Solid Infill Under Letters?
When I’m printing signs I’m getting solid infill on the top layer of the base of the sign before the text starts printing on the next layer. Is there a way to stop this from happening? It doesn’t affect the quality of the print but it does add a lot of time. I tried changing the Top and Bottom Shell Thickness which made it better but I’m still getting solid infill under some of the letters. I also don’t understand why it happens under some letters and not others???
RE: Solid Infill Under Letters?
Here’s a picture of the solid infill. Any ideas on how to stop this??
RE:
My suspicion is what you are seeing is the difference between the top layer (external) fill around the letters and an internal solid fill under the letters. I don't know if there is a way to avoid this. I suspect that if your lettering is both tall and wide (chunky) enough, you'll still see infill in the middle of the letters.
See my (limited) designs on:
Printables - https://www.printables.com/@Sembazuru
Thingiverse - https://www.thingiverse.com/Sembazuru/designs
RE: Solid Infill Under Letters?
The size of the letters seems to make a difference. Small letters print directly on top of the Top Solid Infill (red). Larger letters print on top of Solid Infill (purple). So I’m guessing it’s either a bug in Prusa slicer or there’s a setting that is being changed by the size of the letters. Does anyone know if the same thing happens in other slicers?
RE: Solid Infill Under Letters?
AFAIK the reason why there isn't any Solid Infill (purple) under small (or thin) letters is because Prusa's slicing algorithms have perimeters for step features overlapping the Top Solid Infill (red). Smaller lettering is smaller than the overlap. I'm not sure if there is a setting to control the amount of overlap.
Sorry if I didn't explain well, I'm too tired right now to re-word.
I don't really have enough experience in other slicers to know if they do it differently. Someone else will have to answer that for you.
See my (limited) designs on:
Printables - https://www.printables.com/@Sembazuru
Thingiverse - https://www.thingiverse.com/Sembazuru/designs
There are a lot of badly designed 'funny' 2D signs on Printables, many of them generated from on-line joke sources by AI software - if there is no picture of an actual print then don't bother downloading. If the sign is potentially useful then it is usually quicker and cheaper to reproduce it on paper and laminate rather than wasting filament.
I presume you are changing colour by layer - if the relief is too high then the geometry of the lettering layers begins to dominate the print structure and internal support patterns must reflect the structure above them. For most labels and graticules two layers of filament are enough but for bright colours on a dark substrate three may be needed, one of white then two of colour.
Depending on the number of upper layers configured you may see effects in the underlying layers - the raised text is a higher surface locally so there may be a text-shaped gap in the surrounding top layer with the infill pattern showing, or, the solid infill supporting the layers above may start at the same height - as you are seeing it, but below that the infill is higher. The odd example you have suggests that you are printing so few layers that, effectively, the part is solid and infill is not being generated for the base structure but the raised lettering thickness happens to be the same thickness as the defined upper layers, so probably much higher than it needs to be.
Cheerio,
RE: Solid Infill Under Letters?
Diem - Most of the signs I print I design myself using Affinity Designer and Blender. The base of the signs are usually 2mm and the print is usually between .6 - 1.0mm. Like you said thicker than it needs to be but I like the way it looks.
The best I can tell so far is the thickness of the letters doesn’t matter as much as the size of the letters on which type of infill is printed under the letters.
Sembazuru - If theres a setting to control the amount of overlap I haven’t found it yet. I was hoping someone had a work around. I’ll keep looking.
RE: Solid Infill Under Letters?
This is absolutely normal in PS. Its 'supposed' to work that way. There are many issues raised about this on the prusa slicer github and more than a few here on the forum which you could look at (if the search was worth damn).
For example https://github.com/prusa3d/PrusaSlicer/issues/8818 or https://github.com/prusa3d/PrusaSlicer/issues/6734
RE: Solid Infill Under Letters?
But @Neophyl I don’t want PS to work that way!! ;-)) Thanks for the Github links. I used the numbers 8818 and 6734 to search this forum and I found that you have already answered this question more than a few times. Thanks again for answering it again!!
After reading Github and this forum I have a few ideas to test. I’ll let you know if I find something that works.