Small post (cylinder) not printing with solid base

[CleverCoder]

Good afternoon!

I have a FlashForge Creator Pro, and it's creating pretty nice prints so far. I have a model I created with a round post attached to a base. The post comes out fine, with the exception of the bottom-most layers. It appears to be poorly attached, and is much narrower than the rest of the layers. I modeled this in 3ds Max, and the post and base intersect quite well. I've seen this before, and can't find any settings that may affect this behavior. I have changed the perimeter count to 3 (for strength), and very minor settings to temp and speed (mainly bridging and HBA temp change - from 110 on first layer to 70 for layer 2). It's like there's some offset being added, but I'm not sure how.

Here's an image. Notice the poor base on the post (I stopped the print early). Also, this is being printed with support material for something that will be attached to the top of the post.
https://goo.gl/photos/donqQ1iFhnqWs9Ua6

Any tips, ideas? I might try the print in Slic3r and see if I get the same results. The problem with Slic3r is that I can't add manual supports that I need for the object on top of the post.

Thank you,
- Sean

[CleverCoder]

I think I figured it out. After processing with Netfabb, I found some self-intersecting faces. I went back into 3ds Max and used ProBoolean to turn the model into a single object. After a test print, the problem appears to have gone. There's still slight warpage on the base, but it seems much more sturdy. It would be nice if S3D had a repair option to fix self-intersection issues, but I think this was the problem!

[dkightley]

Sean

There is a feature in S3d to address the issue you are describing.

On the Mesh dropdown menu is Separate Connected Surfaces. By highlighting the part and selecting this option, the part will be separated out into multiple sections, and S3D will then successfully slice without missing bits out.

I have to use it all the time due to the way in which I design parts and the software I use.