[SOLVED] Model surfaces disappearing upon rotation

[Marshall]

Hey guys hope you all had a good 4th.

So I'm having this STL model issue that seems to be happening with slightly tapered cylinders or in other words very lightly tapered conical surfaces.

The entire model displays in S3D when imported. It is a rifle round replica. My FFF settings are tuned very well for me I would say but I don't think FFF is involved because of the way it is rendering it up. I tried various infill, perimeter layers--just in case this may have effected something in the output. To no avail.

What happens is, when Send to Print is used, suddenly the model loses most of the cylindrical structure of the rifle case for toolpaths. The supporting structure disappears. Laid on it's side and when the toolpaths are rendered, more of the structure exists, but still, the outermost diameter is deleted away. Top layers remain.

I make my models in Autodesk Inventor 2015, to-scale, and output in .STL. This has always worked for my printing 100% of the time until now.

Here are photos of what I have going on.








I can even provide the source STP file, if anyone wants it. I cannot attach it here.

[JoeJ]

I think your issue is just that the sidewalls are smaller than your printer's nozzle diameter, and thus they won't print. An easy solution would be to go to "edit process settings", click Advanced tab, and enable "merge all outlines into single solid model". This will make the part solid instead of all those tiny thin walls. This way it can easily be printed and filled in.

[Marshall]

Ah HA!

...And what a useful feature I had not known about!

Thank you!!

[dkightley]

Hi Marshall

Looking at your screenshots, I think your bullet model is made up of more than one mesh...and consequently, the slicer is doing some strange things when it processes for slicing. The solution is quite simple...but the difficult thing is remembering it every time you print something.

Simply select the Separate Connected Surfaces option on the Mesh dropdown menu. If you do have multiple meshes, this will give you multiple entries in the Models list....and stop the slicer from going bazerk!

This might also be an alternative solution to JoeJ's suggestion.