Prime Pillar Tube Shape For Warp Prone Filament

[BaronWilliams]

Reason for Request
Square objects have 4 extreme stress points at the 4 corners, which tubes do not have. Stress points are prone to warping. Filament that's very highly prone to warping (such as polypropylene) can cause a square prime pillar to lift and detach from the build platform, messing up the entire print. By using a tube prime pillar instead of a square prime pillar, the chance of the prime pillar lifting is greatly reduced.

Settings Needed
Additions Tab -> Prime Pillar: (New settings shown in bold)

• Prime Pillar Shape
  • Square Prime Pillar (default)
  • Tube Prime Pillar
• Prime Pillar Width
• Prime Pillar Outlines (The idea is to make a tube with enough outlines to provide a good purge.)
• Prime Pillar Infill Percentage (Should be set to 0 for tube prime pillars to avoid adding stress to the pillar.)

Custom Alternative Without This Feature
I have been doing a lot of 2 color printing with polypropylene. And in every case, even with a good brim, the corners of the square prime pillar will lift, and I've had them pull themselves off the build platform, ruining the whole print. The larger the print, the more prone the square prime pillar is to getting pulled off the build platform.

Custom Tube Prime Pillar Example

TubePrimePillar.JPG (7.7 KiB) Viewed 472 times

To solve this, when printing polypropylene, I've stopped using the Simplify3D built in square prime pillar and replaced it with a tube prime pillar object that I designed myself. Circles do not have concentrated stress points like squares have. This geometry change helps decrease warping tremendously. So far, my tube prime pillars have NEVER lifted themselves off of the build platform, in prints where the square prime pillar would have lifted off and ruined the print.

When printing polypropylene, the custom tube prime pillar works really well with an added brim, but it is inconvenient to use.

Custom Tube Prime Pillar Disadvantages:

• You need to manually ensure it prints before the other objects print.
• You need to manually adjust the size.

[S3D-Jason]

Interesting idea!

Just to add another suggestion - you could also try adding a brim to the prime pillar. If you add several outlines to the brim it will end up getting rounded at those corners so you get round edges instead of square which can help. I've used that with many tall prime pillar that had trouble sticking or getting knocked over.