Noisy Surface Finish To Hide Ghosting

[Paintball Magic]

It would be cool if we could add "noise" to the shells of the part. This would make the part look as if it is laser sintered.

This would achieve a few things.
Sacrifice smooth finish for a rough one.
Hides ghosting and any imperfections in the extrusion.
Save a tone of time texturing the part in CAD.


This can be achieved by constantly randomizing the extrusion width for the outer shell or by adding noise to each layer.

Thanks, I love the software and recommended it any chance I get.

[C-line]

+1
Interesting idea, I like it!
Let's start doing more of what we can uniquely do with 3D printing and not always try to duplicate the look of molded parts.

[mitchfx]

This is a great idea for a feature. I often do this manually by adding rake marks or surface noise to my zbrush sculptures but that is bound to the resolution of the mesh. If it was a feature in S3D then it would only be limited by the x/y resolution of the printer and something that could be added and adjusted after modeling is done.

[milks]

This is quite an interesting idea however this is surely a feature for whatever 3D modelling/CAD software you use and not a slicer

[Paintball Magic]

I agree,,

But...

Not everyone has access to software that can achieve those results.

Customer's STLs are difficult to modify.

Its meant to be a time saver.

Besides the gui and process file updates, the actual code could be only a few lines long.

if (distance_traveled > defined) { extrusion_width = extrusion_width + random(range); )

[bbinnard]

This is an interesting idea for sure. But I wonder if it could actually work. My sense is that what would really be changing is the speed of the extruder gear, as this is what controls how much filament flows through the hot end, and this, in turn, is governed by the pressure of the melted filament just above the hot end opening.

So I wonder if that pressure can change quickly enough to produce the desired effect. My printer has a fairly long Bowden tube and it seems to me that this would tend to smooth out any pressure changes down at the hot end. It would be a fascinating experiment to try.