Hello! This is a solution that I’d like to share with you all as it may come in useful sometime, I call it the “Paper Raft”, it certainly worked out for me after I had some adhesion issues with a particular model that didn’t have much of a surface area and also required a lot of support material, “The Ultracortex EEG Headset”. The first layer of the print is quite intricate as first layers go and involves lots of little supports here and there that pop off the blue tape or get knocked around on the second layer, it is so crucial to get the first layer of this particular model solid and not just hope that after a few layers it will iron itself out (as some prints do).
I am not a fan of rafts and I tried brims too but this did not solve the problem of getting the supports laid down solid on the first layer. So I decided to try a first layer approach of putting down just 1 thin layer of PLA and then using this as my foundation to build the intricate support network, normal rafts take quite a long amount of time and material to build which I consider a waste, plus they’re hard to remove but a thin layer as a foundation raft is easily cut away since it is paper thin.
The exact settings in Simplify3D are under the Additions > Raft feature, the settings I used are attached but I set the raft layers to 1 and raft infill to 75% and I disabled raft base layers.
This gave me a very paper thin first sheet of PLA before the real building begun, this gave a great foundation for the supports and the rest of the mode to succeed. It takes a little while (no where near as long as a normal raft nor a failed print!) for that first layer to complete but at least I am safe in the knowledge that the rest of the print all the way to the top will have a much much greater chance of success and because the layer was so thin it is easily trimmed with a sharp knife. It could work on other similar profile models.
Give it a go and let me know if it works for you too! I hope it helps you in your 3D printing adventures.
7 Likes
Not a bad idea! You could consider something like buildtak or lokbuild too
1 Like
cobnut
3
Nice. I’ve had a couple of prints recently that needed silly little bits of support at the base; I’ll give this a go.
Nice! I had done something similar but it was making a layer as a separate process to be like a raft. It works but is a pain. I really like your method!
Even though I have great bed adhesion these type of really small and tall supports will come undone so easily.
Very nice solution!
1 Like
MikeD
5
Thanks for sharing. I try to avoid full rafts since they seem like such a waste of plastic, but I never thought of limiting to 1 layer.
Thanks for sharing! It’s very useful!
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