Side-wall connected infill ?

[DavidWSmith]

I'm interested in a variable infill method for closed interior areas with ceiling/tops, like closed boxes, cylinders, or anything with a solid top. Instead of complete infill over the whole interior, why not some sort of overlapping infill structure which "grows" from the walls to provide the required structure at the top. The purpose would be to save on material for taller models.

A detailed example would be a fairly tall cylinder with closed ends - more than twice as tall as it is wide. This method would not start the infill at the bottom, but would wait until it is as far from the top as the radius of the cylinder (in complex shapes it'd just be the widest point), and then starts to provide a 45 degree angle growth of the infill from the walls toward the middle, just filling the entire space once it reaches the ceiling material. This infill would act as support material for interior surfaces, but separated support material could also work the same way on exterior surfaces in place of tall towers.

A variations of this idea might be: a sliding density infill set to smoothly change from a few percent at the bottom to a dense setting at the top -- this would require interlocking infill patterns as the pattern gets denser.

Has anyone ever seen something like that?

[horst.w]

Yes, if it is convenient I do this. But not as a funnel - like objekt, I use some processes with infill-% from 5% up to ~ 50% or more and solid diaphragme between the process areas.


Regards
horst.w
GER

[dkightley]

This has been asked about many times. Here's the largest thread on the subject: https://forum.simplify3d.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2762

And the S3D advised way to achieve this is to use multiple processes.....created by the Variable Settings Wizard. Its not the solution.....but a manual fudge to get somewhere near!!!

Use the search feature on the forum with the two terms VARIABLE INFILL and you'll find more references about this subject..

[DavidWSmith]

Thanks everyone for your responses. I'll check this out. I really had no idea what to call it...