Is this stupid or very useful?
Im new to printing so i dont know if this has been tried or is being done but i had this idea, what if for larger prints we made pre printed adjustable support "towers" or "trees" with magnetic bases that get placed down during a pause in a print to save time and material? They would be printed towers that could be stacked like a machinists 1 2 3 blocks at any consistant precise height. I suppose it could require custom code but i know very little about that. The easiest way to explain what i mean is if you were printing a large "T" 10 inches high you would print the center and when you are just about to start printing overhangs you slide in the support towers. I have some ideas what they would look like and i know this community has people who can design amazing things so the design is as good as done.i think height would be easy to confirm with some kind of machinist indicator setup on the machine. I got the idea while printing a statue of a goddess on an eagle and realised that more than half of the print time and material was spent on support under the wings which were about 5 inches off of the plate and if i could just slide a little support shelf under there i could speed my way up the print and just throw the support in there myself. Like i said in the title this could be a dumb idea that everyone has their first year printing and theres a million reason it wont work, or maybe for some things it can save alot of time and meterial. I guess there is no harm in putting the idea out and sharing it with the people who could actually make it happen, i cant do it alone but if anyone would like to discuss it i would love to hear your feedback.
RE: Is this stupid or very useful?
I don't see anything particularly wrong with this idea. Oon the other hand, I don't know how often this would be useful given that many (most?) overhangs that need support may not be of the kind that lends itself to easily slide something beneath. Add to that it would have to be super precise lest you end up with drooping layers above the supports. Plus, it would require you monitoring your prints and jump into action at the right time (even if you add pauses to the print). I for one much rather kick of my prints and walk away until they're done and waste some filament than having to be around at the right time to add the kind of supports you mentioned. With paint on supports, you can save a lot of support material, and I frequently add breakaway supports to my models if I need more fine-tuning.
TL;DR: Not a silly idea but I don't think it's of much practical value.
RE: Is this stupid or very useful?
I think the time and precision required to make these supports would be far more than the time required to last the slicer to do its work with supports. You could be off a few microns in a dimension and that would end the use of the support and ruin a great print. Not a bad idea but the time required to get the support made and the precision required is not a good tradeoff in my opinion.
Tom
RE:
I think there may be times if you're printing mechanical jigs/ fixtures, etc, where a magnetically applied support might make sense, provided it was for horizontal support only. If you were able to calibrate position well enough, bridging parameters could probably allow for loose enough position tolerance outside of the printed part to make it practical.
I suppose for some projects, IF you could program the slicer to start a painted support at a specific distance off of the print bed, you could use it as a partial support. (ie, if the support tower is 3", you could use a 2.75" block, and start printing the support on top of the block.) Pause print at the indicated height of the support block, and get it set up where it needs to be, more or less. First layer might be super lousy, depending on calibration. But for support towers, I'm not convinced that it needs to be perfect, especially if the tower is wide enough at the base that there's less risk of it snapping off. Good enough can be good enough, especially as long as there are enough layers on top of it for any errors to start to level out. This might especially be good on projects where there's really only one tall, thin support, and you run the risk of having it pop off of the bed halfway up.
I'm thinking, for example, of an elbow on an outstretched arm, where the whole arm would be spaghetti if the support was lost. In that case, a setup block might actually make more sense. And for as much as much as folks seem to be waiting for tree supports, I don't have as much faith that they'll solve as many problems as they'll cause. Also, if you have a block with a threaded/ height adjustable feature in the middle, it might actually be useful to help save prints like that, if the operator notices that the support tower has broken off.
TLDR: More development of the idea is warranted, starting with use case. But it's not necessarily a bad idea.
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In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. -Yogi Berra
RE: Is this stupid or very useful?
Sincere thank you for your reply. Like i said im probably not qualified to engineer this but i am encouraged by your reply that my thinking is atleast in the right direction when it comes to printing. Im going to play with designs just for fun and to sharpen my skills but i feel good knowing this post i here for anyone to see and maybe spark an idea in someone more capable/experienced than me. Im almost overwhelmed by the positive feedback i recieved here and am looking forward to both learning from you guys and contributing what i can.
RE: Is this stupid or very useful?
not useful unless you only print t shapes and i would get the precise arts of machining out of your mind while 3d printing. printing is a guess on most levels