Adding Support Material

When I make a design how do I add support material and what dimensions are they?

Depends on the slicer you are using. Skeinforge has support options in the Raft plugin. I don't believe slic3r has a good support function yet but I don't use it myself.

Alright, but when I have a thing on Thingiverse and someone asks "support?" what am I supposed to do?

They are referring to you as the creator adding areas to the model to support the overhangs, exactly what that entails depends on the model.

How do I do it? I only have the stl up for download so this part I am unfamiliar with (there is one part that might need support but is so small I don't know) as I thought support was added right before printing not to the stl.

[www.thingiverse.com]

Support can be added by the slicer, but sometimes a person supplying the model will "model" support in, a good example is the Greg's Extruder, he models a couple of 1 layer solid layers to force bridging so that parts above have support as well as an additional piece that sits next to an otherwise unsupported piece.

I'm no expert in the best techniques, though I've seen several descriptions of techniques on various blogs, so you might want to try a web search.

Rather odd that this person doesn't know he is to do it himself at the slicer level.

Thanks again.

Most people try very hard to not use generated support.
Support in Slic3r the most commonly used slicing program is anywhere between bad and useless.
Skeinforge is marginally better.
Kisslicer is better than both for support.
And while support is usually easily removed from ABS, I have yet to see support generated by any slicer that is easily removed from PLA.

Yes, the videos I have seen support makes the object from great to looking like the buzzards had picked at it and requires sand paper use to help repair it. UGH.

So, how do I add it since some users don't like the outcome of the generalizers? If I add it to the 3d model how thick etc do I add?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/08/2012 01:09PM by Dark Alchemist.