Newby question: Horizontal face 'Supports'
Hi all, first time posting here. I'm more familiar with subtractive manufacturing and am just learning additive with my new Prusa i3 MK3S+ and am really enjoying the process 😀 . How did I survive without a 3D printer!
Anyway, I have designed a punch & die for a friend to form some thin copper sheet parts on a flypress. The die printed just fine, but for the punch I want to mount this horizontally to maximise the strength of the part. This means that I have a rather large horizontal layer to print and added some supports for this which look fine on first inspection:
however, when I checked the slicing, I noticed that the supports only support the horizontal face around it's edges:
I have tried altering the 'XY separation' settings, but this makes no difference to the support positions. I have also tried painting the support area without success.
My question is: is this expected behaviour for the supports in this situation? If yes, does anyone have a 'workaround' for this?
Thanks in advance for any assistance.
Best Answer by Neophyl:
It can do that. There’s an option tick box called don’t support bridges. It’s on by default. If you turn it off PS will then generate support under the entire area. There are hundreds of repeat topics all over the forum answering this same question.
Chuck is quite correct though that for many models you don’t need to support bridges to print.
Thank you
Thank you cwbullet for your prompt reply, it is much appreciated.
I did try to print it 'as is' which failed with the horizontal layer sagging. Do you happen to know if this behaviour with the supports for horizontal area's is common across all slicers?
If it is, I think that I'll have to split the model into two parts, not a major issue but would prefer to get it done in one part if possible.
thanks again.
Just tried it using Cura
Just tried it using Cura and got the result that I wanted:
Not sure why the Prusa slicer can't do this, but hey, problem solved. 👍
It can do that. There’s an option tick box called don’t support bridges. It’s on by default. If you turn it off PS will then generate support under the entire area. There are hundreds of repeat topics all over the forum answering this same question.
Chuck is quite correct though that for many models you don’t need to support bridges to print.
That solved it, thank you Neophyl
I had a feeling that it should be possible in Prusa, but I am learning all these new terms, so I didn't really know what terms to start searching for.
I'll try to do a deeper search in future before posting 'repeat' questions, sorry about that.
Thanks for all of the replies.
The search function on the forum to put it bluntly -sucks. However google search limited to just the forum works with Google’s usual efficiency.
Given the sheer amount of times this topic gets asked though I really wish that Prusa would change the default to turn that option off though.
This why i suggest Google.
The search function on the forum to put it bluntly -sucks. However google search limited to just the forum works with Google’s usual efficiency.
Given the sheer amount of times this topic gets asked though I really wish that Prusa would change the default to turn that option off though.
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Chuck H
3D Printer Review Blog
Prusa Knowlegebase & Academy are improving
I had a feeling that it should be possible in Prusa, but I am learning all these new terms, so I didn't really know what terms to start searching for.
I'll try to do a deeper search in future before posting 'repeat' questions, sorry about that.
The knowledgebase and Academy are slowly improving.