Give me your Infill tips

[billyd]

Couple of points. In any object in general, the most efficient (read weight-wise efficiency) cross section for strength to weight is material at the outermost fiber. That is to say, the strongest objects for their weight will have the bulk of their material at the outermost points of the shape, and the least amount of material everywhere else. In certain instances, such as in pure tension, compression or shear this is no longer true. But the overwhelming majority of the time, objects are subjected to some sort of bending, and most objects are weakest when exposed to that type of loading. So in general, if you make an object strong enough to resist any bending forces, it will handle tension, compression and shear pretty well also.

All of that was a rather long winded way of saying if you want stronger prints, use more (thicker) shells, floors and ceilings, and don't worry about the infill at all. View infill as a way of supporting the shells, floors and ceilings of a model to keep them in place during printing. But after the model is complete, the large majority of the strength will come from the perimeters.

This is true in real life as well as in 3D printing. For example, a pipe is almost as strong as a solid rod of the same diameter in bending, but much lighter. And a pipe can be much longer than a solid rod and not bend a lot under it's own weight. So when making 3d prints make them more like a pipe, than a solid rod. They will be stronger and lighter in general. Again there may be some exceptions to this rule of thumb depending on how a part might be used. But in general this is the way to go, to get maximum strength while minimizing weight.

[JFettig]

S3D refuses to recognize that their uni-directional linear infill is an issue and they keep developing bandaids for it. Same with blobbing. You have to send them e-mails to get through to them, they don't read the forums. running 150-200% is not a surefire fix, it brings up other issues, like massive torque requirements and massive nozzle pressures which cause stringing.

From where you are at, try increasing your nozzle temperatures and/or decrease your speed and still run 150-200% infill width. Make sure you're not using random infill and just run 45 and -45 or similar.

It looks like you might be running only a single border? Make sure to run 2+ borders.

[Bassna]

Thanks for all the reply's. And don't mind that tooth mess up, it was just what I happened to be working on. I "normally" print 2 shell's on everything. And yeah using more shell's will make a part stronger, with more top/bottom layer's of course. But on this star I made, its a large flat top building on the infill. I used 4 top/bottom layers, compared to 3 with makerware. It's still considerably weaker if you squeeze it. You can almost here the infill "crunch" inside, compared to makerware's infill being solid all around the whole part, so it has no "crunch" even with less top/bottom layer's.

To who it was that said they are using Slic3r more and more lately, I was thinking about going back to that for certain thing's also, like how I can slow down just the infill speed, or just small diameter circles or such to a slower speed also. I'm just kinda hoping they make better infill on the next update. But I guess everyone has been hoping for that with every update.

[MFitz73]

To who it was that said they are using Slic3r more and more lately, I was thinking about going back to that for certain thing's also, like how I can slow down just the infill speed, or just small diameter circles or such to a slower speed also. I'm just kinda hoping they make better infill on the next update. But I guess everyone has been hoping for that with every update.

the more I use slic3r the more I am amazed at actually how much it does. its got an equivalent for every feature in s3d and more.

[tenaja]

To who it was that said they are using Slic3r more and more lately, I was thinking about going back to that for certain thing's also, like how I can slow down just the infill speed, or just small diameter circles or such to a slower speed also. I'm just kinda hoping they make better infill on the next update. But I guess everyone has been hoping for that with every update.

the more I use slic3r the more I am amazed at actually how much it does. its got an equivalent for every feature in s3d and more.

The only benefit S3D has over Slic3r is the slicing speed--S3d is a full 6x faster. If Slic3r addresses that, then I will likely give up on S3d.

[SockMonkey]

If your printer can't handle printing with a 200% extrusion width, try slowing down the print, providing more/less tension on the idler of the extruder assembly, etc. It will definitely give you a huge infill strength increase.

[TenKOhms]

If you're printer can't handle 200% extrusion width, I would say you need to run some maintenance/calibrating on it.

I disagree with JFettig, s3d does read the forums, tons of new features have been added from requests made on the forum, I think the newest one being the horizontal inset compensation...

[jimc]

I agree with 10k. Slicers aside for a min, if your extruder cant extrude at 200% then i would be digging into why and try to fix that. Unless your running a large nozzle at real high speeds then 200% isnt alot. You have a hardware problem. Clog of some type or just poorly designed. Whatever it is it needs to be addressed.

[tenaja]

"The only benefit S3D has over Slic3r is the slicing speed--S3d is a full 6x faster. If Slic3r addresses that, then I will likely give up on S3d."

Have you stopped to consider that the reason for this speed is exactly because S3D has such simplistic infill?

My comparisons were using identical settings, including the linear infill settings. It doesn't really make much sense to compare linear infill slicing speed with .3mm layers to honeycomb with .1mm layers, does it?

[MichaelHerron]

I haven't tried it yet (and my printer is tied up for the next few days) but this MAY yield stronger parts using the "woven" rectilinear infill setting.

By default, the angles of infill are 45, -45. A single direction would make dramatically stronger parts, but only in 2 of the 3 axes... if your part geometry is such, try only infilling in the "weak" direction of your part.

OTHERWISE, try this:
You can create a list of angles to use. it is NOT useful to specify several different angles--this would probably yield an even weaker part. BUT you can specify several 45's followed by several -45's.
My next try (when the printer frees up) is to try: 45,45,45,45,45,-45,-45,-45,-45,-45.

This will create a woven set, but the "yarn" will be stiffer. It means more bridging at the top, but adding a few solid layers should remedy that.

Again, this is not a solution--only a work-around for a very weak infill. I'd still like to see a better infill geometry--one that is repeated on every layer!

If anyone tries this before me, please post your results!