How to use Support in your 3D Prints! Part 1 - 3D Printing 101 Video Lecture | What is 3D Printing: Basic Knowledge - IT & Software

if you're serious about 3d printing that
you'll need to use support materials now
and then for your 3d printing projects
why is it that so many Twitter bringeth
is iasts avoid support material like
it's the worst thing in the world
well in this two parts really printing
101 series we're going to be talking
about support materials and how you can
best use them in your 3d printing
projects let's get started hello my name
is Angus and welcome to 3d printing 101
here on makers Musso if you're new to 3d
printing you might be downloading files
and they may have descriptions with
things like prints without support or
support material needed for this 3d
print but these statements may be a
little bit confusing if you don't know
what supports mean in relation to FDM 3d
printing you see 3d printing is a layer
by layer process like we've described in
our 3d printing 101 video on infill FDM
is quite unique and that it lays down
these layers within an open-air space
one after another so if you imagine this
design to be 3d printed that's all well
and good it'll actually pretty print
quite easily as a layers more or less
line up with the previous layers but
what about this model as you can see
once it gets up to a certain height the
machine will try to 3d print that part
in mid-air and it's not going to work
very well and most certainly will lead
to a catastrophic 3d print failure I
find the best way to describe support
materials to people is as if you're
building a watch tower you can't just
have the watch tower platform hovering
magically in midair you need something
underneath it to support it and that's
what support materials do for certain
geometries when you're 3d printing them
the support materials job is to be built
at the same time as the 3d print layer
by layer but once you get to those
overhangs there'll be something
underneath it to hold it in place
otherwise to support it and these
supports are designed to be removed
after the print is finished so there's
two different ways you can do this you
can actually build support in a
different material and dissolve it
afterwards using a dual extruder machine
or what I'm going to be talking about in
this tutorial is using what's known as
breakaway support we have designed to be
pulled away mechanically after the
prints completed well that's great Angus
you might be saying how do I know I need
support to my 3d print well actually
that's a really good question
in the early days of 3d printing on
consumer machines you actually had to do
design your own supports into your 3d
models to be broken way upwards that was
extremely tedious as you can imagine but
thanks to the modern-day slices like
simplify 3d you can actually design
supports automatically or even manually
add them into the object before slicing
so let's jump in to simplify 3d to look
at various settings that define support
material so this is the mini nuke pot
that are designed last year and this is
a fantastic example as to how support
material can greatly empower your 3d
printing here we have a model which
could not really succeed without support
but we've got to try print it without
support anyway and see what happens so
I'm going to predict that these may work
these overhangs here they're a bit of a
bridge but they might drip a little bit
but here we can see where the bottom of
the bomb error is that's got nothing to
hold it in place similarly here the
middle area has nothing to hold it all
these fins so I suspect they're gonna
fail horribly and we're gonna end up
with a lot of noodles but regardless
let's go to try to print it and we'll
print it at 0.25 layer height with three
top fills three bottom and three outside
so here we are the print time will be an
hour and 17 minutes and uses sixteen
grams materials so because we don't have
support it will be quicker and use less
material but you can definitely see once
it gets here it's going to be
interesting so let's go the time-lapse
so as the print starts you can see it
doesn't here to the build platform
properly as it starts to get to those
overhanging areas it just starts trying
to print bits of 3d print in mid-air and
although it does a valiant effort some
of the bits do actually work which is
surprising that most of them just fall
into a heap of 3d print noodles so as a
print continues it does actually do okay
on the fins but then it gets to the
bottom of the bomb casing and that's
again where it's just printing in midair
and actually this makes this part of
noodles till it's slowly kind of
recovers and the print continues on so
as you can see by these pictures the
bottom of the print is completely
unacceptable it's just being dragged
around by the extruder because there was
nothing for the print to adhere to
there's nothing underneath it to support
it right so next we're going to try it
with support material this is going to
be interesting because in my experience
support material generation tends to
with supporting very thin overhangs like
these so we may need to use manual
supports and in simplify 3d we can do
very powerful manual supports but
depending on the slicer you're using you
might not have this option to use manual
supports that's go under tools and
customized support structures so under
this menu we have a few different
options we have different types of
support we can build normal which you'll
build everywhere where it's needed and
foam build platform only which means
it'll build only from the bottom of the
build platform but it won't build
support material on top of the part so
for this we're going to go with normal
and then we have support pillar
resolution so by default this is set to
4 and I suspect for this model 4 will be
to coarse but let's see how it goes and
max overhang angle from 90 degrees 990
being no support material at all let's
go with 60 that means 30 degrees will be
supported and generate automatic
supports so like I suspected these areas
are too thin to be picked up by a
4-millimeter
support pillar resolution but it has
detected that the overhang here needs
support so let's just try clearing that
and let's turn it down to 2 millimeters
and I'll generate automatic supports so
you can see here they were much more
successful so to 2 millimeters might be
a good support pillar resolution for
this print you can see it starts of
erroneous support pillars which we don't
want and it's very good practice to
support things with clumps of support
material rather than the single pillars
which are very fragile and often breaks
so we don't want that this is where
manual placement comes in handy so
that's going to remove let's remove
these erroneous ones we don't want so is
there any more around here yet there's
one there looks good to me and
everywhere else you want support it in
the middle has automatically gene
generated but we might want to add some
more around here and some more around
these areas so let's go to add new
support structures and the resolution we
want for the pillars is 2 for this very
thin area and we just click them in they
can be overlapping themselves it's no
problem at all in fact it's actually
probably good practice because it will
lead to a stronger support structure
looks good to me and add these ones in
as well
looks good and these here as well so I'm
looking at the bottom of the part here I
also want some here as well it seems to
have missed there and once again very
thin areas tend to get missed by
automatic support generation
I'll just put one there by accident I
can delete that afterwards looks good so
we've got a nice thick clump also being
simplify 3d there is the option to do
ctrl Z to undo if you make a mistake so
I'm just gonna remove this one here so
you see quite clear that support
material have added will hold up these
areas as they start getting printed as
that layer forms instead of drooping
down because of gravity so I'm done with
that and we can prepare to print this is
a fantastic example of I simplify 2d
helps you every step of the way so you
have manual support defined for model
process one but your support processor
things have support generation disabled
would you like to enable it yes I would
so how fantastic that it's detected that
I've gone to the effort of making manual
support I'll go back here and show you
that but I had support off so make sure
what's on also important to note these
settings here so support you can if you
have two extruders on your machine you
can allocate support to your other
extruder this is important if you want
to do things experimenting with stuff
like soluble support materials which are
not going to go into here but it can be
done and then we have different infill
percentages so similarly when we talked
about infill inside the part support can
have different infill so generally for
very small support structures you want a
higher infill and for large support
structures you want a lower infill and
the thing about simplify 3d is it'll let
you do a low infill and then a denser
infill as you get closer to the part so
this is actually this looks quite good
3270 we'll see how this goes and if you
have the sayings you can play around if
you need to the horizontal offset is
important if you find your support
material sticks too much to your part
you might want to increase this number
if you're finding the support material
isn't sticking enough or it fails to
hold the part in place you might want to
decrease this number so 0.3 is a good
default it seems to work quite well so
I'm happy with that let's see how it
looks alright so if we
go down to this point this is what we
want to see so this is the support
material that's going to be formed as it
starts building up towards our part so
you can see as it starts forming there
there will be plenty of support for it I
go quite slowly let's go back in time so
slow it down quite a bit if you see as a
part forms there will be plenty of
support for it the only one thing that I
might comment on by pausing there is
this detail when it comes to form these
ones the angle might not be correct you
can see there so we can actually change
our support angle as well and it might
be worth demonstrating that in this
video just in case you want to change it
so under your support settings we can
change our support angle so it's set at
0 let's make that 45 to see how that
looks
add angle and remove with zero there we
go
so now set it to 45 you see the support
angle has completely changed by the
benefit of that is now in these areas
the angle supports more of the print as
we go up through the part similarly it
does it there as well so again there's
no perfect way of doing this because you
can see maybe by changing it to 45 now
here might not have as much support so
the one way around that would be to make
our support more dense let's increase it
to 50 and 80 let's see how that goes and
once again the wonderful world of g-code
preview so you see much more support now
much denser but by being denser Maysles
support the part better and I'm pretty
happy with that
so this will be a really nice print and
in my opinion it should turn out really
well
you'll also notice that it only takes a
little bit longer one hour 34 minutes
and uses maybe 5 grams or so more
plastic so not that much more to
guarantee a successful print let's send
it to the printer and see how
that's for this one goes so like before
the print does stick to the built
platform properly but here you can see
the support material being printed at
the same time it's the supports that
make such a big difference to the
quality of the final 3d print because
they're there and stop the print
printing over thin air and drooping down
especially in the case of printing the
bomb casing means that this underside
curve is fully supported so when
printing with supports like this they're
the same material and they have
breakaway but I found when I took this
off the print platform most of them just
broke away by themselves anyway and the
rest were easily removed with pliers and
the quality difference here is just
plain to see this print needed support
and the extra effort that goes into
support Miraval really makes a huge
difference there is really no contest
between the print that was done without
support and the print that was done with
supports so I hope this video helped you
get a better understanding on what
support material is and how you can use
it for your 3d prints but don't miss
part 2 where you put all this theory
into practice on some really difficult
to print 3d objects like this video if
you found it useful and don't forget to
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you