how to manage support separation when printing at large layer heights?

[maker2]

At the moment I'm printing at 0.4mm layer heights.

What's the best way of handling the separation between the support and the part?

At the moment I'm leaving one layer of separation, but since that's 0.4mm the support doesn't function properly and everything droops.

[airscapes]

Have no run into that yet.. but still using 4.01. You can try adding 1 layer of dense support at 100% and leave 1 layer separation. Most of my supports are 1mm resolution at 45% infill. If you are at a lower support infill rate, try bumping that up. Take all this with a lot of salt if you are using some newer version.

[maker2]

That was what I tried in the beginning. But a 0.4mm drop, even onto a nice dense infill layer, is enough to make 3-4 layers above delaminate. Or rather never laminate in the first place.

I'm wondering if this "specify separation in layers" thing was a Quick Fix by the developers for Simplify 1.0. Surely it should be in millimetres? (The machine can figure out how to shift the Z when printing.)

[PhillipM]

It'd certainly be a lot better if you could put support and infill layers on divisions of normal layer height as well as multiples, if you're using half mm layer heights sometimes you only want the seperation to be a half or quarter layer, same for structural infill with alternating patterns, it'd be nice to be able to use half the perimeter layer height for some of them.

[maker2]

In the end the best I could do in this situation was to get rid of the dense support layer that assures the best finish and print with just basic support at a medium density and NO SEPARATION. There was no problem detaching these large strands of plastic but the finish was not as good as it could have been if the distance could have been specified and dense support used.