hard to remove support material

Hi all,

my support structures seem to be very dense. Additionally, they seem to be too close to the structure i'm trying to print and seem to merge with it. It is very hard to remove. I need to use a dremmel and knives to cut through and clean the structures I'm printing.

I've seen videos where the support is very easy to remove.

1- I'm using Slic3r. I heard simplify3d is better but its 150$.

2- I've tried printing with a lower feedrate such that there'd be less PLA but that would affect my print as well.

I will post my Slic3r support settings when I get to the computer they're on in a little while.

Here's my Slic3r support settings. It seems to work pretty well for me.

thanks.

They look quite similar to my settings.

How about the lower feedrate? did you actually use a feedrate that'd give you 1mm for 1mm or did you have to tweak it?

I found playing with the feedrate made the support structures easier to remove but that some parts of the print started to look bad

I agree, support material generated by slic3r is far too difficult to remove in my experience. I now use S3D instead.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

My feed rate is 1 to 1. once my extruder was tuned (10mm commanded to 10mm extruded) I've never touched the feedrate.

Another item I was wondering is should I maybe have a blower to cool down the PLA as it is being placed down because it seems to merge with the existing layer (which is probably a good thing) but not for support.

I made another print using pillars instead of rectilinear, seems easier to remove, however, they still produce the support structures too close to the print itself. I've tried changing all sorts of settings but dont seem to be able to get the support to be a bit farther from the print, or at least to not merge with it.

Anybody have experience with settings on Slic3r to have more separation between support structure and print?

SImplify3d has generated good reviews but does cost 150USD. I'm just starting to print and would rather see good results with Slic3r and later move to simplify3d.
ANy other good software that is free or costs less money?

Change Interface layers to 2 or 3. This allows for the support to cool more and thus it's not adhered as well.

Also it looks like your pattern spacing is way too low, mine it 5mm not .5mm. .5mm would make almost solid support instead from the top looking down it should look more like a square waveform pattern with 5mm between waves.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/20/2015 01:11AM by tmorris9.

I agree that S3D costs too much, and I bought it reluctantly. I would have bought it much earlier had it been half the price. I gave up using slic3r because it kept crashing, not just for me but for other users too. I tried Cura, but I hit a bug that resulted in poor print quality, and it doesn't support relative extrusion which RepRapFirmware prefers to avoid rounding errors. I didn't try Kisslicer.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/20/2015 02:17AM by dc42.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].