I’m printing a wand blender coupler for a coleague of mine.
The CAD model image is included at the end of the post. The total height of the model is 23 mm and the widest diameter (at the outside of the fins) is 35 mm.
I’ve succesfully printed one piece but broke 7 out of 9 fins while removing supports. The fins are 8,5 mm long, 1,5 mm wide and 8 mm high. 5 of them broke when I took off the horizontal support at the base of the fins. The vertical walls of the support deformed and took the fins with them.
I’ve sliced my .STL file with Cura, but I didn’t change support settings as this is my first supported print, so I don’t really know how to set them up.
So my Z distance was 0,1 mm and X/Y distance 0,2 mm. I was thinking of changing the distances to 0,3 mm for Z and 0,5 mm for X/Y. I don’t need perfect smoothness for fins’ base surface, but since the fins take up most of that surface, I want to make it as smooth as I can with supports cause I won’t have much room for sanding it.
The second problem is the hole in the middle. It gets filled with support which I can’t catch in order to get out.
I could flip the print, so the support is not near the fins, but on the other side the height to base is 13,5mm and there is also a middle hole with sqared sides which catch the flaps on the blade shaft. This is the part that failed on the original part (the squared sides wore out) so I was trying to avoid doing anything to it, but I might have to.
Even so, I’d still like to get some help with determining support settings.
Also, I’ve had a really hard time pulling the part off the bed. I’ve left it to cool down for 1,5 hour and i barely managed to pull it off. So any tips on that as well? I couldn’t fit a spatula under the part in order to lift it, so I had to twist it with my hand, but since the contact area is so small, I might have pulled it off vertically, it would be the same. I’ve got a MK2S Prusa with PEI sheet so I don’t want to ruin it.
Maybe heating the bed for a couple of minutes would help get it off after it cools down?