Intricate print with support

I found this [www.smopic.com] model on the web of a beautiful warrior princess and really wanted to print it. After a few hours of modifying, combining and smoothing I was ready.

I first printed her nude standing up with support to see if I could print her and especially her hair. It worked out but required the model to be the largest I could print which was 215mm tall. I then added her dress and bows etc. I did not add the long pony tail, its bow or the sword as they seemed to delicate to risk printing in one piece.

The final file I printed has 6.4 million faces and is 306mb. It takes a very very long time to slice even with KS running on four cores at 3ghz. With the dress KS would not create the support the way I wanted it (supporting the bottom of the dress that floated in free air without encapsulating the entire model in support). After finding the minimal angle KS would create support for the bottom of the dress I tried printing it but it was a failure since the dress was only being supported by the very tips and they ended up breaking off about 4-5hours into the print.

The solution to printing her in her dress was to print her upside down. This resulted in a good print but the quality of the upper body was far better when printed correctly.

There is a third print off to the right that you will need to right click and view image if you want to see.

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Wow. That looks absolutely amazing.

I also printed something with tall support recently and ran into some unstable KS supports. I wish KS would print all the support in one go after finishing outline and infill, with an option to disable retracts between support columns.

lajos Wrote:
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> Wow. That looks absolutely amazing.
>
> I also printed something with tall support
> recently and ran into some unstable KS supports. I
> wish KS would print all the support in one go
> after finishing outline and infill, with an option
> to disable retracts between support columns.

Thanks I printed the second one in the dress because my mom said "I want one of those" as soon as she saw it. So now she has a copy of two of the most intricate things I have printed, this girl and the Eiffel tower.

Try using a higher support level like fine or ultra as it only effects the main support, support. Then use Sheath as high as you can before it would make the support hard to remove. Then use inflate to make the supports larger than the area being supported so it will be more stable.

I wish I could force retractions on all support structures as the lack of retractions between them result in ooze which then results in an under primed hotend when it gets back to the model being printed. This results in small areas at the beginning of each perimeter loop that is lacking enough material. You can see it on her shoulders in the picture from the back. Maybe I should try the prime pillar as that is really what it is for (more for dual extruders but here too).

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I was printing something with an antler or horns, and within a single layer the printer would do some outlines, some infill, some support, back to outlines, infill, support etc... It seemed to me that printing all the outlines/infill first, then all the support would've worked better, even if it be extra time.

In addition there were lots of skinny toothpick-like supports that went several cm high. With all the wipes and restarts those were not coming out to be anything useful.

I guess I have to play around with the support settings more

Surface quality is awesome. Few questions if you don't mind:
- What was the print duration?
- What sort of post processing did you do subsequent to removing the supports? Sanding, acetone vapour etc?

As an aside, I've been battling with getting slic3r to produce a removable support with some success but it's really dumb about where a support is required. (See 50% scaled Zombie hunter head below)

jimjimma Wrote:
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> Surface quality is awesome. Few questions if you
> don't mind:
> - What was the print duration?

All of them were printed at 0.149mm layers on my cable Z axis Tantillus
3 perimeters
0 infill as it just wastes time
You can see the rest of the settings I used in this thread [kisslicer.com]

For the nude girl it was around 10 hours at around 45mm/s

For the first one in a dress it was around 14 hours at around 55mm/s

The second one in a dress it was about 10 hours at 85mm/s

> - What sort of post processing did you do
> subsequent to removing the supports? Sanding,
> acetone vapour etc?

Nothing. I used a knife to remove the support and scraped a few areas that the support was attached to with the knife.

>
> As an aside, I've been battling with getting
> slic3r to produce a removable support with some
> success but it's really dumb about where a support
> is required. (See 50% scaled Zombie hunter head
> below)

Not entirely surprised. Kisslicers support generation works well and I suggest trying it. Even if you have it set to where it encases the entire print in support it will still break away with very little work.

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FFF Settings Calculator	Gcode post processors	Geometric Object Deposition Tool Blog
Tantillus.org	Mini Printable Lathe	How NOT to install a Pololu driver

Sublime Wrote:

> Not entirely surprised. Kisslicers support
> generation works well and I suggest trying it.
> Even if you have it set to where it encases the
> entire print in support it will still break away
> with very little work.

Excellent - thanks Sublime.
I'm playing with Kisslicer ATM - yet another learning curve to overcome :|.

I agree kisslicer is what I use definitely seems to be the best

Amazing surface finish indeed, yet another reason to upgrade to that Cable Z-axis (which I think is quite brilliant Sublime)