Non-Planar 3D printing  

RE: Non-Planar 3D printing

@crawlerin
I'm not sure why you keep fighting this 🙂

Non-Planar FDM 3D printing is by definition limited to only certain cases. You can't throw any object in the slicer and all outer layers will be printed non-planar. So the question is for what kind of objects does it make sense and how often people print such objects. So far the answer is: Not many. We reached a proof of concept stage but as long as the demand will stay low for such a very specific use cases, it will stay at this stage. That's what people are saying here .

RE: Non-Planar 3D printing

@nikolai-r

I am not fighting it at all, just showing that people think about it and try to engineer solutions that accommodate their needs (or just proving "hey this is doable"). Granted it's very limited with tools what we currently have, it's still the way of "extruding melted plastic wire out of hot nozzle". If all you have is a hammer, every problem needs to look like a nail. They just try to forge the hammer into something where maybe different tool we do not have yet would work better - but think about it, maybe that's because there is not much to innovate with FDM itself in how it currently works? Revolution is over, now they can start focusing on detail, speed, QoLs and maybe reliability - or bend it and make it do stuff like this. You see it in its current form as a solution in search of a problem, and that's absolutely fine.

RE: Non-Planar 3D printing

I'm actually all for the approach; but the very simple fact is that until we have flexible micro nozzles that are invisible and can move through other objects with impunity we won't be getting this feature on our FDM printers.  And, that I suspect other technologies will be implemented long before that happens, and those other technologies will 1) be possible; 2) be affordable; 3) be commercially viable.