” when you press it into the leg cups. You can keep the little holes that are either for water draining or pressure relief. Lightly 45° chamfer that face.
You’re going about it backwards sadly, you want thicker layers for strength - You want more walls, 6 walls and 35% will be stronger than 2 walls and 90%
The gold standard for ABS strength is ambient temperature, stick your heatbed on 100 for an hour with the machine shut up until the chamber is 50-60 and the layer adhesion will be perfect
In terms of general tips for mechanical use like that, if it’s not got to look pretty consider where the layer lines are, would it benefit from different print orientation, does it matter if one edge is slightly flat so you can print it on its side and avoid the support all together?
Example - the one on the left does the same job but is probably 10 times stronger and the layer lines are 90 degrees against the natural stress points in use
Also consider the use case, ABS is what I used on my first printer without a heatbed before PLA, petg, tpu, asa existed, there are better options now, if it’s load bearing/prone to stress there are better (easier) to print options like ASA
Also can you share the STL? It helps to know the geometry of the file
All of this assumes you have a proper calibrated filament profile for the specific filament, none of it matters if you’re printing it at the wrong temperature for your filament, so normal temperature tower rules apply
I’ll be honest, I’ve used nothing but slight variations of the presets on OrcaSlicer.
Appreciate the info about more walls and less fill.
I did as Cable suggested and filled in the interior. I printed one with the 0.20mm Strength @BBL P1P profile (which has 6 walls), and it’s a tad large, which is fine as it’s a friction fit in the cup.
The hollowed thin lip of the original design provides the flexibility/spring for it to clip into place, especially if I’m seeing that little ridge on the outside correctly. W/out the flex the ridge may break or the whole thing may not fit at all.
I don’t know if any of that matters for your design/use case, but just wanted to point it out.
OTOH if you don’t really need the ground-side part of the foot to be rounded, that could be cut flat w/out affecting the flex-fit aspect. Or, it may be easier to remove supports from the curved side than from an inset area, especially if that is flattened out a bit more. Or make it less rounded so it prints w/out supports…
Depending on the model, I’ve found a mix of walls and infill tends to give better rigidity/strength than walls alone. The main reason being that walls mostly just stack parallel to each other w/out much to inter-connect them to each other. An infill running cross-ways or diagonally gives the whole structure more of a “log cabin” effect with print lines running in different directions.
Oh yeah and I agree about keeping the hole, unless the cup it is going into is already vented somehow (but also good idea for drainage).
