Print in mid air
Hi all,
I'm trying to replicate a gear and one of the things I need to copy is a ring on either side of the gear. Please see attached.
To avoid printing supports I had a brainwave - I can print the ring on the top of the gear, flip it over and get the printer to print the ring on the other side. To properly align it, I was going to print some guides on the belt to assist in positioning the gear.
The issue I've come across is that PrusaSlicer wants to snap the ring to the bed, whereas really I want it to print 14 mm in midair.
Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance!
RE: Print in mid air
That's going to be horribly difficult to align 🙁
I generally approach this sort of problem in one of two ways:
Either print the ring seperately as an insert. leaving a space to slot it in the lower face of the part.
Or split the part in two horizontally, invert one and join them post-print. You'll need to add keyways to keep the result in alignment.
RE: Print in mid air
As the ring looks like some form of spacer that keeps the rest aligned on an axle does it even need to be a part of the main object at all anyway ?
If I has to be then I would do what diem suggests, redo the part so that area is recessed and then do a separate ring that is taller and can be glued into the recess.
RE: Print in mid air
You might want to do some test with Pinter Settings\Size and coordinates\Z offset.
This acutally makes the printer thinks the bedplate is offeset.
That was the easy part. You will want to avoid any skirt as those will definitely print mid-air. You might also want to remove the prime line before the print (Pinter Settings\Custom G-code\Start G-code remove both G92 lines and all between). You might also want to remove the bed leveling to avoid interference with the model already on the bedplate (Pinter Settings\Custom G-code\Start G-code remove G80). Make some small sample test to make sure the bugs are sorted out.