unwelcome slicer behaviour again
Hi all,
another fight with the slicer lost where I hope somebody can point me in the right direction.
The attached project is supposed to become a lamp. The Bert should be illuminated from below (the bottom part containing the actual lamp is still under construction). The actual Bert is an stl from the web. The bottom disk is a simple generic cylinder from slicer that has been set to 100% infill to avoid light spilling. The Bert has 4 perimeters in the lower part and 2 perimeters in the upper part to change the translucency (set via height range modifier). The problem zone is the transition from the disk to Bert.
No matter how I play around with the amount of intersection slicer will not produce perimeters all the way from the built plate. Instead it sclices the disk without an inner perimeter and as soon as it reaches Bert it sets the perimeters into thin air. The trial print in PLA worked somehow but when I started to print in the final material (Fillamentum CPE transparent) the connection failed, which was when I noticed the problem.
I gave cura a try, but there seems to be now way of adding those standard shapes to the models there.
I hope somebody has an idea how to fix this without having to resort to things like Blender (not really good at using this one).
Cheers
Hansjoerg
RE: unwelcome slicer behaviour again
Hansjoerg, just to be sure we're looking at the same thing here ...
I played with this a bit as I waited for a print to finish. I broke the project down to bert_alone as a sanity check and when I slice Bert with no other objects, I still see a gap between the main body of Bert and the inner perimeters. Can you confirm that this is related to the problem?
I have to leave to attend an affair tonight, but when I get back I'll try a few things to get it to do what I think you are trying to do. Please confirm that I'm seeing the error you are concerned about here.
RE: unwelcome slicer behaviour again
@jsw
Thanks for looking into this. From what I see in your picture the gap is between the supports, the brim and the actual perimeter.
My initial problem is at the height where the base disk ends and the 0% infill/4 perimeters shell of Bert starts.
Oddly enough while trying to confirm your question I deleted the generic cylinder to have a look at the slice you did. After that I just hit undo until the cylinder was back. And guess what happened, this time it sliced as needed.
I admit that I have no idea why deleting and then undeleting the part should have made a difference...
RE: unwelcome slicer behaviour again
Where Bert meets Cylinder there is a face-normal conflict. Joining everything outside Slicer fixes the conflict. Not sure why order dependency within Slicer is making a difference, but any shell within a shell can have this issue.
RE: unwelcome slicer behaviour again
Joining everything outside Slicer fixes the conflict.
I thought so myself, but I'm still struggling to find some sort of idiot (me) proof software. I so far failed to add any standard shapes to surface models. Still trying to learn Blender, but that is a tall order for my amateurish exploits. Do you have any other suggestions?
Currently the new g-code is printing and it did those inner perimeters nicely so far.
RE: unwelcome slicer behaviour again
It looks like things may be under control, so I won't do anything more unless you ask.
Sorry, but I got in last night much later than expected and I went right to bed.
My approach would have been along the line to take the Bert and the cylinder externally and probably create a nice clean union of the two that would slice and print as expected.
Personally, I prefer to do the designing and drafting with a tool that's made for that (I mostly use FreeCAD for 3d work) and use the slicer for what it does best, that being slicing.
RE: unwelcome slicer behaviour again
Meshmixer is free, easy to use, and pretty capable for adding simple things together, best for freeform or artsy projects, and has some fairly capable abilities for working with parts: smoothing, reduction, texturing, etc.
TinkerCAD is another free and easy to use tool - in some ways better than Meshmixer, especially for mechanical parts.
RE: unwelcome slicer behaviour again
Here's what Bert looks like in both tools. The UI is a short learning curve - moving the parts around in TinkerCAD is more intuitive; MeshMixer requires learning the keyboard shortcuts to be efficient in it (T for transform - allows moves, resize, etc). I'm mostly using TinkerCAD these days. But then not doing a lot of artsy stuff, either. TinkerCAD is a lot better at Boolean joins. MeshMixer crashes a lot when playing with Booleans. I guess I'd recommend TinkerCAD at this point.
RE: unwelcome slicer behaviour again
Thanks everybody for chipping in!