Support structures for SLA type printers

[watsonstudios]

I love how you can place supports where you want them and rotate the model inside of S3D
My question was can you adjust the point at which the support "tubes" touch the model? Do the tubes taper at the top before touching the model?
I don't have the software yet but if it will work for SLA-type printing then I'm very interested.

The higher end SLA software (Magics, VisCAMrp) have fairly extensive control over supports and you can taper the supports to very fine points where it attaches to the model, then you have easier cleanup after removing support.

I guess this would be a feature request if it doesn't already do this. Please let me know what type of control you have with your support "cones"

Thanks.

[Simplify3D]

This is something we have in the pipeline for the future, but the software can definitely be used for these purposes right now. You have complete control over the placement of individual support pillars so you can manually place them on the few locations where they would be needed, or you can let the software automatically place them for you based on an extreme overhang angle that you specify. It's a really powerful features and would obviously help a lot for SLA-type printing.

The support pillars do not taper at the moment, but that's something we have on the todo list. You can set the width and position of the towers, but they have the same cross section all the way up.

Just curious, what SLA printer would you be using it with?

[watsonstudios]

Thanks for the response. Being able to adjust the diameter of the towers is definitely a plus. The printer I'm building is a variation of the Pryntech OpenSL printer http://www.facebook.com/Pryntech. It's the closest thing to the Form 1 you can get that is open source, they actually use the same laser/galvo components as the Form 1. I should be getting all the electronics and laser components tomorrow, I'm just building my own frame. My goal is to make a larger build area than what is common for these photo-resin based printers. Right now, I have a Type A Machines Series 1 and it's a great printer. I use Kisslicer and Pronterface. I've just been waiting for a true "SLA" solution to become open source. I was very close to building a DLP printer but then saw what Pryntech had to offer.

I like that you have an all in one solution, slicing and control (without being specific to one printer). It's silly to have to try to communicate with 2 different developers when problems and feature list wishes pop up.

I'm excited about what you have and the fact that it has SLA-type features like the support towers and the ability to rotate the part in any axis on the build platform. Form 1 has their own software but as SLA printers get more popular in the open source arena, you may have a jump on the other guys from the software side of things. When using the galvos & laser, you gain tremendous speed chewing through the gcode because the galvos can move the mirrors much faster than any XY or Delta printhead. So, you have a chance to grab this SLA market before anyone else does.

One of my ideas for slicing gcode is the ability to "scan" the object rather than jump around when infilling. What I mean is, create your perimeter loops as you do now, then scan, from top to bottom, the infill. Whether it's solid or a percentage of infill, scanning from one end to the other, back & forth. I could be wrong but seems like it would be so much faster than hopping around like most slicers do with gcode on FFF printers.

One other question I have is can you control the gcode resolution? Kisslicer has an "oversample" setting that allows for finer curve representation (shorter line segments) when slicing. This is nice when slicing high resolution meshes. You definitely don't want the gcode to be at a lower rez than your model. You need a nice XY resolution to compliment you fine Z layers.

What do you think? If you have a demo version or trial, that would be wonderful. If not, the customizable supports has me sold anyway.

Looking forward to giving it a go.
Thanks.

[Simplify3D]

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