Support generated at arbitrary angles other than 90

[ddnguyen_278]

It would be nice to let the user specify the angle at which the support spans instead of the straight up 90 degrees they do now. I tried printing the mammoth skeleton from the Smithsonian and its 95% supports based on mass. There just isn't an option to create a tree like support structure to reduce the print time and waste mass.

[Tetraodon]

+1

I recently had to resort to Meshmixer for this as it uses a lot of plastic to use 90 degree supports a lot of the time for me - it'd be nice to be able to angle both horizontally and vertically. I'd love to be able to size supports too - eg if I need to manually define support on a long, thin edge, it can be quite time consuming.

[JoeJ]

I thought you could already do this?? Just go to "edit process settings", click Support tab, and then change the "Support Infill Angles" in the bottom right. Just ran some tests here and it works fine for me

[ddnguyen_278]

Changing the support infill angle doesn't create non-90 degree supports from what i can tell. I'll try a print with it to see but from the pre-viz it looks exactly the same.

[JoeJ]

Why don't you post your factory file and a picture, cause it seems to be working fine here

[Tetraodon]

Wait - OP, do you mean rotating it on the Z axis, or the X/Y axis?

[Marshall]

What I'm reading is that rotation in the Z-axis is needed. I also +1 this feature, greatly!

I would assume he realizes what changes to the infill angle do, they are simple X/Y fill locations. If we have X/Y, well how about Z? Why not, is the better question. An intricate support structure could be built; supports supporting supports, even. You can bet that would be useful. The possibilities of support would expand 10-fold, with an exterior scaffold structure nature now entering the big picture of possibilities.

I can think of a way right now that this could be incredibly handy. One of my own prints I am unhappy with, because nothing works when I want to stand the print straight up and get the highest looking level of detail on the object.

Say that I'm printing a tower, or a rifle replica, standing straight up. Lets say the structure is rather narrow and long, using the rifle example. I want to print the rifle standing straight up, but it doesn't have much base support, and even when it does, the barrel of the rifle is very prone to base flex leading all the way up the body column because of leverage. Printing the rifle standing straight no longer becomes an option then, in many similar modeling scenarios.

Now if the support could be rotated in the Z-axis, I could build a 3-way "pyramid" or triangular support structure of angled supports that contact the rifle model midway. Once all 3 supports meet at the object, high stability is formed. Now the rifle could be printed standing straight up, with a perfect looking barrel that does not step all over the place from sway and leverage effects.

This method of tapered support could really generate finished parts in a whole new way, just by adding simple Z-rotation, with X/Y pivot combined.

[jimc]

i think your asking for mesh mixer style supports.

[Tetraodon]

Essentially, yes. Mesh Mixer is a right pain when it comes to having to make the model solid and then exporting - then having to go back into the program and do it again if something goes wrong. of course, it means that the edits of supports are a part of the model, rather than being recognized as supports. It'd be nice to not have to go through two slicer programs in order to make tree structures - Simply3D's supports are handy, but it can use up a lot of filament on tall objects to have supports that go vertically.

[JoeJ]

For tall objects, I like to use the dense support features. That way 95% of your support structure only uses a tiny amount of plastic with a really low infill percentage, and only the very top 5% or so uses dense infill to support the object. It has saved me pounds of plastic and structurally had much better performance than the few times I have bothered to try meshmixer.

If you've never used the dense support stuff before, this explains is pretty well: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2135&p=13342