Solid prints - Lothiphane

[shawnhenson]

Im guessing that the cube3 will not do Solid prints?

[ztoddman1]

Nope- Short to the point.

[shawnhenson]

Thank you for the straight to the point answer.

[MegaloDon]

Im guessing that the cube3 will not do Solid prints?

The Cube 3 will. Cube Print software won't.

[TommyDee]

A thin Lithophane will print without fill if you limit the thickness.
This allows the depth of the print to come through with light.
It is the layer thickness that makes up most of the resolution.
Printing on end does a pretty decent job!

I've also done some geological 3D prints of land-areas with exaggerated height. Those work nicely too.

It is all a matter of scale and resolution. And for Lithophanes, fill.

[Ap0c4lyptyc]

Is there no way to make the software print solid? It is really causing me problems with some prints lol. I need totally solid sides on some things and it isn't doing it for me.

[TommyDee]

Solid prints is a numbers game if you are not considering the poor side fill.
When I design something meant to be solid, I use the 0.45mm line width as a guide.
A project with a solid wall of 0.9mm will generate a good solid with 2 walls.
A 1.8mm wall will get me 4 lines. Every output option in the SW can do this.
"Almost solid" in the software means 5 lines per wall, meaning you can go as far as 4.5mm thick without infill.
Again, it will truncate if the values are in-between these values, but if the outside dimensions land on these, you will have no infill and a solid wall.


Just because the wall should be 1.8mm... doesn't mean 1.8mm throughout as you would do with mold making for plastic parts.
In 3D printing it means "1.8mm offset". This is because our height can be any multiple of 0.2mm or 0.07mm.
It is tough to design things specifically to work with the printer.

[Ap0c4lyptyc]

Oh ok gotcha! I will have to tinker around with that whenever I create something. Now what about files I find elsewhere? Specifically I was trying to print this:

ttps://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2258301

It would print out ok, but the walls were paper thin and would just crumple in on themselves. The top was fine, but that was about it. Any suggestions there?

Thanks!!

[TommyDee]

One of the problems with established designs is that they are hard to modify other than scale or other basic translation.

The best way to Thingiverse to work is to help designers know what challenges we face. The comments system is probably the best way to improve a design.

If you happened to be very patient, you might be able to figure out MeshMixer but life isn't long enough for me to recommend this.
There are tools that can directly manipulate facet files like our STL formats. These tend to be a bit pricy as well.

There are two problems with the thin wall... one that it is thin, obviously, but the other is that the two walls are barely attached to each other except at the start/end of the trace. For this, you can "drill" a few holes in the wall. This forces the system to "stitch together" if you will, the pair of walls.

Finally, you could implore capable people with too much time on their hands, or people with a common desire to regenerate the design to your liking or to meet your printer's capability.

No easy answers but that is what communities are for. Maybe we have some MeshMixer experts here that know how to thicken a walls on existing models easily.

[Ap0c4lyptyc]

Thanks for such a thorough response!! I have tinkered around with Meshmixer and Fusion360 but I don't know if I am proficient enough to edit those STL's myself. I might just try my hand at designing my own dock instead. We shall see. Thank you though!!!