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Poor Man's Breakaway supports: Masking tape and gluestick.  

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Sean Roach
(@sean-roach)
Eminent Member
Poor Man's Breakaway supports: Masking tape and gluestick.

I have a reasonably long project  which has major overhangs at any orientation, (or it won't fit in the Z-axis), and I don't want to break it into even smaller pieces to avoid using support material. I've been playing around with how to get the best finish despite these limitations, as I frequently end up with the supports too heavily welded to the item I'm making to remove them cleanly.
I don't yet have any practical means to use a dedicated support material filament.
I have found a way.
I just conducted a second test of my solution, using a much cut down version of the model I'm trying to print and it came out very nice.

Take a strip of masking tape, apply glue stick to the back side and allow it to dry.
Using the new PrusaSlicer alpha's pause feature, add a pause where you have a nice, horizontally flat, area you need breakaway supports. Be careful to put those pauses at the last available moment, as you want to be able to tell where the supports end and the structure of the object begins. With top contact z distance set at 0.3, your printer should leave you a decent gap that helps you tell. I haven't tried with 0.2, but it should work fine too. When the print is paused, cut and place sections of the glue stick where the supports will go, and resume the print.

You do end up with some residue, both from the glue stick and the adhesive from the tape, but it works quite well, and will let you print some extreme, horizontal, overhangs with good surface finish and no risk of welding.

I haven't tried blue painter's tape, as I don't have any. The white stuff works.

Posted : 11/09/2021 1:14 am
sylviatrilling
(@sylviatrilling)
Honorable Member
Brilliant!

I'm going to try this.

Mk3S+,SL1S

Posted : 11/09/2021 1:53 am
Sean Roach
(@sean-roach)
Eminent Member
Topic starter answered:
Whoops. Typo.

 

Posted by: @sean-roach

When the print is paused, cut and place sections of the glue stick where the supports will go, and resume the print.

No edit button. In case anyone might misunderstand me because of a mistake I made in writing this, this SHOULD read: When the print is paused, cut and place the sections of tape that you applied glue stick to where the supports will go, and resume the print.

Posted : 11/09/2021 3:19 am
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