Help me understand printing supports, because I am wasting filament.
I am constantly having to fight with my printer when it comes to my prints with overhangs. Part of this is my own failing because I am sure I am not understanding the settings. This is an example of a mini I am trying to print. I can tell it's going to need to address overhangs. The tentacles and the some of that head might be questionable with out supports.
I've tried a number of things and all I want is for the slicer program (prusaslicer) to be able to detect when I am giving it a print that will need to build supports.
I think what confuses me if when you slice with ZERO support it will warn you. But it just says enable supports. Which is both helpful and unhelpful.
I really wish (and if it exists please show me how) to get it to tell me where it see's the support issues. Like the build plate only supports shows the support material I would love to see that so I could understand visually.
I've went through all these settings in different ways.
This picture of the skeleton archers is particularly confusing, because it's original source is from a supportless mini database. And i can see how it is, by most standards the prusa should be able to print that and (it sort of did)
I don't have a picture of the demongoron because i stopped it half way I could tell it was trying to print off into no where as if there was no supports, but I know on that print I did tell it to generate base on the threshold which should have been safe.
Any help would be much appreciated.
Best Answer by Crab:
No question that in the first pic, you have some real issue with the filament. But your question is more about supports, so I'll add my 2cents. It appears you'd like to know when to add support and at what point. The slicer is key to determining this. When you have the FEATURE TYPE selected, look at your model from the bottom (flip the plate). Y0u will see BLUE where the slicer thinks it needs support. You also want to slide the slider on the right hand side (assuming PSlicer) all the way down to the bottom and then slowly up and you'll see areas that appear in mid air. These areas need support. Now when there is a span between two point, the slicer will also mark this in blue as potentially needing support. But if the span is short, the filament can bridge across it. When using AUTO SUPPORTS, there is an important setting in SUPPORT MATERIAL > OVERHANG THRESHOLD. Varying this will cause the slicer to add more or less support depending on the overhang angle.
No software, nor any upcoming AI is going to be as good as learning how and when to use support. In our lifetime there is not going to be any replacement for your own grey matter, so everyone needs to learn as much as possible about using supports. If you need supports, it is best to paint them on and only in the places required. Auto supports are much too wasteful and often in many areas that are not necessary.
So practice adding your own supports using the slicer and slicer that shows each layer as a guide. You'll eventually even use the slicer that shows how a particular layer is drawn and that can enhance exactly where to put the support. When I paint on support I often use the "snug" option. I use organic when I don't want the bottom of the support to be attached to the model (usually they try to attach to the base).
Watch videos on using support.. don't assume the software will take care of it.. It will never be as good as you can be. And if you design your own models, it will make you a better designer.
The top pic is just really bad quality filament.. Looks like a model that might not need support, but that filament may be wet beyond repair. Everyone needs a filament dryer.
Dry your filament: Lots of threads on the forum.
When it's dry, try again, if problems persist come back and we'll take another look.
Cheerio,
RE: Help me understand printing supports, because I am wasting filament.
Dry your filament: Lots of threads on the forum.
When it's dry, try again, if problems persist come back and we'll take another look.
Cheerio
I don't understand what does drying filament have to do with the printer detecting whether or not it should print supports or not. 🤔
Nothing.
But the print pictured, which looks like it doesn't need any support, was spoiled by very wet filament. If everything is being printed with the same filament it will fail whether or not the support is correct. So dry the filament and try again, you may be getting a lot of your supports right but I suspect you may have problems with enforcers with some others ... until you are getting clean prints we cannot easily tell.
Cheerio,
RE: Help me understand printing supports, because I am wasting filament.
No question that in the first pic, you have some real issue with the filament. But your question is more about supports, so I'll add my 2cents. It appears you'd like to know when to add support and at what point. The slicer is key to determining this. When you have the FEATURE TYPE selected, look at your model from the bottom (flip the plate). Y0u will see BLUE where the slicer thinks it needs support. You also want to slide the slider on the right hand side (assuming PSlicer) all the way down to the bottom and then slowly up and you'll see areas that appear in mid air. These areas need support. Now when there is a span between two point, the slicer will also mark this in blue as potentially needing support. But if the span is short, the filament can bridge across it. When using AUTO SUPPORTS, there is an important setting in SUPPORT MATERIAL > OVERHANG THRESHOLD. Varying this will cause the slicer to add more or less support depending on the overhang angle.
No software, nor any upcoming AI is going to be as good as learning how and when to use support. In our lifetime there is not going to be any replacement for your own grey matter, so everyone needs to learn as much as possible about using supports. If you need supports, it is best to paint them on and only in the places required. Auto supports are much too wasteful and often in many areas that are not necessary.
So practice adding your own supports using the slicer and slicer that shows each layer as a guide. You'll eventually even use the slicer that shows how a particular layer is drawn and that can enhance exactly where to put the support. When I paint on support I often use the "snug" option. I use organic when I don't want the bottom of the support to be attached to the model (usually they try to attach to the base).
Watch videos on using support.. don't assume the software will take care of it.. It will never be as good as you can be. And if you design your own models, it will make you a better designer.
The top pic is just really bad quality filament.. Looks like a model that might not need support, but that filament may be wet beyond repair. Everyone needs a filament dryer.
RE: Help me understand printing supports, because I am wasting filament.
No question that in the first pic, you have some real issue with the filament. But your question is more about supports, so I'll add my 2cents. It appears you'd like to know when to add support and at what point. The slicer is key to determining this. When you have the FEATURE TYPE selected, look at your model from the bottom (flip the plate). Y0u will see BLUE where the slicer thinks it needs support. You also want to slide the slider on the right hand side (assuming PSlicer) all the way down to the bottom and then slowly up and you'll see areas that appear in mid air. These areas need support. Now when there is a span between two point, the slicer will also mark this in blue as potentially needing support. But if the span is short, the filament can bridge across it. When using AUTO SUPPORTS, there is an important setting in SUPPORT MATERIAL > OVERHANG THRESHOLD. Varying this will cause the slicer to add more or less support depending on the overhang angle.
No software, nor any upcoming AI is going to be as good as learning how and when to use support. In our lifetime there is not going to be any replacement for your own grey matter, so everyone needs to learn as much as possible about using supports. If you need supports, it is best to paint them on and only in the places required. Auto supports are much too wasteful and often in many areas that are not necessary.
So practice adding your own supports using the slicer and slicer that shows each layer as a guide. You'll eventually even use the slicer that shows how a particular layer is drawn and that can enhance exactly where to put the support. When I paint on support I often use the "snug" option. I use organic when I don't want the bottom of the support to be attached to the model (usually they try to attach to the base).
Watch videos on using support.. don't assume the software will take care of it.. It will never be as good as you can be. And if you design your own models, it will make you a better designer.
The top pic is just really bad quality filament.. Looks like a model that might not need support, but that filament may be wet beyond repair. Everyone needs a filament dryer.
Thank you, and we are getting drying stuff soon.
RE: Help me understand printing supports, because I am wasting filament.
Okay update so I still haven't necessarily resolved the support thing but now that I understand how to identify on the preview model where supports are being calculated that goes a long way.
I would like to ask if there's a way to have it at least generate supports in the preview window to see them even if they're not necessarily used unless that's the point of you painting them on if so then understood.
However in a surprisingly new turn of events because of the attention to the moist filament I don't have any tools right now or things to dry out filament but what I do have which is what I pretty much always have to use when moisture is a problem in my 129-year-old house...
I grabbed our dehumidifier that is fairly robust and used to dehumidify a fairly large size portion of our basement. I did a test by printing a silica packet container before I brought it up. You can see that the base and the top which are supposed to be slotted are mostly filled in you can see where there's obviously a problem with the filament.
The second one I printed though Just looking at it right now and it's only halfway done it is near perfect. And we have the dehumidifier basically sitting on the floor in front of our cabinet where our 3D printer is housed with our little doors for it open.
I changed none of the settings All I did was go right into the printer interface and tell it to reprint again with the same settings again. Results were night and day. Incredible difference. As soon as it's done I'll get pictures up of both. I don't want to inadvertently disturb the printer while it's in progress.
RE: Help me understand printing supports, because I am wasting filament.
You have an environment similar to me, where I live near the Atlantic Ocean and humidity is 50% for 4 months and 90+% for the next 8. I use a PrintDryer (Canadian) and it can be made to dry 3 filaments.. doesn’t go really hot.. so if you plan to print ASA, ABS, you might need a hotter one. Keeping filament dry might be an ongoing struggle unless you have a great dehumidifier and want to use it continuously.
Not sure what you are meaning about showing supports. All supports are shown in the preview window and anything shown will be generated. The “blue” tracks just indicate the areas of filament that it thinks needs support. If you let the slicer general supports, it will put supports under all blue areas. You can reduce the ‘blue’ areas by adjusting the overhang angle. But you should paint on supports most times.. there are rare instances where I let the slicer just do supports.. but 99% of the time, I paint everything on.