3D Printing intersecting shells - let's try it! 3D Printing 101 Video Lecture | What is 3D Printing: Basic Knowledge - IT & Software

here on makers Muse I recently made a
video on why intersecting shells in STL
files are bad for 3d printing I said
specifically in the thumbnail of that
video don't print this well I decided to
print it that old reverse psychology
let's see what happened so the file I
use is pretty basic
it's the Stanford Bunny that in
meshmixer and I basically just got that
file and patterned it around itself so
this rotated around so I'm ended up with
this Cronenberg rabbit that I intended
to use to demonstrate my intersecting
shells are bad for 3d printing and what
I wanted to find out was just how bad 3d
printing multiple shells is for 3d
printing is it as bad as I thought
or can some programs kind of deal with
it it's not very good practice but if
you can get away with it that may help
some people in some situation so I find
up five different slicing programs I
fired up the up studio which comes with
the up 3d printers and I ran these
seaters to test that then I slide up
slicer I fired up simplify 3d by the
Kira
and finally I tested craft wear so let's
see how they all did shall we let's
start with up studio so the up 3d
printers have to run their own slicer
although they are now implementing a
g-code parser kind of thing but really
you have to run up up software on the up
and they have no G Co preview so it's
really you send the file to it and you
don't know what you're going to get so I
sent our Bunny file with the insert D
shells to the seaters to be printed out
in PLA and this was the result so as you
can see as usual
the support material is done beautifully
which is what you can expect off these
machines but it's pretty damn clear that
the software has no idea what to do with
those intersecting shelves you can very
clearly see where they intersect each
other it's just made a gap it tries to
kind of separate those areas and as I
pull the support away off it it
basically just falls apart so that I
fail and it's very clear from this that
intersecting shells are a very bad idea
if you're running up studio so how about
Kira I downloaded the latest version of
Kira and it took ages to download even
though I've got NBN fiber anyway it
finally downloaded and it did have a
preset in it for the pressure she
remarked to and this was the result so
as I could see in the g-code preview
files file before I even printed it it
was having no issues stitching these
these shelves together into a uniform
manifold 3d print so really it was
managing to detect the fact that
although these shells these surfaces
were intersecting it was still able to
detect what the outside of the shape
should be and join it together properly
and I can't really see any artifacts of
where it's added geometry in where it
shouldn't be and I can't see any
artifacts where it's trying to separate
things when they shouldn't be which is
pretty good although I will say the
support material on this is pretty poor
and it's pretty stringy but it did work
printing the files despite multiple
shelves and the next slicer off the
block was simplified 3d so I have two
models of simplify 3d because I told
myself at the start of this test that if
it did have issues printing multiple
shells I would see if there's any
options to make it not have an issue and
in up studio there's no options I
couldn't change anything but in
simplifying 3d if you bring a model in
with intersecting shells it does much
the same thing as our studio did it
printed this model actually really
poorly with the shells intersecting and
Chyna sort of separated areas it didn't
know what to do and there is a text box
you can check to try to sort of merge it
all into one outline but then the
internal part here at the top became
filled which wasn't a good solution so
the way to get around this instability
is you can actually separate out all of
the meshes so what you can do is
separate them out so they're separate
and that they're now separate bodies but
then print them together and simplify to
do once you do that realizes that they
can be joined together correctly and
this is the print that was done after
doing that and it is flawless they're
all joined together properly and there's
no
issues and again the support material
hospital facility is definitely one of
my favorite so if you think of
opportunity and you have intersecting
shelves or you suspect you might have a
file winner taking shelves to try taking
that check box and seeing if they do
separate out and if you do do that then
the file will print properly and the
next class or off the block was craft
where so I dumped the multiple Bunny
Cronenberg file into craft where and
then slice it as normal
without telling it to do anything and it
also managed to stitch together these
these shelves into a single 3d print
with consistent infill without having
any weird intersecting geometry so
that's pretty impressive from class
works during it is free and it is
currently the only other free software
that has customizable support structures
unlike unlike slicer and Kuro where you
just have what it gives you but
unfortunately when I try to send it to
the pressure I tree mark - even though I
did set a custom profile it just managed
to make a little line of 3d printed poop
basically it was not pretty properly at
all it was doing something really weird
I probably can change the settings but
doing this is all about how the slicer
would handle a file not Howard Prince
I'm not going to bother but if you are
running craft where you shouldn't have
too much issues with multiple shells and
last but certainly not least is slicer
so joseph got in touch with me and said
if i'd like to try the latest version of
slicer out which i did and this is the
print of the pressurized remark to keep
in mind it is the special edition
version for the pressurized remark - I'm
not surprised that the default settings
were Lollis so it had no issues joining
together these separate shells into one
3d print there's no gap it's managed to
stitch the outlines together properly
which is really quite impressive for a
free bit of software and the infill
again is pretty cool it's a 3d infill
which now you can do on some of these
slices I haven't really played of it
before but it looks cool when it's
printing no customizable sports but I
really really do you need them I mean
these are just these are just beautiful
they're breaking off no issues and we're
left with a model
that has all of the bunnies stitched
together properly but I didn't have to
do it in other software so where does
that leave us
was I wrong to say that 3d printing with
multiple shells is a very bad idea well
not really it's still very poor form and
kind of amateurish design to not make
your files fully combined for 3d
printing because as we've seen some
software like up studio you can only run
that on the UPS and to make your file
accessible to everyone really you should
run it through that that repairing
software to fix it and make the file a
single meta fault mesh but if you're
printing for stuff on your own at home
and you're running a software like
ZBrush or sculpture it's where you do
have intersecting bodies naturally out
of the software and then you're running
slicer or simplified through DD or Kira
you can get away with it which is really
surprising to me I thought we'd have
loads of errors but I guess not so it
just shows how far these programs have
come so thank you so much for watching
guys as we enjoy this experiment into
testing intersecting shells on different
slices and a few different printers to
see what the results are and if you
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forward to seeing again very shortly
happy printing guys bye
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