Any way to force a layer to smooth completely (ironing) without going around future (higher layer) obstacles?
I have a mold I'm making, basically a flat plate with some cylinders sticking up. I would like to smooth the surface (ironing turned on) as one big flat surface so there are no transitions around the future cylinder sites. Right now it stops at each cylinder, smooths the section between cylinders, and then fills the cylinder. Is there any way to do this?
Best Answer by Neophyl:
Not easily no. Also more possible to do in something like Super Slicer as PS lacks the settings to control this. You have to play around with modifiers or your actual model to make sure they are separate parts etc.
Also its not recommended to do that. Small features printed sticking up on top of an ironed surface tend to have very weak layer adhesion. Ironing a surface and then say printing text on top is generally ok but anything more tends to snap off.
Of course a lot of that weakness happens as the nozzle has cooked filament that isn't pressurised fully once it switches from ironing to further printing.
There are several posts in this forum about the topic already but of course the search function here sucks. Github also has had this raised multiple times over several years.
RE: Any way to force a layer to smooth completely (ironing) without going around future (higher layer) obstacles?
Hello.Unfortunately, I can't really imagine that without a 3MF file. Can you give us more information?
RE: Any way to force a layer to smooth completely (ironing) without going around future (higher layer) obstacles?
Not easily no. Also more possible to do in something like Super Slicer as PS lacks the settings to control this. You have to play around with modifiers or your actual model to make sure they are separate parts etc.
Also its not recommended to do that. Small features printed sticking up on top of an ironed surface tend to have very weak layer adhesion. Ironing a surface and then say printing text on top is generally ok but anything more tends to snap off.
Of course a lot of that weakness happens as the nozzle has cooked filament that isn't pressurised fully once it switches from ironing to further printing.
There are several posts in this forum about the topic already but of course the search function here sucks. Github also has had this raised multiple times over several years.
RE: Any way to force a layer to smooth completely (ironing) without going around future (higher layer) obstacles?
Thanks for the info and reference to previous posts. It looks like ironing the whole layer would be a bad idea in this case anyway; I hadn't thought about the inter-layer adhesion problem. I found these two most interesting/helpful:
https://forum.prusa3d.com/forum/how-do-i-print-this-printing-help/help-with-ironing/#post-411037
RE: Any way to force a layer to smooth completely (ironing) without going around future (higher layer) obstacles?
Just thought I'd post a link to this https://github.com/prusa3d/PrusaSlicer/issues/5409 although there are loads more, many closed as duplicates.