3D Scanning for 3D Printing

[MaxFunkner]

Hi all, I am Max from 3DWithUs.
I am a big fan of 3D scanning for 3D printing and published a lot of blogs on the subject with original images. I haven’t had experience with the industrial-grade laser scanners, yet, but keep trying out the ones that come out on the consumer market. In almost all cases 3D printing is involved.
I hope you will find our articles insightful. If you come across something interesting in this area, please let me know.

[JaffH]

Hi. Thanks for sharing. I am just a beginner in 3d printing and looking for some support on 3d forums. When I was looking for my first printer I also searched for advice and reviews. I purchased one from this review https://43dprint.org/best-3d-printers-under-200/.
I found your article '3D Printing Tips & Tricks' really useful. You are saying that Many of the objects require a lot of supports to be added, in there. Is there a way to minimize the supports in order to save material?

Thanks

[Dirkie2710]

Is there a way to minimize the supports in order to save material?

You can do a few things. Orientation of the item on the bed is one way.

Imagine a cylinder printed open side facing down. Would require lots of support. Flip it 180 with open side facing up. No support needed. your object may need support regardless of the orientation, but try other orientations to see which require the least amount of supports.

Depending on which slicer you use, there are a number of options for supports. I use Cura. They have some interesting supports (like the tree one) and you can change the infill etc of supports. There is also a plugin for cura to create your own supports. Pretty useful when you don't need an entire support for a wing, just some support at a tip

https://ultimaker.com/learn/ultimaker-c ... ilable-now


youtu.be/95DFDGqyMGU

[Scott.Warren]

I'm a big fan of using Tree supports (Cura) when things get complex, but often use more regular patterns if the overhang is simple.

With slicers you can edit the parameters of almost everything, so if you want thicker walled supports, or thinner support towers, you can make those changes. Lots of good videos on how to get good quality of your prints, but it comes down to trial and error, and learning all about how molten plastic behaves with your printer in your own environment. You can tweak the support settings with values like '% overhang to support', which would increase or decrease the amount of supports used for a given model.

[Scott.Warren]

20200818_103930.jpg

Lots of sanding left to do on this one!